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Re: How come pop music never comes up here?



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
>>