Origins
See also: Tape loop, Musique concrete, and Sampling (music)While repetition is used in the musics of all cultures, the first musicians to use loops were electroacoustic music pioneers such as Pierre Schaeffer, Halim El-Dabh, Pierre Henry, Edgard Varèse and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In turn, El-Dabh's music influenced Frank Zappa's use of tape loops in the mid-1960s, and Stockhausen's music influenced The Beatles to experiment with tape loops; their use of loops in early psychedelic works (most notably 1966's "Tomorrow Never Knows" and 1968's avant-garde "Revolution 9") brought the technique into the mainstream. The stereo version of The Kinks' 1967 song "Autumn Almanac" (which appears on the 1972 compilation The Kink Kronikles) also features a psychedelic tape loop during the fadeout. Later, inspired by Terry Riley's use of one tape on two tape machines, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp created the technical basis for their No Pussyfooting album—this technological concept was later dubbed Frippertronics.
Another approach was the use of pre-recorded loops, exemplified by Yellow Magic Orchestra, who released one of the first albums to feature mostly samples and loops (1981's Technodelic), and Grandmaster Flash's turntablism. Major producers like Timbaland, and underground producers like Jimmy Spice Curry, as well as the group Sir Mask, and others often create their own sound loops then incorporate them into songs.
Use of pre-recorded loops made its way into many styles of popular music, including hip hop, trip hop, techno, drum and bass, and contemporary dub, as well as into mood music on soundtracks.
Read more about this topic: Loop (music)
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