Hello All!!!

As I begin to get my head around Hip-Hop/Trap/Neo Soul production, there is one thing that confuses me...

...Sample packs that contain fully completed songs broken into individual tracks, sold as a 'Loop Pack' and touted as 'Original Compositions'.

I use one shots, I chop songs, and I understand FX and perc loops usage...but what would one do with a anothers' fully produced song stem like a piano/GTR/strings track in their own productions?

Explain it to me as if I am five years old please.

 

Hello!

Imagine you're building a big, colorful Lego castle. You have all kinds of Lego pieces: some are tiny bricks, some are cool wheels, and some are special shapes like doors or windows.

In music production, you can think of sounds like Lego pieces. There are tiny bits of sounds called one-shots (like your small Lego bricks), little loops of beats and effects (like wheels or small decorations), and then there are bigger pieces, which are like fully built parts of the castle (like a whole door or window).

When you get a "Loop Pack" with "Original Compositions," it's like getting a bunch of pre-built Lego windows, doors, and towers. These are parts of a song that someone else already made, like a piano track, a guitar track, or strings.

Now, what can you do with these pre-built pieces? Here are some fun things:

1. Add Them to Your Castle: You can use these ready-made pieces to add to your song. For example, if you have a cool beat (like the base of your Lego castle), you can add a pre-built piano track (a pre-built Lego window) to make your song more interesting and richer.
   
   
2. Mix and Match: Just like you can mix different Lego pieces to create something unique, you can combine different tracks from these loop packs with your own sounds to make a unique song.
   
   
3. Chop and Change: Even though the piano track (Lego window) is ready-made, you can still chop it up, rearrange it, or add effects to it, making it sound different and fitting it perfectly into your song.
   
   
4. Inspiration: Sometimes, seeing a cool pre-built Lego part gives you new ideas for your castle. In the same way, hearing a ready-made track can inspire you to come up with new melodies, beats, or even whole songs.
   

So, just like with Lego, you have all these different pieces – from tiny bricks to big pre-built parts – and you can combine them in endless ways to make your own amazing creations. Using these pre-built tracks is just another fun way to make your music more exciting and unique.

 

i'm gonna give you a practical example. It was actually @Garamondo Furbish who found the song, in another thread.


this one is the sample loop

this one is the finished song

 

@Stewart Daniels. These loop packs you speak of sound like 'Construction Kits' to me, where essentially, you can remix a bunch of loops made by the makers. Some loops can be very useable though.

 

get better understanding of certain genres or train mixing or just use a tiny bit of it for something completly other and/or completly alter it ....
but lot of kids just remix it or build bit different arrangments with and think they are full scale producers now.
to build these packs is for revenue for many very talented skillfull guys which dont moving in the right circles to get the big range
hiphop sub is declining anyways same as real 4x4

 

Last edited: Jun 10, 2024

if I see "original compositions", or "construction kit" mentioned in the description of a sample pack; I assume the entire pack will be a waste of time and storage space. Stems are another on my no-fly list. It's a way to make a pack larger in file size. Extra "Full mix" wav files, "demo.mp3", and whatever else they can stick in there to bulk file size up. It's a safe bet, the entire thing is junk; but an even safer bet is that you will never miss it.

 

Your description was beautifully put in a context even my tiny mind could grasp. I get it...inspiration, not plagiarism.

"Legos"

I asked for that, didn't I? Thank You.

 

Yeah, they seem like a trap to me somehow. But, I am a little more knowledgeable now. Opens up a lot of creativity though if used wisely I'm sure.

Thank You So Very Much!!!

 

Gotcha! I'm amazed that one could blatantly use anothers' work with no penalty.

Thanks for taking time to reply to my question.

 

Wise words. You speak from experience, and I will carry that knowledge with me when previewing packs. I was afraid to use construction kits just because it seemed like cheating or copyright trouble.

I appreciate your help, Thanks a Lot!!!

 

@Stewart Daniels exactly.
the loop is the guitar, and there will be no penalties, because the loop was made for that purpose and is royalties free.

 

Ha ha ha, yes you did .
But you know Gorillaz made the "Clint Eastwood" with row 1 01 preset from the Suzuki Omnischord so don't discard music posibilities whenever you can find them.

 

Last edited: Jun 11, 2024

good point .wtf.i remember many of this stuff isnt marked roality free so this is another revenue generator .never thought bout it that some of them must make good money with claimings from kids then . bit like porn download warnings settlement business model . Btw in germany there is a lovely old lady politician which does same business model but with insults against her written in www , its crazy .
dont know the correct juristical terms in english but i guess you know what i mean .

