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just discovered Looper's Delight
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