Tape Loops

TheNihilisticIdiot · Post by **TheNihilisticIdiot** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 2:15 am

Has anyone here gotten heavily into making music with tape loops?

I've been getting into Steve Reich. Madlib samples him in 'America's Most Blunted'. Just wondering if you've guys have had success with tape loops

hurlingdervish · Post by **hurlingdervish** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 2:18 am

i tried making tape loops with a friend, we didnt get very far before the machine broke... i posted a couple of songs by steve reich under the topic "the godfather of sampling" if you want to download them

honestly though tape machines are sketchy and can be expensive to repair, your better off with your sp

TheNihilisticIdiot · Post by **TheNihilisticIdiot** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:19 am

yeah you're definitely right. My friend has a Renovox.. I think it is and he says he just uses it to impress friends lol.

I was just wondering if anyone here has actually done a song on only tape loops. I will check out you post. =]

ColeRockLee · Post by **ColeRockLee** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 5:39 am

I messed around with tape loops as a teenager but it's tedious work. Never succeeded in making anything more than a jumble mess.

DREWDANK · Post by **DREWDANK** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 7:15 am

what is a tape loop defined as?

Euclid Ov Oåklånd · Post by **Euclid Ov Oåklånd** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 7:21 am

Making a loop out of recording tape and running it on a reel to reel 4-track and recording weird noises or samples. You can also make cassette tape loops which pretty fun, especially if you have a cassette 4-track.

fauna · Post by **fauna** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:31 pm

i did a bit of work with tape loops - had a friend (genius) who was doing electro acoustic studies in university. we used the lab and had these looooong stretches of tape circling out of the 2-track machines (we'd use mic stands placed about 10 feet away as the other spindle, lol).

the results were cool and random and immensely time consuming to do.

two things i'll throw at you:

there are tapes that are made for old answering machines, that do infinite loops (they are built to just spool over and keep recording). you can probably find some on ebay, which you could probably then use on a four-track. they'd be short loops, but they would be actual tape loops. something to consider.

the othe thing (of course) is that reich did stuff with musicians looping over each other in real-time, almost in a round style (i'm finking of music for 12 musicians in particular). so you could fake the loop by off-setting starting points for dif instruments to create the effect.

hope this helps a bit.

TheNihilisticIdiot · Post by **TheNihilisticIdiot** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:43 pm

Thanks man. yeah i know what you're talking about.

=]