IDM Mailing Archive

Hi, On Tue, 5 Jan 1999, Irene McC wrote:

quoted 4 lines Due to post-new-year-wooze lack of proof reading, I obviously

> Due to post-new-year-wooze lack of proof reading, I obviously > meant "needle" instead of "needed" in my previous flurry of e-mails. > > Sooooorry if I added to any confusion...

I'm sure you know what a runout groove is (and didn't meant this) so you know lock grooves. Lock grooves have a duration of just on rotation of the record (so they're longer if they're on the outer side and get shorter to the center), no beginning and no end. While the groove on a record normally looks like a spiral a look groove is just a circle. Well, hope this helps (if not, I can try it in German, but who will understand beside you and Thaddi ?). Bye Sebastian -- Sebastian Herrfurth (seher@cs.tu-berlin.de) pages for Bernd Friedmann / Riz Maslen / Daniel Meier / DJ Krush / ... at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~seher/music.html

Well, the actual grooves in the vinyl does get shorter the closer you are to the center of the record, but since the rotation speed of the record is the same (i.e. it always takes the same amount of time to get to the starting point of a groove), the length of the music is the same no matter where on the record a groove is located. But that may be what Sebastian was saying. Just wanted to make it clear. P ---Sebastian Herrfurth <seher@cs.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

quoted 11 lines Hi,

> > Hi, > > On Tue, 5 Jan 1999, Irene McC wrote: > > > Due to post-new-year-wooze lack of proof reading, I obviously > > meant "needle" instead of "needed" in my previous flurry of e-mails. > > > > Sooooorry if I added to any confusion... > > I'm sure you know what a runout groove is (and didn't meant this) so

you

quoted 1 line know lock grooves. Lock grooves have a duration of just on rotation

> know lock grooves. Lock grooves have a duration of just on rotation

of

quoted 2 lines the record (so they're longer if they're on the outer side and get

> the record (so they're longer if they're on the outer side and get > shorter to the center), no beginning and no end. While the groove on

a

quoted 16 lines record normally looks like a spiral a look groove is just a circle.

> record normally looks like a spiral a look groove is just a circle. > > Well, hope this helps (if not, I can try it in German, but who will > understand beside you and Thaddi ?). > > Bye > > Sebastian > > -- > Sebastian Herrfurth (seher@cs.tu-berlin.de) > > pages for Bernd Friedmann / Riz Maslen / Daniel Meier / DJ Krush / ... > at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~seher/music.html > >

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On 5 Jan 99, Petter Ottosson wrote re: Re: (idm) lock groove:

quoted 2 lines the length of the music is the

> the length of the music is the > same no matter where on the record a groove is located.

Ah! Yes, this does shed some extra light on things. What I gathered initially is that ONLY the runout groove can be turned into an endless repeat lock groove, which I understand and can see. What you are saying though is that it can be anywhere on the record, providing that one physically picks up the stylus and moves on the needle, otherwise it will keep on repeating itself, right? Which comes back to the initial post which described that the track *after* the lock groove kept playing from inside out, ie, coming back in _towards_ the lock groove, which, thus, had to be located somewhere preceding the runout grooves. Elementary, my dear Watson ... huh?? And the POINT of lock grooves is .... ? I imagine it is useful for mixing - is that the only purpose they serve? I *

On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Irene McC wrote:

quoted 6 lines Ah! Yes, this does shed some extra light on things. What I

> Ah! Yes, this does shed some extra light on things. What I > gathered initially is that ONLY the runout groove can be turned into > an endless repeat lock groove, which I understand and can see. > What you are saying though is that it can be anywhere on the > record, providing that one physically picks up the stylus and moves > on the needle, otherwise it will keep on repeating itself, right?

This is correct. I own a couple of records that have locked grooves in the middle of a side. I think V/Vm's Privileged Frames compilation is one of them if I'm remember correctly. Toronto's Legion Of Green Men are also masters of this sort of thing, and have been playing with locked grooves since their very first releases of experimental noise/ambience under the names Electro Static Cat and Emperical Sleeping Consort. Almost every release they've put out under their multitude of aliases has included several locked grooves. And then, of course, there's the infamous RRR100 (the 100th release on experimental label RRRecords), a 7" featuring 100 locked grooves by 100 different artists. It was followed up last year sometime with an LP featuring *500* (I think it was that many, anyway) locked grooves by 500 different artists. In both cases, each "track" was the length of a single revolution of the record, so the needle would be instantly "locked" everywhere it was dropped.

quoted 2 lines And the POINT of lock grooves is .... ? I imagine it is useful for

> And the POINT of lock grooves is .... ? I imagine it is useful for > mixing - is that the only purpose they serve?

Nah, they were around a long time before IDM and other forms of music where DJ mixing was prevalent, and are more commonly found in the realms of experimental music, where I suppose they're used to make an "artistic statement" or something. If done well, they can be a wonderful thing. I often finish my live DJ sets with two locked grooves pitched out of sync with each other, and the resulting "track" is usually quite interesting, Greg

Irene McC wrote:

quoted 6 lines <snip> And the POINT of lock grooves is .... ? I imagine it is useful

> <snip> And the POINT of lock grooves is .... ? I imagine it is useful > for > mixing - is that the only purpose they serve? > > I > *

Irene: re: lock grooves: because not that many do the lock groove thing with their records, it does have a certain "coolness" factor to it ;) but essentially, yes, it's a DJ tool. if you have a bit of music that you want to repeat over and over, why not just do a loop of it instead of having it play for 6 minutes or whatever. when ron at NSC showed jeff mills that a loop could be done, jeff said "wow, look at the possibilities" and now loops are often used not only for the music they loop up, but also for making a record more interesting flow and appearance wise. some labels have done records with only loops (serotonin and others) canada's legion of green men have done many many loops on there records. Andrew

Locked grooves and manipulation of records has well defined roots in experimental/avant garde music. Their use as "dj tools" seems to be a complete afterthought. I remember that one of Boyd Rice's first records (1978?) was a varispeed (33 or 45) seven inch with multiple holes and locked grooves. Back in 1986, Lee Renaldo came out with a varispeed twelve inch where each track ended in a locked groove. And of course, Christian Marclay has been cutting grooves into records for loops for at least two decades.

quoted 9 lines And the POINT of lock grooves is .... ? I imagine it is useful for

> >And the POINT of lock grooves is .... ? I imagine it is useful for >mixing - is that the only purpose they serve? > >I >* > > >

Hello.

quoted 2 lines <snip> And the POINT of lock grooves is .... ? I imagine it is useful

> <snip> And the POINT of lock grooves is .... ? I imagine it is useful > for mixing - is that the only purpose they serve?

I feel they serve several other purposes, some which have already been mentioned. The most important purpose of locked grooves (IMHO) is they make the listener actually sit down and enjoy playing with the record..."Damn! I only counted 248 grooves on this side, which 2 did I miss?" These kind of records make you work for your enjoyment...no more lounging in that fat chair while listening!!! davealex ((())) ))))))) davealex@obliq.net (( )) )) http://obliq.net (( )) ))))))) ((())) )) )) OBLIQ RECORDINGS ))))