Tape loops are loops of prerecorded magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns. A measure of recorded magnetic tape is cut and spliced end to end, creating a circle or loop which can be played continuously, usually on a reel to reel machine. Tape loop effects are sometimes combined with a technique wherein the playback speed of the loop is increased or decreased over time, somewhat similar to a glisando which slurs the pitch of a note up or down as used in music. In electronic music, a loop is a sample which is repeated. ... Compact audio cassette Magnetic tape is a non-volatile storage medium consisting of a magnetic coating on a thin plastic strip. ... A Sony TC-630 reel-to-reel recorder, once a common household object. ...

Simultaneous playing of tape loops to create phase patterns and rhythms was developed and initially used by musique concrète and tape music composers, and was most extensively utilized by Steve Reich for his "phasing" pieces such as "Come Out" and "It's Gonna Rain", and by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Musique concrète (French; literally, concrete music), is a style of avant-garde music that relies on natural environmental sounds and other non-musical noises to create music. ... Tape music is a form of music which began soon after tape recording was invented, as people could now create sounds that were for the first time identical with each performance. ... Stephen Michael Reich (born October 3, 1936) is an American composer. ... In music the compositional technique phasing, popularized by composer Steve Reich, is that while the same part is played on two musical instruments, one instrumentalist keeps playing in steady tempo, while the other gradually moves ahead of the first until it becomes out of and then back in phase (the... Karlheinz Stockhausen (born August 22, 1928) is a German composer, and one of the most important and controversial composers of the 20th century. ...

Beginning in the late 1950s the BBC Radiophonic Workshop began using tape loops to add special effects to some BBC programming. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, one of the sound effects units of the BBC, was created in 1958 to produce effects and new music for radio, and was closed in March 1998, although much of its traditional work had already been outsourced by 1995. ...

Pop musicians, most notably The Beatles, Fifty Foot Hose, Can, and Pink Floyd, have used tape loops on their albums. Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and are disseminated by one or more of the mass media. ... The White Album, see The Beatles (album). ... Cauldron album cover Fifty Foot Hose were a psychedelic rock band that formed in San Fransisco in the late 1960s. ... Can was a musical group formed in West Germany in 1968. ... Pink Floyd are an English rock band that initially earned recognition for their psychedelic rock music, and, as they evolved, for their avant-garde progressive rock music. ... An album or record album is a collection of related audio or music tracks distributed to the public. ...

One of the more novel uses of tape loops were heavily utilized by French electronic pop composer Jean Jacques Perrey (sometimes working with American composer Gershon Kingsley) on a series of mid-60s albums on the Vanguard label. Their loops often had tight, multiple splices in them to create their frantic rhythmic loop effects, to which they added conventional instruments and synthesizers playing generally familiar instrumental up-tempo tunes. Their composition, "Baroque Hoedown", from their 1967 album, "Kaleidoscopic Vibrations" was adopted by Disney for their "Starlight Parade" event at Disneyland and Disneyworld, and was used by filmmaker Mike Jittlov for the "Mouse Mania" animated short film he made for Disney's Mickey Mouse 50th anniversary TV special in 1978. For other uses, see Disneyland (disambiguation). ... Cinderella Castle, at the center of the Magic Kingdom, is Walt Disney World Resorts most recognizable icon Introduction Owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company, the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, USA is home to four theme parks, three water parks, several resort hotels and golf courses... Mike Jittlov is the creator of many inventive movies using stop-motion animation, also known as pixilation. ...

In the early 1970s, musicians Brian Eno and Robert Fripp created Frippertronics, a system for creating tape loops during a live performance. A few years later, Mission of Burma began using loops on their albums, and also began feeding snippets of vocals and guitar recorded moments earlier back into their live mix, thereby introducing live loop effects to punk rock. Experimental noise musician NON aka Boyd Rice played loops of speeches, radio broadcasts and conversations just under the threshold of comprehensibility in his live shows, starting in 1977. Since then, he's created loops to evoke a hypnotic, trance state in his audiences. Brian Eno (pronounced ) (born Brian Peter George St. ... Robert Fripp (born 16 May 1946 in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England) is a guitarist, record producer and a composer, perhaps best known for being the guitarist for, and only constant member of King Crimson. ... Frippertronics is a system of tape loops developed by composer Brian Eno with guitarist Robert Fripp. ... Mission of Burma is a post-punk band from Boston, Massachusetts, USA comprising guitarist Roger Miller, bassist Clint Conley and drummer Peter Prescott, with Bob Weston (originally Martin Swope) as tape manipulator and sound engineer. ... Punk rock is an anti-establishment music movement beginning around 1976 (although precursors can be found several years earlier), exemplified and popularised by The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned. ... For experimental rock music, see experimental rock. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Boyd Rice (born 1956) is an American experimental sound artist, occultist, archivist, actor, photographer, prankster and writer best known for his pioneering industrial noise music under the name NON. // Rice started creating experimental noise recordings in 1975, drawing on his interest in tape machines and bubblegum pop sung by female...