 

Ok' so ive not read any responses in this thread so far,

"So if i cover ground already trodden upon i apologise"

Whilst Theres been many a commercial HIt Based Upon a "Fuckn Vengeance loop or similar"

I hear exactly What your saying!!

However' the Fact is that whilst i dont use > "Stems"
which is the correct teminology for the elements you described btw,

I do Know Of certain individuals'
Heh Heh, > In fact i Know Waaaay tooo Many People in the industry that Swear by the simple truth that

"Library is a resource that no matter what you as a programmer are capable of doing, one can never achieve the same Quality of mix ready elements in the box without the Hardware used to resample it with "

Now My answer to those specific people i shant outright humiliate is>>

"What utter Horseshit, You Guys are Lazy and are essentially just Sequencing other peoples work and then have the fuckn nerve to sit back and accept the credit, Whats More is The reason you do this is because you Simply Do Not Posess The Skills Needed To Program it all yourself"

Theres an enourmous difference between True Creative Sampling/Resampling, And simply running a loop and in essence being a Hack!!

And i Rather Live Broke as Fuck than comprimise that integrity , If youve no musical integrity then your in this for the wrong reasons

Theres a place for library, but my personal opinion is many wanna be programmers run loops and then think theyre a sound designer or a programmer worth a fuck!!

 

Color By Numbers

 

@Stewart Daniels Trust your intuition dude. Unless you are truly a beginner who wants to understand production processes, or a YouTube beat maker who literally doesn't give a shit, I believe they are a big distraction that will more likely stifle your creativity and progression as a musician (if that's your goal of course), as opposed to evolving it. I kinda feel the same for expansion packs for Maschine or MPC. Curated pre mastered drum samples and melodic samples, leave little to the imagination. I own some, but struggle to think of any instances that these have been of use. Occasionally I may want to source a specific sound, such as an African drum for example and look for some samples, but if at any point I feel I am overly relying on samples or sound packs to create the vibe, the magic is gone for me. Maybe it depends on what school you come from. Back when I learnt to use the MPC 2000, I had about 3 or 4 floppy disks with drum samples (maybe 10/20 drums on each if that) and that was that. How many Techno/House/Hip/Hop/Ethnic/Trap/Drill/Drip (Drip????), drums can one really need. In fact, how does one discern between drum genres definitively. Can't you use any hat, kick or snare, to make anything within reason? I thought that's why we had ADSR and Reverb etc. As such, I don't really follow the music industry as an entity anymore anyway, so intuition is all I have left.

 

In A Nutshell!!>

" Colour By Numbers "

Indeed!!

 

some very nice and varied answers here, thanks everybody for sharing your wisdoms.
me personally, i don't make music for money or anything, it's just a hobby (although i did earn some money to buy back something), so this might be different for others. but as jynx said: if you mainly use loops without really doing anything, you're not really "producing", you're sequencing other people's work... now we all know that sampling has been used a lot and will be used for a long time, but most of the time we see a creative use of samples. like someone mentioned above, gorillaz made the whole clint eastwood's main theme with a default loop. is that a bad track? i wouldn't say so.. there are other elements that compliment well the *already made* loop etc. etc. if you were to give the same loop to 10 different artists, they would most likely come up with very extreme and different examples, wouldn't they?
the problem with the "fully produced stems" is that you're hearing THE WHOLE COMPOSITION and that already fucks with your brain. imagine this: gorillaz plays the loop above, but instead of the main loop there's also a melody and another element..... it'd be another different story, you wouldn't even feel like "wow this loop is good i'm goin to make a whole song around it" because you're already hearing something close to a full song.
construction kits should come, IMHO, all scrambled up.. you hear a good bass loop? alright that's it, just use that one, modify it however you want it, build something around it... but when the noob musician listens to: "AWESOME TRACK - BASS" he instantly wants to hear: "AWESOME TRACK - MELODY" and then you're hearing a song... anyway this is a complicate matter, i don't use construction kits for the reasons above (i want to make something on my own); if i've ever used them or if i will ever use it, it'd be for creativity, inspiration, or a single loop from the whole "arrangement", otherwise i'd feel like i'm remixing something (which is also valid for some people) or "stealing" something.. i wouldn't be completely happy with it because some of the elements of the track are not from me.
sorry for the long post but last days at school.. the kids were extremely happy, we played some cards game and im quite cheerful now :=)

bye!