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The Joy of Delay

Seeker_UK

Seeker_UK

Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans
I've been going though a lot of my CDs to catalogue them for Discogs and has led me to replay quite a few of them. It struck me that the one common theme for a lot of my collection is the use of delay / echo and this has manifested itself on many of my own recordings.

The main use is to add syncopation - making rhythmic pattern have a bit of drive. Most of the 'Berlin School' music that makes up a lot of my collection features it:
 
But that syncopation is obviously not just for keys, The Edge, John Martyn, Manuel Gottsching, Dave Gilmour also use it to great effect;



You can add to that Achim Reichel (A.R and Machines), the Durutti Column, Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim, all suing that effect to propel arpeggios forward
 
But it's not just a rhythmic approach, the us of Delay for additional colour, such as in the guitar work of The Chameleons / Cocteaus


Which IMHO is one of the routes to Shoegaze / Dreampop who use stacked delays for that 'Cathedral of Sound' (LOL) effect.
 
Then there's analogue delay's saturation effect which is something else I have a lot of time for (again using it a lot in my recordings, possibly too much). For example the whole Theramin / vocal workout from 1:50 to 3:40 always make the hairs on the back of my neck stick up. The rest is a bit of an anticlimax (IMHO, obvs)

Or adding some colour in this track in "Never Known"

And the final use I can think of is the long delay / looping of Frippertronics. Later soundscapes are rubbish - it's the tape saturation (again) that makes a harmonic mush that does it for me. It works either as a standalone piece (over which to improvise or not.


Or underpinning something more rhythmic - the loops own rhythm works against the 'dance' rhythm to somehow give it more power.


Does anyone else have some favourites (that didn't feature in the shoegaze thread)?
 
Big fan here, though more tape and analogue delay than digital. Many years ago I had a pretty knackered Wem Copicat tape delay which was great, the knackeredness being a real advantage as the way it distorted, wobbled and faded just sounded great. Pure Hawkwind, who I think were my starting point for tape echo:


EMS VCS3 with its spring reverb through a Wem Copicat. Copicat on the guitar too. That whole (best) era of Hawkwind was defined by this kit.


Fripp and Eno’s stuff using Revox open reel recorders as tape delay is great too, giving vastly longer times than was possible from proper delay units of the time.


Here Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder pretty much write the modern rule book for syncopated delay. This final side of Bad Girls being their masterpiece IMHO, even pre-empting the Blue Monday drum program by sticking delay on the kick drum at the end of Our Love. Lots of delay everywhere, but much of it quite dry and adding rhythmic interest to the synth sequencing.

PS I second the stuff upthread and would certainly have cited early Tangerine Dream, Durutti Column etc had Seeker not got in first. Hugely influential stuff for me.
 
Tony L said:
Big fan here, though more tape and analogue delay than digital. Many years ago I had a pretty knackered Wem Copicat tape delay which was great, the knackeredness being a real advantage as the way it distorted, wobbled and faded just sounded great. Pure Hawkwind, who I think were my starting point for tape echo:


EMS VCS3 with its spring reverb through a Wem Copicat. Copicat on the guitar too. That whole (best) era of Hawkwind was defined by this kit.
Click to expand...

AIUI, Del's VCS3 went through a Binson Echorec. It was DikMik who used a Copicat.

win-73-aa-hawks.jpg
Dik-Mik.jpg



Tony L said:

Fripp and Eno’s stuff using Revox open reel recorders as tape delay is great too, giving vastly longer times than was possible from proper delay units of the time.
Click to expand...

Yep. I forgot to mention Terry Riley's "Poppy Nogood" and Ron Geesin's "Mr Tape Machine, Speak With Your Heads" which predate Eno / Uncle Bob's excusrions.


Tony L said:
Here Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder pretty much write the modern rule book for syncopated delay. This final side of Bad Girls being their masterpiece IMHO, even pre-empting the Blue Monday drum program by sticking delay on the kick drum at the end of Our Love. Lots of delay everywhere, but much of it quite dry and adding rhythmic interest to the synth sequencing.
Click to expand...

Some of the drum programming in that does beg the question on how much of "Blue Monday" was an accident and how much was planned. :)
 
Seeker_UK said:
Yep. I forgot to mention Terry Riley's "Poppy Nogood" and Ron Geesin's "Mr Tape Machine, Speak With Your Heads" which predate Eno / Uncle Bob's excusrions.
Click to expand...

You can easily take it right back to Stockhausen and a lot of the musique concrete of the 1950s. People have been playing with tape recorders as long as there have been tape recorders to play with!

