Paul Dresher - Liquid And Stellar Music

Liquid And Stellar Music from the same titled album released by Lovely Music

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Paul Dresher: "Liquid and Stellar Music" (1981), for electric guitar and live tape loop system

This work began as an idea for a sonic world while working with Terry Riley at Mills College 1973 and when I was working exclusively with the electric guitar. The notion evolved further in 1977 when I produced a 4-track “study” for electric guitar, exploring the range of timbres available for that instrument, while a graduate student working with Robert Erickson at UC San Diego. Since the “study” was essentially a tape composition produced in a recording studio, I had no means of performing the work live as a soloist. Thus in 1979 I collaborated with electronic designer Paul Tydelski in building a performer-controlled live tape processing system (described below) which would allow me to perform such works as a soloist live and without using any pre-recorded tapes.

"Liquid and Stellar Music" was first performed at the Festival d’Automne á Paris in the fall of 1979 and for the next two years it was a constantly evolving performance format generally consisting of a predetermined overall form and germinal composed materials which were developed in a somewhat improvisational fashion while interacting with the tape loop system. In 1981, in preparation for a performance at the New Music America ’81 Festival in San Francisco, the work attained its final form as it appears on this recording.

The tape system consists of a four-channel tape machine with three playback heads located at various points in the path of a closed loop of variable speed (different compositions for the system will have different speeds and thus loop durations.) Record/play functions and the mixing and routing of all sounds are controlled by the performer with an array of foot pedals and switches.

When composing for the tape system, the materials are chosen in part on the basis of their effectiveness in the context of the processing system. Through the use of this system, it is possible for the performer to build up complex textural, harmonic or rhythmic structures through what is essentially a process of live multi-track recording (and playback, erasing and mixing). There are no pre-recorded materials used in a performance.
--Paul Dresher