The length of the loop, of course, controlled the length of the repeated sound, combined with the desired content of the composer. On a standard reel-to-reel, one could loop, at most, a few seconds of music or sound. Some composers were satisfied with this approach, but there were other methods to allow for longer loops. For example, one could place two reel-to-reel machines side by side and string the tape between them, using one machine for playback and the other simply as a pulley for the length of tape. Or one tape machine could be a playback machine while the second machine was a recording machine, creating not only a tape loop, but an extremely long echo. By using this or other methods, some composers could create very long loops which allowed for lengthier fragments of sound. When recording his landmark 1978 ambient album Music for Airports, Brian Eno reported that for a particular song, "One of the tape loops was seventy-nine feet long and the other eighty-three feet." (Prendergrast, 123) This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Ambient 1/Music for Airports (1978) is one of Brian Enos first ambient albums. ... Brian Eno (pronounced ) (born Brian Peter George St. ...

Digital Loops

Digital sampling -- which can generally provide similar results with less effort -- overtook much tape loop use, beginning in the mid 1980s. To create a loop digitally requires nothing more than highlighting a section of already-recorded music or sound and clicking on a 'repeat' or 'duplicate' icon as many times as you want the loop to repeat. Some musicians and composers, however, continue to use analog tape loops for various reasons. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...

Loop Pedals

An interesting direction of the evolution of the tape loop is the looping pedal - a digital sampler built into an easy-to-use footswitch-operated pedal of the kind most often used by guitarists to create looping layers of melody or texture during a live performance. A noteworthy example of this melodic layering effect is Ian Williams' dense, complex layers of guitar on Don Caballero's American Don (free MP3s available here and here). Some popular digital looping pedals (which can be used on any instrument, but are primarily used by guitarists) are the Line 6 DL4 (used by, among others, Jazz guitarists Bill Frisell and John Scofield), the Boomerang Phrase Sampler (used by Phish's Trey Anastasio), the Akai E2 Headrush (best known for its extensive use by KT Tunstall), and the Boss Loop Station. Don Caballero is a critically-acclaimed instrumental math rock group from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ... The Line 6 logo. ... William Richard Bill Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is a North American jazz guitarist, progressive folk musician and composer. ... John Scofield (born December 26, 1951 in Dayton, Ohio)[1] is an American jazz guitarist and composer, who played and eventually collaborated with Miles Davis, Billy Cobham, Medeski Martin & Wood, and other important artists. ... This article is about the band. ... Trey Anastasio (born Ernest Joseph Anastasio III on September 30th, 1964)[1][2][3] is an American guitarist, composer, and vocalist most noted for his work with the rock band Phish. ... Akai () was a Japanese consumer electronics producer founded in 1929. ... Kate KT Tunstall (born June 23, 1975) is a Grammy-nominated, BRIT Award-winning Scottish singer/songwriter. ...

See also

• Music loop
• Echo machine

In electronic music, a loop is a sample which is repeated. ... An echo machine is the early name for a sound processing device used with electronic instruments to repeat the sound to produce a simulated echo. ...

Sources

• Mark Prendergrast; The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Trance, the Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age; Bloomsbury, 2000; ISBN 1-58234-134-6

Record albums: Jean Jacques Perrey & Gershon Kingsley: The In Sound From Way Out (Vanguard Records, 1966, VSD 79222), Kaledoscopic Vibrations (Vanguard Records, 1967, VSD 79264), Moog Indigo (Vanguard Records, 1970, VSD 6549)

External links

• From Tape Loops To MIDI, from Stockhausen.org
• Making cassette tape loops