Get Loopy With These Digital Mixing Tricks

 

Of course, Glass is quite recent in the long history of musical looping. Meditative, pulsating, and oftentimes trance-inducing rhythms are about as old as breathing itself. Though not necessarily novel, 20th-century composers embarked on a never-ending cycle to break the chains of the 12-tone plateau. In doing so, composers including Glass, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, and many others elevated the possibilities of looping towards an impossible limit. Robert Fripp invented his analog Flippertronics, a guitar and tape delay setup, in 1979, though the accessibility of digital machines has since marked looping as somewhat of a musical norm. Stuck in an antiquated Ouroboros? This how-to just might help you jump the track.

There is pretty bad joke that begins with "Knock, knock. Who's there?" and is followed by "Philip Glass. Philip Glass who?" Instead of the typical and expected knock-knock conclusion, however, the joke works only if the initial interlocutor then repeats her initial question, thus dooming the responder to an endless, enclosed, and dorky loop that honors the famed minimalist composer, renowned for his work with repetition. With growing frustration and waning enthusiasm, the iteration changes, evolving beyond the simple-mindedness of its own content, and becoming a sort of commentary on the incessant existence of knock-knock jokes in general.

John Flanagan, a freelance writer in Vermont, wrote this article was written by John Flanagan, a freelance writer in Vermont, wrote this article was written by John Flanagan, a freelance writer in Vermont.

Contents  [hide] 1 A Little Loopy 1.1 How It Works 2 The Piecemeal Loop 2.1 How It Works 3 Erase Head 3.1 How It Works

A Little Loopy

Ben Maddox of the bands Farm and Mouthbreather says finding Loopy, an iOS app, culminated his years of searching for the right audio looper. At $2.99 for the iPhone-only Loopy, and just $7.99 for the spruced-up, iPhone/iPad-compatible Loopy HD, Maddox's find clocks in as perhaps the most inexpensive highly-functional digital looping utility. According to its introductory video, Loopy works like “a musical notepad,” giving loopers six, nine, or twelve tracks on which to record their own loops. Users can also import preexisting loops via iTunes. For musicians lacking confidence in their own rhythmic timing, Loopy packs a dynamic time shifting feature to ease the responsibility of syncopation – though the audio and visual metronome makes timing a no-brainer for even the most maladroit looper. Imported tracks may also be scaled automatically to match any particular project's time signature.

Though Loopy works well for home studio session recording, Maddox uses the app live via an Alesis iO Dock and external MIDI footswitch.

How It Works

To begin using Loopy, set your project's tempo by recording your first loop. Make sure there are no gaps in the loop, so that it repeats without hiccups. You can also preset a tempo and have Loopy count loops in and out for you. Set how long you want your loop to be using the master clock length controls. After adjusting the first track to seamless perfection, any loops you add will stay in time automatically. Watch Maddox operate Loopy with masterful alacrity in this Mouthbreather performance of their song “Equa.”

The Piecemeal Loop

Steve Hadeka, a Burlington, VT-based drummer, recently deconstructed how he prepared a live cover of Faith Evans' “Love Like This Before” for Heloise & the Savior Faire. “In order to get the song sounding just right,” he says, “I wanted to make a loop of percussion to play along with.” By adding a small piano lick to the loop, Hadeka liberated the band's keyboard player to focus on vocals and dancing.

How It Works

Hadeka began his process by finding Evans' song on YouTube and determining its key and beats per minute (BPM). He simulated the audio using the “Musical Typing” feature in GarageBand, and then found triangle, shaker, hi-hat, and other percussion sounds to construct the loop's foundation in a four-bar cycle. Hadeka added Evans' song's signature piano riff to his track, and layered in other effects, such as reverb and delay, “to give it a more vintage feel.” Not completely satisfied with GarageBand's vintage sound selection, Hadeka ventured to www.freesound.org for some royalty-free sound samples. He found a perfect scratchy old record sound and imported the .WAV file to GarageBand. Next, he loaded the completed track to a Roland SPD-SX Sampling Pad via its USB-connected Wave Manager. Because the loop was mapped at a particular BPM, he simply set the Sampling Pad to match the rhythm, thus enabling him to send a click track back to his headphones for the live performance.

Erase Head

Son of Salami may freak out the untrained ear, but keener listeners will detect a loop-prone mind that falls someplace between William Basinski and Ariel Pink. On his website, on his tapes, and during his live shows, Mr. Salami, AKA Joey Pizza Slice, explains how he creates his analog loops. To begin, he simply yanks the erase heads out of generic tape recorders – found in abundance at a thrift store near you.

How It Works

The Erase Head.

Erase heads apply a high-amplitude, high-frequency AC magnetic field to cassette tapes in order to erase any recorded content before the tape passes over the record head. By ripping the erase head out, the record head will layer new material over what's already been recorded, “much like multiple exposures with a camera,” Joey says.

To find the erase head, hit eject and locate a small metal lever in the top left corner of the mechanism's insides. Press the lever down while holding Record and Play simultaneously. The erase head should then pop up. Joey recommends a steak knife for proper removal.

The limits of this primitive process are many, though they foster uncontrolled and often happy accidents. The looper can't adjust the volume of each individual track, and sounds become more compressed and sometimes quieter with more than a few loops layered onto one small space of tape. Fun tricks allow for endless experimentation, such as Joey's proclivity to record a track while pressing Fast Forward. The audio will sound normal only when the tape is sped up, thus producing long, droning noises that Joey says sound like “big bass rumbles.” “This is a fun trick for leaving subliminal messages in songs,” he adds. Joey often compliments his audio mashups with a likeminded video mélange, as exemplified in the very weird, and brilliant, “Fresh Baguettes.”