Sound UnBound:

After re reading intro/ chapter 1, a major point that stuck out to me was the change in technology from simply 30 years ago. Reich talked about how he got started in the 60/70's with two cheap mono recorders and started to create his sample loops, where as today we have labtops that do everything and more. back in the day they need tape decks, thousands of cables, millions of analog synths etc. and now we have every synth ever made (digitally recreated) on our computers. This point was only nailed home as I continued to read and saw the technological advancements that made their way into Steve's musical life. Forget about the idea of sampling and the "is it music or is it simply stealing someone else's music...blah blah blah," just thinking about how they recorded this stuff and layered and mastered with such limited tech blows my mind out of the water. "In 1988 i discovered first that i could use a music notation program on a Mac computer to make scores and second that there were sampling keyboards." wow! so dated.

With that said, I really enjoyed his thought process throughout this "revolutionary" (as everyone always says) time. I like how he pointed out the question, "how will people do this live?" (paraphrased) He realized he could do this with 2 tape decks a recorder...etc... but he needed a way to incorporate this into a show or with people to perform..... "or else it will be seen as a gimmick" as he puts it. I love the idea of sampling and loops. I myself being a synth player see the musical value in it and can more adequately understand the time and effort that he went through to get some of these sounds/ recordings/ pieces.

Again, the reading was a little convoluted when it got into the FTP analogy, but all n all I enjoyed it.

-Tim