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oops - I sent this to Tyler directly. I meant to send it to the list: There's a difference between "looping" (the repetitive use of audio samples) and "live looping" (the act of recording those audio samples in real-time during a performance before using them). Most of the artists on loopers-delight.com, livelooping.org and this email list are concerned primarily with live looping. Looping, such as that you hear in most modern pop songs, has been the industry standard way of recording pop music since digital recording has been available. I'd guess most electronic groups have been making music primarily by looping samples since the late 80s. Cases of pop music using loops goes back to the 60s that I'm aware of (such as Perry & Kingsley), and experimental music using loops goes back to the invention of magnetic tape. In modern pop and dance music, it's not just the vocal parts you're referencing that are looped, but all the instruments! Personally, I think it can be a good thing in the right hands - musicians can spend more time fine-tuning every element of a 15 second loop, then have that 15 seconds play multiple times during a song. I would dare say that everything you hear on a pop radio station these days is built from loops, and it's been that way since 1992 or so. Even rock bands record that way more often than they'd care to admit. I'm not too familiar with the pop songs you're naming. I thought I had some Britney Spears on my ipod, but apparently it never uploaded. Do you have the song "Animal" by Miike Snow? In that one, the first 7 seconds is created from triggered samples of instruments, but then that 7 seconds is looped through most of the rest of the song. Loops of more instruments are added at the same intervals. Listening to it now, I'd guess that only the verse vocal, the drums and maybe a synth are not looped. Even the chorus is most likely only recorded once, and you're literally hearing the same recording each time it's repeated. The producers introduce just enough variation that it doesn't feel canned. (Great song by the way - did you know that these are the same guys that produced the music for "Toxic" by Britney Spears?) But yeah, there aren't many famous artists using "live looping", and many of them tend to be indie artists: Imogen Heap, Andrew Bird, Reggie Watts, etc. Many of the members of this list will point out the Robert Fripp/Brian Eno recording "No Pussyfooting" (from 1974!) in which Brian Eno uses tape machines to sample and play back Robert Fripp's live guitar sounds. The earliest live looping record that I'm aware of is Terry Riley's "A Rainbow in Curved Air", which was released in 1969. -- Matt Davignon mattdavignon@gmail.com www.ribosomemusic.com Podcast! http://ribosomematt.podomatic.com > Tyler <programmer651@comcast.net> was all: >> Hello! Whenever I listen to a pop music radio station for more than a >> half hour, I hear at least >> one song full of loops! Three months ago you heard me talk about Jason >> Derulo's Imogen >> Heap sample in "Whatcha Say," (the "what" is looped sometimes). And in >> Britney Spears's >> "I Wanna Go" the "I" and the "Go" (and the "way" in "all the way") are >> all looped! And some songs >> by artists from LMFAO to Kesha have loops! How come we only talk about >> the indie stuff here? How >> come only the indie ones (like myself) join this mailing list? >> Tyler Z >>