Way back during my sophomore/junior undergraduate years, I started
doing music with Greg Horn, a supremely talented guitarist who sadly
passed away two years ago. He had a difficult life. We discovered that
we had very similar approaches and aeshetics, and formed an 'experimemtal'
duo we called Accept the Bop (Greg's name for us). We would perform
extended guitar + keyboard jams that were often run through a
long Terry Riley/Fripp-Eno tape delay system, with one recorder recording
onto a tape that ran into a second playback recorder. This resulted
in very long echo delays, sometimes several minutes. It had the effect of
smearing time, creating a meditative and dream-like state through the
music.
I still use this technique today. It's very easy to set up these
long delays using digital technology. The difficult part is putting
it all together, getting the audio signal to flow from one app to another.
delchords is a test of one approach to accomplish this
using my laptop and some of my modular gear.
It's yet another piece motivated by technical concerns. It
sort-of worked, although the virtual connections I built would often
stop unexpeectedly after five minutes or so of audio.
But I was able to get delchords recorded. It was performed
live, and I do like them chords!
Brad Garton
July, 2025
