Research Paper Introduction, any thoughts?

[darren perry <darrencperry@live.com>]

Hi I've written a draft for my research paper on Live Looping and Looping 
Technology. If you have the chance to read this and have any corrections 
or suggestions please send them my way!

Thanks

Darren Perry
Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK


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Live Looping and Looping Technology

Introduction


“LiveLooping music is a way of extending the musical possibilities of 
instruments without resorting to the use of pre-recorded material. Sounds 
can be layered, altered, mixed and edited on the fly as the music is 
performed.” (1)

        The term looping technology refers to audio devices that are used 
to record or sample live audio and play it back repeatedly, usually 
controlled with the use of foot pedals. Live Looping is a relatively new 
term that is used to describe the use of looping technology in live 
performance. The term is also used within the “International Live Looping 
Movement” (2) to describe what is often considered to be a new genre of 
music born out of this movement. Throughout this essay I will use the term 
Live Looping to refer to the use of looping technology in live performance 
rather than the genre or movement associated with it. Looping Music, Loop 
Based Music or Loop Music describes the use of looping technology in all 
mediums of music, not restricted to live performance and naturally the 
terms Looper and Live Looper refer to the people that use looping 
technology in their work. Looping technology has applications not only 
within live performance but in composition, practice, improvisation and 
even teaching. The core element of looping is the repetition of audio. In 
Live Looping a loop is recorded during a performance to create a 
repetition. This process often happens many times in one performance and 
the loops are often altered, reversed, cut and otherwise treated. 


1 http://www.andybutler.com Andy Butler, 2003
2 www.looppool.info/ Rick Walker, 2003



Brief History


The early loop was a physical loop of magnetic tape(3) that passed 
continuously over the play/record head of a tape player, explored by 
Pierre Shaffer and Pierre Henry in the 1950s. The 1960s San Francisco Tape 
Music Center spawned the introduction of tape loops into mainstream 
compositions and live performances by composers such as Terry Riley, 
Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Morton Subotnick, Richard Maxfield, Ramon 
Sender and Le Monte Young, their music largely falling under the bracket 
of minimalism, a term born out of the music of many of these composers.(4) 
The most influential composers and innovators of looping in the 70s were 
Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. Fripp has been hugely influential to the 
development of looping largely with his Frippertronics system developed 
out of Eno’s tape delay system and through working with a large list of 
other hugely influential artists over the last two decades. The 80s saw 
Fripp develop his solo work even further while other artists of many 
different styles contributed to the development of looping. 

Recently there has been a rise in the use of looping, largely through the 
creation of a number of online communities (LoopersDelight.com, 
Ableton.com). A number of current well known Looping artists include Andy 
Butler, Andre LaFosse, Rick Walker, Kid Beyond, Amy X, Per Boysen, Zoe 
Keating... The development of looping technology over the past two decades 
has been the main contributing factor in the rise of its popularity as 
hardware and software has become more powerful and affordable.

The most notable and affordable early digital loop processor was the 
Lexicon PCM42, designed by Gary Hall in the 1980s. This was primarily a 
digital delay unit which was adapted to achieve loops of up to 60 seconds. 
Lexicon later went on to release the Jamman in the 1990s(5), a unit still 
favoured by many current live loopers (not to be confused with the 
DigiTech JamMan released in 2005). Arguably the most important development 
in the 1990s was the Paradis Loop-Delay by Matthias Grob, which later 
became the Gibson Echoplex Digital Pro, largely regarded as one of the 
most advanced hardware looping device around even today. A survey in 2003 
looking at the technology used by loopers ranked the Jamman and the 
Echoplex in the top ten in popularity along with the Electrix Repeater, 
Line6 DL4, Kaoss Pad I and II, Ableton Live, Boomerang Phrase Sampler, 
Akai headrush, Boss RC20 and the Lexicon Vortex. Although five years old 
and a sample of less than a hundred musicians, the survey does point out a 
number of important devices. 2006 saw the release of the LP1 by 
Looperlative. Created by Robert Amstadt, this device offers 8 stereo loop 
tracks totalling four minutes thirty seconds of recorded audio space, a 
significant technological development in response to the demand for more 
layers in looping.
As computers have become more powerful and have started to develop their 
place in live performance, looping technology has found its way into 
software form. Ableton Live being the front runner of live looping 
software, other applications such as Sony Acid 6 and SooperLooper offer a 
cheap introduction while the programming software package MAX/MSP offers 
unprecedented versatility not just within live looping but in all areas of 
sound manipulation and recording. Kaiser Looper by Jeff Kaiser is a 
relatively simple looping ‘patch’ written in MAX/MSP.


3 Vinyl was also used with a single linked groove that would play 
continuously but was far less versatile.
4 Another term, Systems Music, was used by Brian Eno to categorise a 
particular style of music often that utilised looping, including pieces 
such as Reich’s ‘It’s Gonna Rain’.
5 “Like most great "inventions", the JamMan was really the work of a team: 
Joe Waltz, Steve DeFuria, Wayne Hall, Will Eggleston, me (Bob Sellon) and 
many others who shaped the concept into the JamMan.” 
http://www.stecrecords.com/gear/jamman/ Bob Sellon, 2005


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