The psychedelic background sounds of The Beatles Tomorrow Never Knows were created using a tape loop. Tape loops were first used by composers of the earliest electronic music, but they began to be used more commonly in pop and rock in the 60s. It’s called looping because back then the two ends of a section of analog tape would spliced together to form a literal closed loop. Looping originated with tape experiments in the 50s. You can create entire songs using sound-on-sound looping. Sound-on-sound looping means recording additional passes over top of the original phrase. Looping can be done with a dedicated device like a looper pedal or sampler or in your DAW using a plugin. Looping is recording on the fly into a seamless phrase that plays continuously over and over again. In this article I’ll go over everything you need to understand loops and start looping like a pro. And If you’ve used a DAW before you’ve probably already done it! Looping is an inspiring creative tool that can benefit every producer. With such a big subject, getting started can seem intimidating. Loops, loopers and looping tools are essential to how we make music today. Looping is revolutionary music production technique.
