Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
Hello, loopers. This is Tyler. I have been a loop fan since 2010, and I've fantasized about loops all my life. My loopy life can notably be traced back to 2006 (though there were accounts of looping before that) I had this dream about the Transylvania Polka (from Sesame Street), or should I say a wacky remix of it. In the original, you hear a seven-second intro full of violins. The intro ends on a third-octave A (on a piano scale), the orchestra stops, the violin continues, and then the orchestral music continues again. Well, in the dream, the whole song was sped up two clicks, making the A I was talking about a B. The B looped and looped and looped (in the remix in my dream), but the looping was so subtle that, if you didn't know the original song, you would think it was a long note originally. I'm wondering how a loop like that in audio editing would work. Turning a one-second-long note into a one-minute-long note by making sixty subtle loops. That was just the beginning of looping for me. In 2006, I became a computer person (especially working with HTML and Javascript at the time). In HTML, I had BGSOUND (background sound) tags that I could loop within my web browser. Also, in Javascript, I could do programming loops (not sound loops), which I think is an important part of looping culture for people in the computer business. In 2007, I made apps that extensively used program looping. And that was my kind of loop back then. In 2010, I started to get to know Lizzie, another blind musician I know. She is a big fan of Imogen Heap, and she started talking about Jason Derulo's song "Whatcha Say," which has an Imogen Heap sample in it. It is a remix, full of loops. As the original song said "What did she say?" The remix went, "What-what-what-what-what did she say?" in an audio-editing, copy, copy, paste, paste loop fashion. It was then that Lizzie invented the term "Oh my loop!" It was originally an exclamation of surprise, uttered when you heard a loop remix version of a song when you were expecting the original. "Oh my loop! He replaced the Transylvania Polka in my collection with a remix version!", for example. But, as loop fans, she and I use "Oh my loop" for things that have nothing to do with loops. Kind of a looping community slang term, instead of "Oh my gosh" or anything like it, we use "Oh my loop," and for extreme shock, "Oh my heaping loop!" So I should have joined the looping community in a mailing-list sort of way back then, but I didn't know about it. In 2011, Lizzie and I discovered a "tape sample" (a recording that was originally recorded on tape, but converted to digital) on some sound effect CD. It sounded like a rewinding tape. Her sound-editing twin brother, Michael, reversed the sound, so it sounded like the tape was fast-forwarding. Then, he slowed it down until it sounded like playing speed. They discovered some mysterious music that could probably be heard nowhere else. We all referred to the melody as "Tape Sample." Throughout it, there were chords that repeated a lot, and we called them "tape loops." Lizzie thought that that was her word, "tape loop." But she found "tape loop" on Wikipedia to be an actual loop of tape that creates a traditional looping sound. Believe it or not, after a few months, she got me addicted to tapes that looped, or digital units that act like tapes (that happen to have a looping property). That's when we became Morcheeba fans; Morcheeba actually has a song called Tape Loop, the first line is: "Tape loop keeps on turnin' round forever." It actually begins with a "BLAM!" sound (like a bell) that sounds like it is on a tape, and it sounds as if it's looping. So, before I introduce Lizzie to Looper's Delight, let me tell you, I already read the "good-old fashioned tape looping" article. I am a comedy musician, and once in a great while I do a remix. I'm both a comedian and a remix artist, but you won't be hearing loops (tape or no tape) on my first CD when it comes out. You'll be hearing parodies (one of them will probably be about loops). Maybe I should add a loop in there. But, if the Looper's Delight "loop albums" are still out, I'll buy all the disks. Lizzie (a big looper) might like this site; I'll ask her if she wants a loopy listing. Out of my dozens of Javascript-based computer programs I have made over the years, I have two Javascript-based computer programs that I made for people that are feeling "loopy." One of them is about audio, the other is just text-memory cell loops. The first one (called Soundlap) asks the user for the name of an audio file. After the user responds, it asks how many media players the user wants to open. If you open 10 media players (referred to as the Manipulation Level), it will open up ten media players and try to play all ten copies at the same time. Usually, there's a delay, so you get an "overlap loop." The third box is for the Submanipulation Level. It tells the computer how many times each media player should play it. (New feature). For example, if you open ten media players and the Submanip is set to 20, it will play a size ten overlap loop twenty times. That's a lot of loops! What loop person doesn't like that? Now, for a program I created that a looper may or may not like. It has nothing to do with sound, but there's still something loopy going on. This program, called "tape loop" (originally called "inside loop", I created it before I became a big-time looper), is all about computations. It is called "tape loop" because I'm imagining a digital tape deck, and the tape (which is really a file) stores digital cells. When you open the program, you have a button between two boxes; a sideways button sandwich. You type a number, say, 100 in the box. As you click the button, watch the box on the right. From the time you click the button to the time the right-side box changes to a number (or changes to a different number), the computer will have made 100 computations. Amazingly, computers do that in an eighth of a second. That's when you start playing with numbers like 20000 (twenty thousand, and it takes about three seconds for the box to change. This program is considered part of the Loop Series because the computations are like loops: When you type 20000 into the box, the number starts with 1, and it keeps adding one to it, again, again, again, again, 20,000 times. A loop! You don't see the results of each loop (you just see a number change when it's done looping), but the whole point of the program is to test the speed of your computer (more specifically, the program system in your web browser). I guess, because of the repetitive computations, (I've let one do billions before), you can call this program a loop. It's called "tape-loop." That would make a good sitcom; "The Lovely but Loopy Lives of Lizzie and Tyler." My life was always loopy (figuratively), but I'm discovering more literal loops every day. Our local radio station, 104.5 WSNX in Michigan, does a lot of remixes, and sometimes they will play a long, continuous loop. Some people might be annoyed by the loop, but I get up, start dancing, spinning around, and shouting "Oh my loop! Oh my loop!" I guess I'm caught in the loop, too. I always wondered if there was a "Loop Addicts Anonymous." Well, I guess this is it. Tyler Zahnke, owner of Prosomawi Media http://prosomawi.editthis.info Comedian http://tyler_zahnke.editthis.info