What is looping and how to make the best of it in music production?

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Looping refers to the recording in a seamless pattern that plays over and over continuously. It can be done with the help of a device equipped with a looper pedal or sampler or in a DAW with the help of a plugin. Sound on sound plugin refers to recording the extra passes over the original one. Entire songs can be based on sound on sound looping. It is referred to as looping because back then was looping was invented, the ends of a section of an analog tape was cut to literally form a closed loop. You can make the most of looping at Songmill recording studio by:

  1. Using the looper pedals. 

They are hands down the best way to work with looping. Loopers in the stompbox format are made for guitar but if you have a 1/4” output, you can plug almost anything. There are many looper pedals that bear specific inputs for mics. This lets you loop audio from vocals or drums with the help of a mic. Loopers with mic make it easy for a musician to compose the complete track right from the beginning and that too in live. 

  1. Looping with samplers

The hardware samplers come equipped with looping and sequencing tools.

Hardware samplers have looping and sequencing tools built in. When you loop the breakbeat repeatedly, you make it easy for providing a steady groove for the rappers to rap over. Hence, looping samples are a boon for hip hop department. 

How looping works?

There are many kinds of loopers, bit each one of them works in the same way. The looping devices carry a few basic functions like:

  1. Record loop
  2. Set loop end point
  3. Overdub recording

On the basis of what you will be doing to make the best of the loops, these functions can be managed by using pads, footswitches or MIDI controls. 

If you are using a pedal style looper then you may need only one footswitch to begin recording, close the loop and begin the overdubbing. Big devices need effects such as reverse and half speed recording.

Why use a looper? 

Loopers help in performing music that makes workflow smooth for you. It makes coordinating the bandmates for rehearsals and shows so easy that you can create amazing live performances by your own means, if you are well acquainted with building entire tracks on a looper. 

It also comes in handy when you are writing a song and it is far better than staring at a blank DAW session for hours. Working with a looper is more like working with a muse, it is a shortcut to your inspiration and more like jamming with yourself.