Hotel Fab To Be Here

Posted by Robert Fripp
16 Oct 2005
Sunday, October 16, 2005

11.14

Hotel Fab To Be Here, University District, Seattle.

A grey day in Seattle…

seattle7.jpg

Today is the final Soundscapes performance of this particular tour.

 

13.32 Spotted on Planet Crimson…
scorched earth Planet Crimson Resident Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 1301

Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 10:26 pm   
… I had to check out the BBC program about "Heroes" that Sid has a link to in his blog. Specially interesting of course, hearing Eno and company explain Fripp’s part: his guitar was plugged into Eno’s EMS synth, and was improvised on the first pass, with two other layers added on, with Eno all the while doing his thing with the synth knobs.

This was how most of the RF overdubs on the Heroes album were recorded (with lots of fun, laughter & play). The guitar on the Heroes track was an exception & recorded at the end of my visit; the first track, Beauty And The Beast, recorded at the end of my arrival afternoon: just in from a NY flight into Germany, domestic connection to Berlin, being missed at Berlin airport by the greeter, and coming via the hotel. Dribbling, I arrived at the studio to touch base & was invited to plug in. The Les Paul was direct-inject via VC3 & Enossified with skysaw. For Heroes, I plugged guitar straight into a stack (I believe Marshall) & worked the sustain from guitar to amp. No fuzz- box, no e-bow (as is sometimes suggested), but a particular attitude. And sustained in turn by one of my all-time favourite rock songs by anyone.

23.40 Yow! Terror! Fear! Horror! Suffering! Misery! Torment!

For the last performance of this series, we used (for the first time) a secondhand GR1 guitar synth (purchased from FQM Glenn on the East Coast) to replace the GR1 currently with Biff back in Madison: being repaired because it lost midi control. John copied the programmes out of that un-midifying GR1 & loaded them into this new-old midi-responsive beast.

seattle8.jpg

At soundcheck, 30 minutes before doors-opening, plugging in to check SV II - the synth hadn’t accepted the programme download. The sounds of Soundscapes were, mostly, not onboard. Much scrabbling on the floor, copying & loading a basic selection of algorithms from various banks, modifying them, discovering that several didn’t exist (a missing soundcard). So, this evening was very much a performance on the wing. My sense: 7 out of 10 to a generous audience who deserved more than they were given, in an excellent performance space.

Four Quarters’ Maintainers: Tony, Curt, Frank, Jaxie & Bill.


 



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