Steve Tibbetts (born 1954) is an American guitarist and composer. He views the recording studio as a tool for creating sounds. Most of his albums include percussionist
Marc Anderson
Marc Dennis Anderson (born December 10, 1955) is an American born percussionist, composer, poet and Zen Buddhist priest. Best known for records and live performances with guitarist and composer Steve Tibbetts, he has recorded and performed wi ...
.
Style
Tibbetts plays acoustic and electric guitar and exotic percussive instruments such as the
kendang
Kendang or Gendang ( jv, ꦏꦼꦤ꧀ꦝꦁ, translit=Kendhang, su, ᮊᮨᮔ᮪ᮓᮀ, translit=Kendang, ban, ᬓᬾᬦ᭄ᬤᬂ, translit=Kendang, Tausug/Bajau Maranao: ''Gandang'', Bugis: ''Gendrang'' and Makassar: ''Gandrang'' or ''Ganra ...
and
kalimba
Mbira ( ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and p ...
.
His music has been described as rock, jazz, ambient, experimental, and
world music.
Tibbetts refers to it as "postmodern neo-primitivism".
Often more than one genre or style is found in a single composition.
On guitar he uses a string-bending technique to imitate a
sarangi
The sārangī is a bowed, short-necked string instrument played in traditional music from South Asia – Punjabi folk music, Rajasthani folk music, and Boro folk music (there known as the ''serja'') – in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. It is ...
while alternating between ambient soundscapes and electric distortion.
[Iverson, Jo]
Recording of January 2003: A Man About a Horse
''Stereophile
''Stereophile'' is a monthly American audiophile magazine which reviews high-end audio equipment, such as loudspeakers and amplifiers, and audio-related news.
History
Founded in 1962 by J. Gordon Holt. ''Stereophile'' is the highest-circulation ...
'', January 2003 He incorporates
field recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside a recording studio, and the term applies to recordings of both natural and human-produced sounds. It also applies to sound recordings like electromagnetic fields or vibra ...
, such as the footsteps in the track "Running" from ''Safe Journey'' and the chanting of Nepalese villagers on ''Big Map Idea''. His albums often include percussion by
Marc Anderson
Marc Dennis Anderson (born December 10, 1955) is an American born percussionist, composer, poet and Zen Buddhist priest. Best known for records and live performances with guitarist and composer Steve Tibbetts, he has recorded and performed wi ...
.
The album ''A Man About a Horse'' included tracks based on rhythms built from different pitches and speeds. These recordings were then sampled, sequenced, and looped on
synthesizer
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...
s.
[Ellis, And]
Steve Tibbetts: Zen and the art of sculpting sound.
''Guitar Player
''Guitar Player'' is an American popular magazine for guitarists, founded in 1967 in San Jose, California. It contains articles, interviews, reviews and lessons of an eclectic collection of artists, genres and products. It has been in print si ...
'', December 01, 2002 He stated, "I go back and forth between the
sampler and
tape machine
An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present- ...
so much—looping, cutting, offsetting, and layering—that eventually I don't know where the sounds come from."
A collection of his loops and textures entitled ''Friendly Fire'' was released in 2002 by
Sonic Foundry
Sonic Foundry (NASDAQ:SOFO) produces software for distance learning and corporate communications. Sonic Foundry, Inc. was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, and is known for originally developing Vegas Pro and Sound Forge ...
for their ''
Acid Loops
Acid Pro (often stylized ACID) is a professional digital audio workstation (DAW) software program currently developed by Magix Software. It was originally called Acid pH1 and published by Sonic Foundry, later by Sony Creative Software as Acid Pro ...
'' series.
History
Tibbetts was born in
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...
, in 1954. When he was twelve years old, he started to play guitar and was attracted to the electric distortion of the Blind Joe Mendelbaum Blues Band. He went to college in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he experimented with distortion pedals and other devices that could be plugged into a guitar. He met drummer Marc Anderson in college, and the two began a lifelong collaboration. Tibbetts has cited jazz guitarist
Bill Connors
Bill Connors (born September 24, 1949) is an American jazz guitarist who was a member of Chick Corea's band Return to Forever. After leaving Return to Forever, he recorded three acoustic albums and then three electric albums as a leader/soloist ...
as an influence and the fingerstyle technique of
Harvey Mandel
Harvey Mandel (born March 11, 1945) is an American guitarist best known as a member of Canned Heat. He also played with Charlie Musselwhite and John Mayall as well as maintaining a solo career.
Early life
Mandel was born in Detroit, Michigan, ...
.
His first album, released in 1976, received attention on Minnesota public radio. His second, ''Yr'' (Frammis, 1980) was the first to be recorded with Anderson.
His first album for a major label was ''Northern Song'' for
ECM in 1982.
This was an attempt to fit into producer
Manfred Eicher
Manfred Eicher (born 9 July 1943) is a German record producer and the founder of ECM Records.
Life and career
Eicher was born in Lindau, Germany. He studied music at the Academy of Music in Berlin. He started as a double-bass player of classic ...
's style of recording in two or three days. ''Northern Song'' received scathing reviews. Tibbetts returned to his method of recording slowly over a period of months or longer. His subsequent records gained better reviews. He released five albums in the 1980s, three in the 1990s. He has collaborated with Norwegian
hardingfele
A Hardanger fiddle ( no, hardingfele) is a traditional stringed instrument considered to be the national instrument of Norway. In modern designs, this type of fiddle is very similar to the violin, though with eight or nine strings (rather than fo ...
player
Knut Hamre and Tibetan Buddhist nun
Chöying Drolma.
Tibbetts stopped doing live performances regularly in the mid-1980s. Tibbetts and Anderson have toured on other occasions, including a 1988 YR tour, a 1991–1992 Big Map Idea tour, and shows with Chöying Drolma in 1997, 1999, and 2005. Starting in the late 1980s he travelled extensively in
Nepal
Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne,
सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...
, which is where he met Drolma. Their first collaboration, ''Chö'', was not intended as a commercial record but it was released and gained some positive notice. The second album, ''Selwa'', was a more carefully considered collaboration and was praised as a successful meeting between different musical traditions. These albums helped establish Drolma's career on the Nepalese music chart.
"Topping the Charts for Freedom"
''Tricycle
A tricycle, sometimes abbreviated to trike, is a human-powered (or gasoline or electric motor powered or assisted, or gravity powered) three-wheeled vehicle.
Some tricycles, such as cycle rickshaws (for passenger transport) and freight trikes, ...
'', Fall 2009
Discography
* '' Steve Tibbetts'' (Frammis, 1977)
* '' Yr'' (Frammis, 1980)
* ''Northern Song'' ( ECM, 1982)
* ''Safe Journey'' (ECM, 1984)
* ''Exploded View'' (ECM, 1986)
* ''Big Map Idea'' (ECM, 1989)
* ''The Fall of Us All'' (ECM, 1994)
* ''Chö'' (Hannibal, 1997) with Chöying Drolma
* ''A Man About a Horse'' (ECM, 2002)
* ''Selwa'' ( Six Degrees, 2004) with Chöying Drolma
* ''Natural Causes'' (ECM, 2010)
* ''Life Of'' (ECM, 2018)
* ''Hellbound Train - An Anthology'' (ECM, 2022)
References
External links
Official website
Steve Tibbetts at ECM
Steve Tibbetts at Discogs.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tibbetts, Steve
1954 births
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American composers
American experimental musicians
American male composers
ECM Records artists
Guitarists from Minnesota
Living people
American male guitarists
20th-century American male musicians
Six Degrees Records artists
Rykodisc artists