1/01/18

The idea would be to re-create an environment where Pause-Tapes were used.

I think it is important to replicate a homes aesthetic. I will concentrate on making a small space with a turntable and a dual cassette deck and sofa chair. Less is more!

A good reference for those who don’t know what I’m talking about:

“For young Hip Hop fans without the means to purchase expensive samplers of the day, pause-tapes were an early DIY way of producing. Using dual cassette decks, aspiring producers would play and record a sample from another tape or record, pausing the tape when the sample had finished its rotation. They would then rewind to the beginning of the sample and unpause the tape, starting the process again and extending the sample loop for several minutes. Those with more advanced setups would sometimes use a 4-track recorder or an overdubbing feature to layer different pause-tape loops together to construct a proper beat. While this may sound amateur at best, pause-tapes played a significant role in the evolution of rap music. Although several prominent producers talk openly about experimenting with pause-tapes at a young age, many modern rap music fans don’t realize that some of these creations became timeless major label releases. And the act of pause-tape beats turning into actual releases goes all the way back to the early days of Hip Hop.” (Sorcinelli, 2016)

31/12/17

Today I decided to stop the idea of making a series of small installations because it was too ambitious!   NOW – I want to make an interactive audio installation that involve people sampling off a dual cassette deck.

I want to re-introduce the Pause-Tapes method to the public because it was a an early DIY way of producing for a lot of hip hop producers.

This was always going to be my plan b idea if things didn’t work out.  There is quite a big learning curve with Arduino, I think I would waste a lot of precious time.

 

16/11/17

Today we had an informal technical workshop with Par and Seb.

This was good because it enabled me to progress on the SOR series.  I ordered an Arduino starter kit accompanied by the DIY book that goes with it!

 

18/11/17

Today’s aim was to try and get Arduino up and running.  It was harder than I expected – I looked up tutorials on how to start a DC motor and the main difficulty was the coding.