Frippertronics on Midnight Special 1979 360p

[@ericfurst6091]

“Thx very much rick james“ still gets me 🤣😂🤣😂🤣

[@davideconti1354]

It's appropriate, I'll tell you. I showed my entire Crim collection o first date and then, she wouldn't make love to me.

[@esmailalbertoghassemishuak1355]

can you explain the rick james thing ahahah

[@ericfurst6091]

@@esmailalbertoghassemishuak1355 its cutted out in this video BUT before he plays, he says thx to Rick James.
Which basicly means that there was a time that Robert Fripp and Rick James were on the same show. 🥰

[@johnf120]

Turn on the TV and see Rick James immediately followed by Robert Fripp. The 70s were great lol

[@wendelynmusic]

IKR!

[@BarrelShape]

The only thing more remarkable than Fripp's guitar playing is his ability to look good with a mullet

[@MassimoZucchettiprof]

He has been the most talented and innovative musician in the world in 70s and 80s. Frippertronics got me mad about it, in those days. An outstanding genius.

[@Romany1111]

Thanks to Brian Eno for the first incarnation of what became Frippertronics, after Terry Riley proposed the idea of a two-deck analogue live-delay system. A whole album dedicated to this concept was Eno-Fripp's "No Pussyfooting"

[@Kohntarkosz]

Apart from Terry Riley, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pauline Oliveros and probably other experimental music composers worked with similar setups before Eno.

[@JamesHunterRoss]

I still listen to "No Pussyfooting". When I was 20, it opened my mind to something wild and new, and it's still a fave. Those two were good together!

[@Henry-uv9xu]

The liquid lines and the tone he conjures is amazing

[@kevinblanchard9064]

Beautiful, just absolutely beautiful

[@gianniguerriero]

With the guitar he shows me the universe. Brilliant

[@tommyrawlings3046]

Greatest musician/composer of his time!

[@ronwhitehouse23]

Surprisingly melodic for Frippy. I quite enjoyed it.

[@kevinblanchard9064]

One of the best guitarists I have ever discovered, his work with King Crimson mesmerised me. I would just love to sit down and just pick his brain on what he thinks of music today, rock music especially

[@coreyzimmerman9782]

Saw KC & talked with his sister (she sold ts) smart family!

[@StephenMassey1]

And they're still going. Worth going to see if you get a chance.

[@mrpzak]

Those trills are perfect

[@veerchasm1]

This guy is the Legend nobody knows

[@curtisjones1904]

We know

[@hazestratosliterallyme-mh3ey]

​@curtisjones1904 so does is your mom(Robert Fripp banged her)😊

[@hughjohnson2674]

Towards the end Robert is almost smiling, Almost relaxed.👍 I find that delightful as normally, last century at least, he was very serious indeed.

[@jdhill9730]

Robert Fripp and Steve Howe. The two best guitarist in Rock music period.

[@123agidee_2]

He seems to be on another planet when he talks

[@complicitytheory]

I saw him lecture on Frippertronics around this time, at a faculty of education. It was life changing. And still is.

[@Civilizashum]

Yes. When I transferred to SFCM in 1980, they had, in "electronic music lab" two Revox A or B 77s. I had seen the setup diagrammed on iirc the liner notes to Eno Music for Airports. So I fed a tape of very clean microphone/loudspeaker feedback into this, with a mixer between the end of the path and the beginning. I lost that, being negligent/stupid.

[@complicitytheory]

@@Civilizashum Always good to lose those things. I threw out almost all my quadraphonic recordings from the 80s. Now I'm designing a quad VCA that will allow me to recreate what I did back then.

[@RB939393]

I have watched this maybe hundreds of times. Utterly stunning. This and LTIA pt 2 are Fripp's finest moments

[@carachangren3059]

Abosolute masterpiece Mr fripp....love it to bits...👍

[@acanadiancarpenter]

Genius always ahead of their time

[@jeronroberts]

Greatest of all time.....

[@TheBadThad]

No joke...Robert Fripp bummed a cigarette from me ca. 1988!

[@rickvenlo1362]

And bill Bruford from me 😅

[@Kohntarkosz]

It's worth noting that Fripp insisted on referring to as Frippertronics is actually a tape loop system that was first used by composers like Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros back in the mid 1960's.

[@drillbag]

piss off :)

[@psilocypher]

Fripp’s girlfriend coined the term. He used it to refer to his use of guitar with that tape loop system. It’s not like he was trying to take credit for it.

[@Kohntarkosz]

@@psilocypherHe might not have been deliberately taking credit (and in fact, I've seen him specifically state in public that he's aware that other people had used similar systems before him), but a lot of people who don't know the history of experimental music like to give him and/or Eno credit for inventing it. They both did some interesting things with looping, but neither of them invented it.

[@bobconnor1210]

Let’s not forget Les Paul who pioneered looping and multitrack even earlier.

[@Kohntarkosz]

@@bobconnor1210 Les didn't do looping. Contrary to popular belief, it turns out the Les Paulverizer, the gizmo he mounted on the back of the body of his guitar, was really just a remote control for an otherwise more or less conventional tape machine. I know, he did that schtick in concert, where he'd play something, and then the tape machine would play it back, and he'd play another part on top of it. As I said that was all schtick, showmanship. All the Les Pauliverizer did was start and stop the tape machine, and maybe selectively mute tracks, depending on which part Les wanted to play right there and then.

