Today, I’m going to gush about a sound-design superhero: Looperman (www.looperman.com).

Looperman will save us all!

Looperman has nearly 230,000 loops (short music clips) that you can use for free in non-commercial and commercial projects.

It illustrates the power of crowdsourcing. Musicians upload loops they’ve created so other people can incorporate them into their musical compositions. These short clips, typically somewhere between 10-30 seconds long, are intended to be looped (repeated) in songs, creating an extended rhythmic or melodic pattern in those songs.

Musicians are clearly Looperman’s target audience, but luckily for us, nobody checks credentials. In fact, creators may be happily surprised to hear their loop in a podcast episode instead of a song. When you use a loop, you’re asked to leave feedback with a link to your work so the loop’s creator can check it out.

I’ve also started adding Looperman to my episode end-credits and linking to the loops in my written credits. When someone allows me to use their work for free, that’s the least I can do in return.

A couple of caveats:

• You need to create a Looperman.com account before you can download any files.
• Looperman offers other types of music for download, such as tracks (songs) and “acapellas” (vocals with no music). But they have more stringent terms and conditions. Example: to use a track, you have to get permission from the member who created it. Please read the terms and conditions carefully.

Needles in the haystack

On a site with more than 220K loops, how do you find just the right one? Luckily, Looperman’s search tools work pretty well.

First, be sure you’re on the Loops & Samples tab. Then you can see the list of tags, genres, and categories by selecting those options near the top of the page.

Make sure you’re on the Loops & Samples tab.

Take a gander at the variety of options for genre and category, as well as the number of loops in each one (in parentheses).

To search using the Filter options, select Search for Free Loops on the Loops & Samples tab. The more filters you use, the more narrowly you can target the type of sound you’re looking for.

Just for kicks, I searched for mandolin loops in the fusion genre. The results: there is one fusion mandolin loop. Now that’s a needle in a haystack.

Make sure you’re on the Loops & Samples tab and that you’ve selected Search Free Loops.
Then select your search criteria in the Filter area.

Search tips

When searching, start by selecting the genre and category (instrument) you want. Then try one or more of these filters to further refine your results.

• Date filter:
  • Allows you to limit search results to loops uploaded anywhere from the past 60 days to the last 24 hours. Using any of these filter options significantly reduces the number of search results.
  • Example: In the last 30 days, 2328 loops have been uploaded to the site. That’s a much smaller pool to start with than the entire database of loops. The date filter is especially helpful when you need a loop in any of the larger genres (e.g., hip-hop and trap).
• Key filter:
  • Allows you to select from a list of 24 major and minor keys.
  • Major keys are generally happier sounding.
  • Minor keys are generally sadder sounding (look for “m” after the key name).
• BPM/Tempo filter:
  • Allows you to specify a tempo (speed/pace) range in bpm (beats per minute).
  • Rather than search for a bpm range, such as 100-120 bpm, search for a specific bpm, which will reduce your search results significantly, sometimes by half or more.
  • To search for a specific bpm, put that number in both the “from” and “to” fields.

Make your own luck

I won’t lie, you’ll probably find yourself listening to a lot of loops. Loopscrolling is real, I tell ya.

But it’s worth it. First of all, it’s free. (Bears repeating!) Second, thousands of loopy gems are waiting to be unearthed and used in ways their creators never imagined.

Here’s an example from Mementos, which is the opening scene to the Ruth’s Poetry episode.

This is what the scene looks like in Hindenburg. Please ignore my poor track organization.

Allow me to explain what you’re looking at:

• I staggered and layered three different loops (numbers 1, 2, & 3) for the music in this scene.
• Loop 1, the plucky strings, starts alone and loops (repeats) six times.
• Loop 2 starts next and loops five times.
• Loop 3 joins last, near the end of the scene, and does not loop.
• It’s hard to see in the screen capture, but the loops fade out sequentially. Loop 2 fades out first, then Loop 3, and finally Loop 1, so at the end, we’re left with only the plucky strings, just like at the beginning.
• Even though Loop 1 repeats for about 1.5 minutes and Loop 2 for almost a minute, the music never gets monotonous. A sense of movement and a growing, tongue-in-cheek seriousness develops as Loops 2 and 3 join and complement the narration.

For this scene, I wanted classical-style music to accompany the narration, but in a playful, faux dramatic way, to match my guest’s storytelling style. Think Downton Abbey meets small-town Connecticut. At this point, I was just hoping to find one good loop that would work for the entire opening scene.

I searched for “classical” genre and “strings,” and while scanning the results, I just so happened to notice three loops with similar names:

• Strings of the Sun
• Strings of the Sun 2
• Strings of the Sun Pizzicato

After listening to them, I thought they sounded like a string-orchestra loop that had been disassembled into separate parts.

Once I started noodling around with them in Hindenburg, I realized that didn’t I need to start them all at the same time, and, in fact, it would sound better if I didn’t. And I figured out the rest from there.

Honestly, I was lucky that I noticed the similarity in the loop names because I never look at the names. They rarely tell you anything useful about the loops. This time, they did. Then I made the most of my good fortune by taking the time to noodle around and figure out a unique way to combine the loops with the story.

That’s power of Looperman. With so many loops and so many ways to search them, it’s worth spending some time getting to know this superhero resource. You never know when you might make your own luck and create sound-design magic.

Get thee to Looperman!