PS Here’s an interesting use, the amount of rhythms that emerge as the two tape-loops gradually shift against each other in time is amazing:

 
Tony L said:
You can easily take it right back to Stockhausen and a lot of the musique concrete of the 1950s. People have been playing with tape recorders as long as there have been tape recorders to play with!

PS Here’s an interesting use, the amount of rhythms that emerge as the two tape-loops gradually shift against each other in time is amazing:

Click to expand...

I've had that CD for yonks. I find "It's Gonna Rain" more interesting as it goes from the two loops phasing of Part 1 to the dense multilayered phasing of "Hallelujah! They began to knock upon the door" of Part 2 which is much more. Suprisingly it came before "Come Out". Clearly Reich was interested in distilling it down to the simple phasing / changing rhythms which he then further developed with "Piano Phase" (no need for tapes) and "Clapping Music" (no need for instruments).

 
A couple of other notable mentions if you like this sort of thing.

Achim Reichel & Machines

Günter Schickert
 
kendo said:
Would Michael Brook's "infinite guitar" technique fit the bill?
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Personally, I think it doesn't. What that is is similar technology to the Sustainiac (https://www.sustainiac.com/) ie controlled feedback without needing hundreds of watts and a lot of tape marks on the floor (to show you where to stand to get the right note out of feedback). The e-Bow does similar. It's a bloody cool sound though - overdriven, naturally.

Slight ramble follows...

John Martyn bought his Echoplex to achieve a long sustain so he could solo like a jazz sax player, in particular, Pharaoh Sanders (as an aside, if you've not done it, listen to Martyn's "Solid Air" then go and listen to Sanders' "Astral Travelling" from "Thembi" :)). He sort of failed that but discovered his familiar syncopated style (post #2) which he first commited to tape with "Glistening Glyndebourne" on "Bless the Weather" (I could have sworn there was some echo guitar on one of the earlier John & Beverley Martyn albums, but I can't find it).

So a quest for long guitar notes is something that got us to the stuff wot I like. :)
 
Bill Frisell uses it quite a bit in his playing, alongside loops. He always has a Line 6 DL4 delay pedal on stage - a great device btw ( a v dull product demo but check around 3 mins for what it can do.



For Frisell using one, jump in around the 2 or 17 minute minute marks


or here


For guitar and pedal geeks there's a nice interview about his use of the pedal here

Model Citizens » Blog Archive » Bill Frisell Talks Looping & Loopers (line6.com)
 
A lot of people seem to really like that Line 6, Josh (JHS Show) really rates it too. I've never tried one.

My taste is far more for tape or true analogue. I’d love a proper Roland Space Echo, I’d take one of those over anything, but they are very expensive now and need fairly regular servicing. My compromise is a Boss DM-2W. It sounds great, a proper analogue ‘bucket brigade’ device, the ‘W’ variant having longer and more useful delay times than the original, though I’d love just a bit of the modulation/pitch instability you inevitably get from tape. There was something very special about that trashed old Copicat I used to have (and technically do still own; I lent it to someone and haven’t seen them for about 20 years!). It had a really interesting blend of distortion, fade to dullness and pitch-instability!
 
Tony L said:
A lot of people seem to really like that Line 6, Josh (JHS Show) really rates it too. I've never tried one.

My taste is far more for tape or true analogue. I’d love a proper Roland Space Echo, I’d take one of those over anything, but they are very expensive now and need fairly regular servicing
Click to expand...

An RE-202 (or it's predecessor the RE-20) is so close to the RE-201, it's scary.


Or trying a different route, there are some very good Binson emulators.

 
Tony L said:
Big fan here, though more tape and analogue delay than digital. Many years ago I had a pretty knackered Wem Copicat tape delay which was great, the knackeredness being a real advantage as the way it distorted, wobbled and faded just sounded great. Pure Hawkwind, who I think were my starting point for tape echo:


EMS VCS3 with its spring reverb through a Wem Copicat. Copicat on the guitar too. That whole (best) era of Hawkwind was defined by this kit.


Fripp and Eno’s stuff using Revox open reel recorders as tape delay is great too, giving vastly longer times than was possible from proper delay units of the time.


Here Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder pretty much write the modern rule book for syncopated delay. This final side of Bad Girls being their masterpiece IMHO, even pre-empting the Blue Monday drum program by sticking delay on the kick drum at the end of Our Love. Lots of delay everywhere, but much of it quite dry and adding rhythmic interest to the synth sequencing.

PS I second the stuff upthread and would certainly have cited early Tangerine Dream, Durutti Column etc had Seeker not got in first. Hugely influential stuff for me.
Click to expand...

Wow, never mind Blue Monday taking from this, Our Love is a definite precursor to New Order's Temptation! First time I have heard this.
 
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