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Simultaneous playing of tape loops to create phase patterns and rhythms was developed and initially used by musique concrète and tape music composers, and was utilized by Steve Reich for his " phasing" pieces, and by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Beginning in the late 1950's the BBC Radiophonic Workshop began using tape loops for to add special effects to some BBC programming.

In the early 1970s, musicians Brian EnoBrian Peter George St. Jean le Baptiste de la Salle Eno usually given as Eno (born May 15, 1948), is an electronic musician, producer, and music theorist who started his musical career with Roxy Music. He then went on to produce a number of highly eclecti and Robert FrippRobert Fripp (born in 1946 in Dorset, England) is a guitarist, perhaps best known for his founding role in the band King Crimson. His work, spanning more than three decades, encompasses a variety of musical styles. Fripp's earliest professional work began created FrippertronicsFrippertronics is a system of tape loops developed by composer Brian Eno with guitarist Robert Fripp. Frippertronics (a term coined by Joanna Walton, Fripp's beau in the late 1970s) is an analog delay system consisting of two reel-to-reel tape recorders s, a system for creating tape loops during a live performance. A few years later, Mission of BurmaMission of Burma was an influential post-punk band from Boston (1979-1983), formed by guitarist/singer Roger Miller, bass guitarist/singer Clint Conley, drummer Peter Prescott, and sound engineer Martin Swope, who processed their sound with various tape l began using loops on their albums, and also began feeding snippets of vocals and guitar recorded moments earlier back into their live mix, thereby introducing live loop effects to punk rockPunk rock is the anti-establishment music movement of the period 1976- 80, exemplified by The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned. This term is also used to describe subsequent music scenes that share key characteristics with those first-g. ExperimentalExperimental music is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. There is an overlap with avant-garde music. John Cage was a pioneer in experimental music and defined and gave credibility to the form. As with other edge form noise musicNoise music is harnessed sound that can be sonically harsh, painful, nauseating, and generally undesirable under normative circumstances. Noise" music could be viewed a contradiction in terms. Strictly speaking, "noise" is sound that is not wanted. The deian NON aka Boyd Rice played loops of speeches, radio broadcasts and conversations just under the threshold of comprehensibility in his live shows, starting in 1977. Since then, he's created loops to evoke a hypnotic, trance state in his audiences.

Digital sampling -- which can generally provide similar results with less effort -- overtook much tape loop use, beginning in the mid 1980s. Some musicians and composers, however, continue to use tape loops for various reasons.