================ PREMIUM FEATURE ================
Loop Recording in Songzap allows you to quickly capture short musical phrases and chord progressions, add multitrack layers and then construct a detailed song arrangement from your loop ‘building blocks’ – all in just a few simple steps and actions!
Introduction to Loops
Loop recording is a music production concept that emerged widely when it first became possible to digitise music and manipulate sound data on a computer, back in the 1980s and 1990s. Nowadays loop recording and playback is a powerful and commonly used tool in music production – and on stage too. Indeed many music genres exist because of the use of loops and repeated musical sounds.
An audio loop in itself is something very simple; usually it is just a number of beats or bars of sound that continuously loops and repeats. We often play repetitive phrases when performing an instrument, but, with audio loops, the exact same sound that has been recorded plays back over and over again.
In music production, this can be useful if we want to reuse a musical phrase in different parts of the song. Perhaps there is a ‘perfect’ take of a guitar hook or a vocal performance and we want to reuse that in different places as the song is played back. In other cases, we just don’t need to keep playing the same thing over and over again, such as a four-bar chord progression that continues throughout the song. So we can use loops to save time and to keep the sonics of a track consistent too. Playing back loops also keeps things very much locked in time, because the loops always trigger exactly at the right time and, if the performances are good, the dynamics of a song can be very tight and give a strong sense of rhythm that people can dance to.
On stage, guitarists often use a looper pedal to build up complex layers of sound, first adding some chords, then some lead parts, then maybe some percussion or vocal layers. Some great examples of this are by KT Tunstall and Ed Sheeran. The looper pedal can be quite hard to master, because timing of the performance (and the timing of tapping the looper pedal buttons with your feet) is critical to getting a good sounding result. But the results can be extremely impactful and creative, allowing a simple one-person performance to sound like a full band with intricate layers and dynamics varying throughout a song.
Loops and phrases can also become synonymous with the structure or arrangement of a song. For example:
- The same guitar melody might appear in the intro, instrumental and outro of a song.
- A four-chord piano loop might be present in a song’s verses, with a different four-bar chord progression being used in the chorus.
- A singer might perform the same lyrics and phrasing in each chorus of a song.
- A strings or horns motif might be absent in the song’s verse, but be present during the chorus and instrumental section to add density and interest.
- Drum beats themselves are often loops that are repetitive phrases interlinked by drum fills.
It’s therefore possible to consider the loops and arrangement together, as if the loops become the building blocks by which the song is constructed (arranged). Let’s take a look at how this approach can be adopted and achieved in Songzap.
Loop Recording in Songzap
Loop recording is part of the Groove feature in Songzap. This is because the ‘Groove’ of a song is generally defined as being ‘the combination of rhythmic and repetitive elements that make up a song’. So the ‘groove’ of a song is all about how the drums interact with a repetitive bassline, motif or sequence of arranged notes.
When you get to the Loop Recorder within the Groove page, you’ll see a fairly detailed layout with a waveform display, four mix faders, and some control buttons in between (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Loop Recorder features (a) and with record enabled (b).
It’s possible to record up to four layered loops for each song section. So you can record four loop layers for the verse and four different loop layers for the chorus for example. If you are a guitarist, then you might use the four layers as follows:
- Loop Track 1 (layer 1) to record chords
- Loop Track 2 (the second layer) to record the same chords (‘double tracking’ the same part)
- Loop Track 3 as picked or arpeggiated chords
- Loop Track 4 as a solo guitar line
(of course, you might only need to use one or two layers to get the sounds and feel you need in your song, there’s no need for overkill every time!)
When playing back your recordings, the layers all play at the same time, so you can build up complex soundscapes, but you’ll need to make sure everything recorded is in key and time with each other too. Later on, we’ll explain how you can pan the layers left and right with the mixer, adding a sense of space and dimension to your music.
Pre-Roll and Live Sync Recording Modes
Loop record has two subtly different modes, which can both be useful in different music-recording scenarios:
- Pre-Roll Mode – this is perfect for singer-songwriters and instrumentalists who want to record song sections and chord progressions, and then explore the song arrangement from recorded building blocks
- Live Sync Mode – this is ideal for rappers, MCs, and beat makers who want to jam, capture and layer ideas before exporting beats or a full song composition from the recordings.
To switch between Pre-Roll and Live Sync modes, you can use the green selector just above the loop track window, on the left, or by opening the settings menu which is accessed from the gear icon on the right, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Switching between Pre-Roll and Live Sync Modes.
Pre-Roll Recording
Pre-Roll mode gives you a count-in of 1 or 2 bars, so when recording starts you are ready and in time from the get-go. (You can also have no count in, if you choose!). You can set the loop recorder to auto-stop after the 16-bar loop window has completed, or you can let the recorder continue and start back at the beginning again. The count-in and auto-stop are useful so you can record a full 16 bars without needing to press any buttons on the app at critical times. This is great for musicians who need to press record and then get their hands ready to start playing guitar, piano or their chosen instrument, and they don’t need to take their hands off to press stop either. Figure 2b shows the loop record settings for Pre-Roll mode.
To record a loop onto Loop Track 1, select Track 1 with the Loop Track Select button, then press the Record Enable button. You should be able to hear the microphone input sound in your headphones. Press play and the recorder will start to count down with a metronome count-in, as in Figure 3. As soon as the count-in completes, the recording starts automatically.
Figure 3. The last 3 beats of the Pre-Roll count-in.
