In
music,
tape loops are
loops of
magnetic tape used to create
repetitive,
rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of
sound when played on a
tape recorder. Originating in the 1940s with the work of
Pierre Schaeffer, they were used among
contemporary composers of 1950s and 1960s, such as
Steve Reich,
Terry Riley, and
Karlheinz Stockhausen, who used them to create
phase patterns, rhythms, textures, and
timbres.
Popular music authors of 1960s and 1970s, particularly in
psychedelic,
progressive and
ambient genres, used tape loops to accompany their music with innovative sound effects. In the 1980s,
analog audio and tape loops with it gave way to
digital audio and application of computers to generate and process sound.