[@pablomcelio]

i listen to this clip and i discover fripp almost 10 years ago when i began to play the guitar. It's amazing how good art can stuck with you and became part of your path as a musician without notice ir. Amazing :)

[@michaelfugate2404]

The Man's a Genius

[@rhythmfield]

Just imagine: Rick James performed just before this!! Back in the 1970s, there was a lot more variety on music television, there was more risk and experimentation, which seems completely “illegal “now. You would never ever see something like this happening after a Taylor Swift performance… I think the world would be a better place if we would allow for more open experimentation.

[@finnmcginn9931]

Zappa playing Black Napkins on the Mike Douglas Show followed by an excellent conversation between Frank, Mike, Jimmie "J.J" Walker, and Kenny Rogers is a personal favourite 70s TV show moment.

[@rhythmfield]

Fripp is a genius - really

[@joecrowaz]

I'M RICK JAAAAMES FRIPP!!!

[@PrimericanIdol]

Robert Fripp is the Kim Il Sung of guitar.

[@whyisgooglemakingmedothis603]

: thela hun juche

[@BeCoShooter]

At the beginning of King Crimson Live in Tokyo, Mr. Fripp starts the show with an electronic version of Frippertronics. I believe he has four or five layers going at once. Very cool.

[@Kohntarkosz]

What do you mean "an electronic version of Frippertronics"?

[@MarceloKatayama]

​@@KohntarkoszHe is referring to Fripp's soundscapes where he uses the midi pickups in his guitar to add different textures to the loop-mostly strings and brass.

[@Kohntarkosz]

@@MarceloKatayama Oh, you mean Soundscapes. I kinda had the impression that Frippertronics was the "electronic version" of Frippertronics. lol

[@agalleyne]

Outstanding guitar work, but no one has yet mentioned his mini-mullet... That's a great haircut.

[@SuperMarioJamesSMJ]

Funny thing for all the technical parts of the original concepts... This was just Fripp soloing over backing tracks.... I wish you would have used a bit of the tape delay in his solo

[@brianfergus839]

I was thinking the same thing, and that his remark about “not knowing what he was going to do” was rather disingenuous.
I would have much preferred to see him build the loop… but at the time probably a good idea he did it this way considering his audience

[@heathfinnie]

@@brianfergus839Robert had three minutes on TV. He would’ve been off by the time the loop got going.

[@brianfergus839]

@@heathfinnie yes… it’s just unfortunate there are no good examples of the real thing on UA-cam

[@heathfinnie]

@@brianfergus839 It's not using the same setup, but this is a good video - ua-cam.com/video/y4222JCzT3U/v-deo.html

[@psilocypher]

@@brianfergus839You realize the loops fade out with time and are replaced by new loops, right? There’s nothing disingenuous about what he said. The only thing that was predetermined was the starting loop, which was only prerecorded for the sake of saving time on a tv show.

[@theactorjohnlarroquette]

you can hear Matte Kudasai in there

[@robzitinho]

Lovely but misleading, as it was at the time, as he is soloing 'over' Frippertronics rather than actually laying it down. Still mesmerising after all these years though

[@kevinjones6122]

It just doesnt look right without a scantily clad Toyah dancing in the background 😂

[@Mist-Media]

Fantastic guitarist but really, this is just him playing guitar over a pre-recorded backing track.

[@complicitytheory]

Yes. And how he plays over a pre-recorded backing track. Actually, the track is actively changing and decaying and morphing though. But ya.

[@MrShortysArtz]

@@complicitytheory he’s playing over what he just recorded, repeatedly.

[@complicitytheory]

@@MrShortysArtz Yeppers. Based on the work he did with Eno, and based on the work pioneered at the San Francisco Tape Music Centre. A lot of that technique is featured in Allen Strange's Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques and Controls... which I just republished last year.

[@thomasrichmond2413]

It’s TV. He only had 3-4 minutes. It would’ve taken a lot longer starting from scratch.

[@bigstupidgrin]

Do other people do this now? Such an awesome concept

[@yaserdavidcruzdelgado182]

Let's Freeze this God

[@tomallen5837]

Hell yeah I said the devil

[@drummerbriz1125]

Wow

[@BillMentzer]

Awesome. But he's just playing to a backtrack. Would have loved to see the build.

[@jackbarnard1781]

Umm Mr fripp is pretty darn awesome. !!!!

[@allthingsbigandsmall]

Does anyone know how hes getting the infinite guitar sustain?

[@turkeysteve2325]

Took me a while to get close but I think it’s a combination of rolled off tone, a good amount of soft clipping od or compression, humbuckers and a very heavy guitar.
There’s an EHX pedal called the attack decay and you can roll off the initial attack and allow set the decay to the longest time and it’ll give you a similar effect. His tone is so ridiculous

[@danopticon]

You can create close to infinite sustain with some distortion pedals by cranking “level” all the way up and “drive” all the way down, or maybe it was vice-versa.

[@edengully]

@@danopticon Drive all the way UP!

[@edengully]

Heavy fuzz (Burns Buzzaround, Big Muff or something similar) running into a volume pedal to create the attack and decay, and definitely some treble cut somewhere in the chain. It's a pretty simple formula but you have to have a very controlled technique for it to sound any good.

[@curtisjones1904]

Fripp is the shit

[@jotaerreito]

jajaja! Empieza el solo con las primeras notas del "Cumpleaños Feliz". LOL! He starts the solo with the first notes of "Happy Birthday"

[@jaredking2512]

This sounds like some something my 3rd grade substitute history teacher would play for the class
Me: 👁👄👁

[@dougpeters1625]

I don't get it.