Loop recording and playback is very time critical, so you’ll probably want to use a simple drum beat or switch the metronome on during recording, and you’ll probably need to practise getting good timing with your performances too. This is a good exercise for any musician and will prepare you well for a professional recording studio experience too!
You can stop the recorder earlier than 16 bars if you have completed playing your loop, but many musicians prefer to play a phrase over and over again so that they can choose the best version that is performed correctly and most perfectly in time with the metronome. For example, you might be recording a four-bar chord progression, so you can play this four times in the 16-bar window, and choose the best version to use in your song.
Live Sync Recording
Live Sync recording allows you to record loops over and over without ever stopping playback. This means you can start the loop recorder going, then jam, experiment or practice with musical phrases, lyrics or melodies, until you’re happy with what you have captured. This mode makes it ideal for rappers, lyricists or beat makers and any musician who likes to record while they experiment and get into the zone. You can also enable and disable recording while playback is active, so you can continue to review your recordings without needing to press stop and restart the playback.
You can set the loop window duration to 4, 8 or 16 bars and you can choose to have Sync active or inactive, as shown in Figure 2c above. The loop window determines when the loop recorder resets to the start of the phrase. If you are working with an 8-bar repeating pattern or song segment, then it makes sense to set the loop window to 8 bars. If you have Sync selected, then the recording wont start immediately – it will wait in a pre-record state until the loop widow completes and then recording will automatically start in sync (‘drop in’ or ‘punch in’) when the loop counter resets to the start. You’ll also see that the loop window duration is highlighted (brighter) to match the setting you chose, so you can see exactly when the loop is about to reset. Figure 4a shows an 8-bar loop window in pre-record state and Figure 4b shows a live loop recording continuing to record after a second pass through the loop window.
Figure 4. Live Sync Loop Record showing pre-record state (a) and continuous looping while recording (b).
In Live Sync mode you can also choose to disable the Sync option. With Sync disabled, recording does not wait until the loop widow completes – instead recording starts or stops immediately whenever the record enable button is pressed.
Setting the Loop Window
After recording, you can select the Loop Window that defines what will be played back repetitively by Songzap. Activate the Loop Window by pressing the Loop Window button (see Figure 5) and then you can select your preferred start and end bars for the playback.
The Loop Window can be adjusted by touching and sliding the start and end markers from side to side, or with the small left-right arrows on each end of the loop window. You’ll also see an indicator in the middle that shows the start and end bars for the loop window, as well as the duration of the loop in bars.
Figure 5. Loop Window examples.
Building an Arrangement with Loops
Once you have recorded some loops into different tracks and different sections, you can start to build a song arrangement with your loops. As an example, let’s assume you have recorded loops for a Verse and Chorus as follows:
- Verse Loop Track 1: Acoustic guitar chords
- Verse Loop Track 2: Picked guitar melody
and
- Chorus Loop Track 1: Acoustic guitar chords
- Chorus Loop Track 2: Picked guitar melody
- Chorus Loop Track 3: Electric guitar chords
- Chorus Loop Track 4: Electric guitar chords
You can now create a song arrangement that utilises these audio loops in different ways. As shown in Figure 6, an arrangement might have two different verse sections, one with the picked guitar melody active, and one with it disabled. This is a good approach for creating space in a song, where the lead guitar disappears and leaves space for a vocal to come in.
Equally in Figure 6 we see that there are two different Chorus sections together. After 4 bars, the electric guitar loops on Loop Tracks 3 and 4 are enabled and give the song some extra depth and intensity.
Figure 6. Song arrangement with varied use of loop recordings.
Mixing Loops
You can mix your loop recordings in much the same way as you mix linear recordings in Songzap, so do take a good look at the Mixing Tutorial also.
A key point to be aware of is that the loops can be mixed independently and as complete song tracks. Let’s explain that a little… For each song segment that has loop recordings, you can set the volume of each loop that has been recorded. This is done directly in the Loop Recording page – simply adjust the loop volume levels by moving the Loop Faders that can be seen above in Figures 1, 2 and 3.
When it comes to mixing the full song in the Mixer page, you’ll see that swiping left on the top set of faders reveals the Loop Track faders and mix controls, as shown in Figure 7. It’s worth understanding that the fader, pan, compressor, EQ and reverb controls for Loop Track 1 are essentially a group fader for all of the loop recordings that have been assigned to Loop Track 1 across the arrangement. This applies similarly For Loop Tracks 2, 3 and 4. Figure 7 shows this diagramatically. All of the audio loops that make up the first loop track column in the arrangement are controlled by the LOOPS 1 mixer channel.
Figure 7. Loop Arrangement and Mixer relationship.
With this in mind, it makes sense to record similar types of audio to each Loop track. For example:
- Record chords onto Loop Track 1.
- Record lead melodies onto Loop Track 2.
- Record sounds to be panned left onto Loop Track 3.
- Record sounds to be panned right onto Loop Track 4.
(You don’t have to follow this exact approach, but having your own consistent method for a song helps with getting a good mix result in the end.) You’ll notice we mentioned panning above, this can be a cool effect for recording the same musical phrase twice onto two loop tracks, and hard panning one left and the other right, in order to achieve a super-wide stereo impact in chosen song sections.
It can take some time to get to grips with any loop recording technology, and learning to perform in time and to a beat or metronome can make a big difference to the results. But it’s a useful skill to develop and add to your creative process. With Loop Recording and the Arrangement Editor in Songzap, you can construct complex songs with interesting sections that take the listener on a dynamic musical journey!
