As Taped Rugs expanded its umbrella of activities in 1984, Charles Goff III took on the task of composing a piece for his niece Tina Guiney to accompany her during an aquatic ballet performance. The piece is entitled “Ritual.” There are several differences between this ballet composition and the ballet piece entitled “Shoot” that –ING composed in 1984 (see: The History Of –ING podcast series, Excerpt Seven for details: http://tapedrugs.podomatic.com/entry/2007-10-24T11_33_12-07_00 ). The most significant of those differences is that this ballet was actually performed before a live audience.

Unlike Shoot, which was composed with notation and meticulously rehearsed, Radial was composed by editing together several short bits of improvised tape loop recordings. Most of those recordings feature Goff playing electric guitar and Guiney playing flute. Goff also injected a small bit of tape looped cello played by Killr Mark Kaswan into the piece. Guiney had instructed Goff to make the final recording around 3-4 minutes in length and to include several shifts in rhythm to accommodate a variety of swimming maneuvers. Goff used two reel to reel tape players and an analog mixer to mesh together the tape loop edits for this piece.

Guiney performed the ballet at a competition in San Francisco not long after the composition was completed. She represented the San Francisco Merionettes Synchronized Swimming Team. Guiney was the only competitor who swam to an original piece of music or who had taken part in the production of her sonic accompaniment. She skillfully added a bit of Gustav Holst’s “Mars” to the end of Radial to create a finale for her performance, which was very well received by the audience and judges.

Here Taped Rugs presents Radial in its brief but engaging entirety. Guiney does not appear on any other recordings in the Taped Rugs catalog, and there was never another Taped Rugs composition written specifically for aquatic ballet performance, so Radial was indeed a unique component in the early experimentation of Taped Rugs Productions. Taped Rugs did, however, continue its experiments in mixing together tape looped improvisations for years to come after Ritual was created. The next excerpt in the Early Experiments of Taped Rugs podcast series will showcase one of those experiments. Get ready to take on the American political system.