Tape Loops

[zeropunk]

This is kind of a dumb question, how does one go about creating tape loops? i want to use some on a song of mine, but i realized i have absolutely no idea how to. At all.

[SpaceCad]

There is a tape-loop tutorial article in the Tape-Op archives on Prosound Webs' site. Go to www.prosoundweb.com and look under "Tape Op archive" It should be one of the article choices.

[zeropunk]

awesome, thanks a lot.

[ryan_c]

i remember thinking the same thing when i first got into that first godspeed record. we bought a reel-to-reel at a garage sale to try it, but it was busted and none of us are very good at making broken things work again.

anyways, here's another article you might find useful. it has some diagrams for the head setup:
http://www.loopers-delight.com/tips/tap ... oping.html

if my memory serves correct, there are also a ton of websites out there devoted to the arcane lore known as looping. try a few google searches and see what you come up with. good luck!

[spiral]

I used to do looping on this old sony portable battery powered reel to reel (the kind with the 3 inch spools) and the motor always spun irregularly so it created this disoriented, dreamlike sound. Just a little happy accident story.

Good luck with your looping. Its really fun and after making about 3 loops you'll be an expert.

[joel hamilton]

I love tapeloops! I have been trying to free up the time to record 24 notes on an upright bass, bowed. Loop them on the 2" machine, and DI a cassette/cd adapter thing and play it like a giant mellotron with no repeat by sliding the casstette head over the tape. I think that would be excellent.

I love cutting a loop, then standing in the middle of an 8 bar, 89 BPM loop going around two mic stands back to the machine. Fun times for all.

I love the idea of getting some cheap little RTR and bending the pinch roller slightly, for some awesome "vintage warble."

It would probably just sound like an Optigan....

[thenumber]

i worked with tape loops for a while. really GHETTO tape loops. i'd take apart normal cassette tapes, remove the tape, and cut out a 2.5" section of tape, stitch it together with tape, then implant it back into the cassette. a total bitch to worth with. handing cassette tape is like trying to hold water in your hand while on a bus. the loops would be all warbly and have dropouts, but it was fun to record single guitar chords on them. at one point i had like 12 tapes of different chords, would have 3-4 looping and would make rad ambient music with that and delay pedals. then id record THAT to more tape loops. it got really weird for a while. staying up all day and night drinking nothing but pomagranate juice. but thats another story

[djimbe]

old dictaphone machines make bitchin' tape loop devices. Plus you get the added benefit of that cheesy microphone/speaker combination for recording and playing back yer loops. Making loops the right size so the transport works is the only trick, but you can make several different sized wooden "reels" to run tape around. We have a couple of these old rascals in various states of repair and they're lots of fun...

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Also try putting a wad of tape over the erase head on your R-T-R. That whay when you recprd your loop you keep recording over the same bit of tape without erasing what's already there. You'll end up with some very strange and cool sounds that you can't really get any other way.

[gyrofrog.com]

i worked with tape loops for a while. really GHETTO tape loops. i'd take apart normal cassette tapes, remove the tape, and cut out a 2.5" section of tape . . . staying up all day and night drinking nothing but pomagranate juice. but thats another story

Wow, I never went to that kind of trouble... I used a pre-looped cassette, the kind they used to put in answering machines, but this limited me to using 30 second loops. And forget splicing, I used the pause button.

Later in college I had access to reel-to-reel machines. You're right, hours and hours go by!

old dictaphone machines make bitchin' tape loop devices.

I like how when Holger Czukay is on an album, the credits include "dictaphone."

However I bet this sort of thing has driven up the price of old dictaphones... "L@@K R-A-R-E Dictaphone! Frippertronics Krautrock Low Reserve!"

[Kyle]

Joel
That mellotron tape loop idea is amazing! Please find some time to do this project.