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How to make a tape loop

Gazillion Industries · September 20, 2026

A length of tape, spliced end to end, running past a head forever. It is the least sophisticated idea in recorded music and it has produced more genuinely strange records than any synthesizer.

A tape loop is a piece of magnetic tape joined into a circle so the same audio plays over and over. To make one, record the phrase you want, cut the tape where the phrase starts and ends, join the two ends with splicing tape, and run the loop through the machine with a pencil, a bottle or a spare spindle holding the far end so it stays under tension. The length of the loop divided by the tape speed gives you the duration of the cycle.

The short version

Why anyone still does this

A tape loop is not a sampler with fewer features. The tape is physically passing a head, so every revolution is a new performance: the oxide sheds, the tension varies, the pitch drifts, and the recording is quietly destroying itself while you listen. Two loops of slightly different lengths will drift out of phase with each other and slowly come back, which is the whole mechanism of Steve Reich's "It's Gonna Rain" in 1965. William Basinski's disintegration recordings, made as he digitized old tape loops that were falling apart on the machine, are the same principle taken to its end.

Nothing in a DAW does that on its own, because a file played twice is identical twice. You can imitate the drift, and you have to decide to.

How to make a tape loop at home

1. Record the phrase onto tape, leaving a little room either side.
2. Find the start and end points by ear, marking the back of the tape with a pencil.
3. Cut both marks at a 45 degree angle with a splicing block, or a very steady hand.
4. Butt the two ends together, shiny side down, and join them with splicing tape on the back.
5. Trim the splice flush so it does not catch on the heads.
6. Thread the loop through the transport and hold the far end out with a pencil or spindle.
7. Adjust the tension: too slack and it slips, too tight and the pitch rises.
8. Record the output back into your session for as many passes as you can stand.

TRIPLE OG is a cassette transport: AGE is in years, nought to sixty, and WOW FLUT is continuous, bounded instability built from several motions at once, which is the part a clean loop is missing.

Doing it in the box

You can get most of the behavior without a splicing block, as long as you accept that you are imitating a mechanism rather than running one.

1. Bounce your loop to a file.
2. Run it through tape-style processing and record the output as a new file.
3. Repeat that four or five times, so each generation loses top end and gains noise.
4. Detune each generation by a few cents, and vary the loop length by a few milliseconds.
5. Layer two versions of different lengths so they drift against each other.

The drift is the part people leave out. Two loops of exactly the same length stacked on top of each other is a thicker loop; two loops eleven milliseconds apart is a piece of music that changes for the next ten minutes. See wow and flutter for the instability, and tape speed for what the transport speed costs you in top end.

Where it costs you

Splices wear out, and the click of a splice passing the head becomes part of the rhythm whether you invited it or not. Loops on a real machine also change while you record them, so there is no undo: the take you got is the take that exists, and the next pass is quieter and duller. That is the appeal and it is also the reason to record everything from the first pass onward.

Questions people ask

How do I make a tape loop at home?

Record onto tape, cut the start and end of the phrase at an angle, join them with splicing tape on the non-magnetic side, and run the loop through the machine with something holding the far end under tension. Record the output as it plays.

What is a tape loop?

A length of magnetic tape spliced into a circle so the recorded audio repeats continuously. It was the standard way of making a repeating figure before samplers, and it is still the only way to hear a recording physically age as it plays.

How do you loop a cassette?

Open the shell, splice a short length of tape into a continuous loop, and let it run free inside the housing or outside it on a guide, which is how endless-loop cartridges worked. It takes patience and it eats tape, so practice on a cassette you do not care about.

How long should a tape loop be?

Divide the duration you want by the tape speed. At cassette speed, 1 7/8 inches per second, a four-second loop needs roughly seven and a half inches of tape, plus the splice.

What TRIPLE OG does

TRIPLE OG is a cassette transport with six controls for what the medium is and what it is doing. AGE is in years, nought to sixty: darker, noisier, slightly more saturated, less speed-stable and less perfectly matched left to right, all on one knob. HISS is a continuous broadband bed rather than clicks or crackle. CATCH is the machine failing on its own, dragging, jamming and recovering, on its own clock or from a trigger on the panel. MIX is on the face and defaults to 100 percent.

The loop is still going round. It is a little quieter than it was when you started reading.

Keep reading

• Tape speed — Why faster tape is cleaner, and what each standard speed sounds like.
• How to record to cassette — Connections, levels, tape types, and getting the playback back in.
• How a tape machine works — The transport, the heads, bias, tape speed, and why tape sounds like tape.

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