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Quote by Pauline Oliveros

“We have a very large constituency in the world from all of the years that we've done workshops, retreats, and talks. I would say there a few thousand people out there that have some relationship to what we do.”

Quote by Pauline Oliveros

Author

Pauline Oliveros

Pauline Oliveros, born on May 30, 1932, was an influential composer and musician from the United States. Her work spanned a wide range of genres, including electronic music, experimental music, and improvisation, and had a profound impact on contemporary music. more

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“Maybe I'll start from the initial idea, what motivated me to do that. In 1953, I had access to a tape recorder. Tape recorders were not widely available. There was no cassette tape back then. It was a Sears Roebuck tape machine. I put a microphone in the window and recorded the ambience.”

Ideas Window Machines Available Access Motivated Tape Initials Microphones Recorders Cassettes Sears Ambience Cassette Tapes

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“I noticed you could monitor the recording that you're making, but you could also monitor the playback head. There's a little distance between them and so you get an echo, right? If you change the amplitude of, say, the playback and play with that, you get different qualities and different sounds. So I was very interested in that phenomenon.”

Ifs Littles Different Play Sound Quality Distance Phenomenon Echoes

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“When we had the San Francisco Tape Music Center, we had a couple of Ampex tape machines there, and I could string tape from one machine, past the heads, and over to the next machine to the supply-reel amp, and have another delay there.”

Past Next Couple Machines Strings Tape Delay San Francisco

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“I became interested in the delay, having sounds recorded and played back and then come back. I did many different configurations of sending signals from one track back to another track, or to the same track, or crisscrossing them and so forth. I worked on masking the delays so when I played into the machine, I would make long tones and collect sounds in such a way that you didn't hear the delay, although sometimes you did.”

Way Long Different Sometimes Sound Machines Track Tone Delay Signals Configuration

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“I didn't have any sophisticated equipment at all. The equipment we had in the studio at the time was not intended to make music; it was for testing purposes. So we had to repurpose all the equipment to make music. That made me try a lot of different things.”

Trying Made Different Purpose Studios Different Things Sophisticated Equipment Testing

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“In the beginning we were making tape music, meaning, we were making music on tape.”

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“My first tape piece was made with that Sears Roebuck recorder. I modified sound using cardboard tubes with a microphone in the end to filter the sound. I had a wooden apple box with a Piezo [contact] mic and little objects that I could amplify on the box. I used the bathtub for reverberation.”

Firsts Littles Made Ends Used Sound Pieces Objects Boxes Contact Apples Tape Tubes Filters Microphones Recorders Mics Amplify Bathtubs Sears Reverberation

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“I had a lot of good times. I had a lot of fun. I liked what I was doing, so I just kept doing it. At the Tape Music Center, I was working from midnight to four in the morning. Because then it was quiet, nobody was there, and I could just do my work. I didn't have to fool around.”

Fun Morning Four Fool Quiet Good Times Tape Midnight

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“That change happened about 1991. It was not possible to transfer the Expanded Instrument System to the computer until then, when 16-bit recording became available.”

Bits Happened Computer Instruments Available Transfers

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“Before that, an 8-bit recording was pixelated; it was really bad. It didn't serve what I was doing, which was recording live sound and delaying it and feeding it back. This is essentially what the EIS system is: a bunch of delays.”

Bits Sound Bunch Delay Feeding

Author:Pauline Oliveros