Minimal Wave Records

First off, hey! Glad to see a forum like this exists..

I’ve looked through the board but haven’t found an answer to this question, so here’s hoping some of you can shed some light on some of this stuff..

I’m wondering if anyone happens to know how sequencing was done for drum loops and other stuff at the time some of this music was new…off of the top of my head, I’m wondering about certain bands like Iron Condor (“Condos”, etc), but it’s sort of a general question..

hi Steve, hello!

well, I am not an expert when it comes to recording techniques as I am more of “spontaneous hardware recorder”, but I guess that “drum looping” is a phenomenon of the 90’s generation, not the 80’s. basically, most of the groups were using real hardware sequencers and drum machines which needed to be programmed instead of having/using of computers running a software that handled samples.

btw, Steven of IRON CURTAIN is a member here so maybe he’s happy to give you a more detailed insight in his specific recording equipment/technique back then.

a common method of drum looping in the 70s (well, moroder, simonetti, roger roger, etc…) was to record a drum loop on spliced tape.  the loop would have an extra track (inaudible on the final mix) that had a click metronome that could be used to derive a gate signal to drive an analog sequencer (moroder’s moog modular for instance).

It sort of went from the method Seth explained, to big hardware sequencers, to drum machine synch/onboard sequencers, to hardware midi sequencers over time…as well as the usual assortment of studio tricks I’m sure!