Hugh Le Caine’s Dripsody begins with one recorded drop of water. Made in 1955, the piece was also a practical study of his Special Purpose Tape Recorder, a machine that allowed several tape tracks to be played at different speeds. Le Caine changed the pitch of the drop by changing playback speed, repeated it in loops and layered the results until the original splash became a dense, rapidly moving texture.
Le Caine called the work an étude, a form normally used to test what a performer can do with an instrument. Here he was also testing the recorder. Slowing, reversing and layering the tape turned one acoustic event into playable material. The method now resembles ordinary sampling, but its clarity still holds: every layer can be traced back to the same brief drop.
https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2016/09/hugh-le-caine-feature/
