Discovering the technique of live looping is a unique experience to most musicians: With relatively little technical overhead it is possible to record, play, and loop created sounds while playing an instrument. These loops can be subjected to musical transformations, depending on the features of the used looping device: Playing the loop with half speed, playing the loop backwards, overdubbing new material, seamless attenuation and fade out.
The fascination for these musical possibilities led to the gathering of an international community that organizes live looping festivals world wide.

At a more prominent of these ("Y2K4 International live looping Festival", Santa Cruz, California, http://bernhardwagner.net/y2k4 ) 40 individual musicians and groups performed.
Swiss musician Matthias Grob invented, desinged, and realized a classic among the loop devices, the "paradis LOOP delay" in Switzerland (Biel). Following its presentation at the Frankfurter Musikmesse 1992, the American music instrument manufacturer Gibson licensed the product under the name "Echoplex Digital Pro".

Since live looping is a technique, the style of music created with it is not predetermined. However, in the same way a music instrument can particularly foster certain styles of music, live looping seems to be particularly interesting to improvisers.
But there are also artists who compose specific music for live looping. Others use the technique to play Jazz tunes and then improvise over their own looped accompaniment.
Since the technique does not dictate the sound source, a great variety of instruments are used for looping. Some musicians even play several instruments and successively build entire pieces that otherwise would require a whole group of musicians.
In a certain sense live looping can be compared to accompaniment systems as can be found in the form of sequencers or drum computers. An essential difference between these systems and live looping, however, is the significantly more organic sound of the looped material, since it is recorded while playing the instrument, thus offering the same expressive potential and agogics that instrumentalists and vocalists have always used.
A further difference is that the loops can be decayed at a controllable rate, even during the overdubbing of new material. This provides for the seamless meandering between different musical and improvisational ideas.

The typical loop devices offer at least the following functions:
recording, overdubbing (adding of new material to the existing loop), regulation of feedback between 0 and 100% (This controls the rate with which the loop is attenuated with each repetition. Unfortunately, most commercially successful loop devices lack this fundamental feedback control thus fostering the loop-device-replaces-band approach.)
These three functions represent the foundation for live looping.
Most devices offer additional functions: reversing of the loop, playing the loop at different speed/pitch, multiplying the loop while overdubbing a longer phrase comprising several iterations of the original loop. All functions are invoked via foot pedals to leave the hands free for playing the music instru ment.
While the technique of looping already was explored and used 1948 (using manipulated gramophones), live looping using tape was experimented with since 1964.
Digital electronics made it possible to build portable loop devices and fostered the broader adoption of live looping in live performances.

Further information:
http://www.livelooping.org
http://www.loopersdelight.com
© Bernhard Wagner, 2010
http://bernhardwagner.net