Cecelia Tape Loop

by Gary Stockton
(Huntington Beach, CA)

As Paul Simon recalled recently. They were sitting around in a rented house on Blue Jay Way, beating on a piano bench, guitar cases and clapping as a group, recording into a Nagra tape machine. The Nagra was producing a unique slap-back sound to give the rhythm a unique quality. So Paul asked Roy Halee to take about a minute of the rhythm and make a loop. Roy created the loop by connecting two tape machines and recording 3 minutes and 30 seconds of the beat. Paul used the loop to write the song "Cecelia."