As defining characteristics of digital music production go, ease of repetition is huge. The role of computers in ‘looping’ a section of a digitised waveform, a job that previously entailed cutting and splicing together analogue tape, has been revolutionary. Indeed, GarageBand is wholly built on this speed and convenience in manipulating audio loops to construct awesome songs on Mac, iPad and iPhone. So in this guide we’re going back to basics with a look at the techniques for identifying a section of an audio region and isolating it to become a loop. Using the cycle area and region resizing, we illustrate the simplest method for looping a section of a real recording to repeat seamlessly over multiple bars in your project.