I usually only save the drum beats or percussion sounds because, even if they're full loops, I can somehow adjust and reuse them.
However I haven't found any really good use for melodic loops other than maybe inspire some kind of vibe (which can be achieved as well by listening to commercial music). If I add a predefined chord progression, it's like I have to stick with it for a good part of the track.

Any tips? I'd like to read how you work with Construction Kits.

 

By Deleting them. I never use them even if I like the sample pack.

 

I very rarely download samples packs. If I do, it will just be for one shots, for building a drum kit, for example. I'll take the one shots out and drop them in my folder where the rest of my drum one shots are and delete the remainder.

I don't find loops to be inspiring. I can be inspired by the sound of a preset on a VSTi though.. That frequently can start an idea in my head.

 

I use Zynaptiq's PITCHMAP in midi mode to bend melodic loops in my own chords progressions and honestly it sped up my workflow

 

I have stopped to wasting time on construction kits since the day I understood that construction kits makes you lazy and doesn't let you quit the confort zone.

Quite the reserve messing around with random construction kits to find the alleged right sound wastes your time much more than you ever think.

But, yeah, I mean, I only save synth presets and one shot drum kits from construction kits.

 

I find construction kits a great source of inspiration. Often I open a blank template and stare at it all day and then go to bed having done nothing. If I drag and drop parts of an arrangement into a project, I then delete everything I don't want and keep some parts which then get moved about into a new order. This was a house track. I halved the tempo and constructed the song around just the vocal.

 

I am also open minded about sample packs.
Actually there are some very good composers out there (not many, just a few): when I find the good pack, I like to listen to the chord progressions and how they are matched to the bassline, how the vocal arpeggios are build etc. I often analyze with the audio2midi function the chords to have new inspiration.
The best packs are those with construction kits including midifiles: I begin to assign crazy sounds to the midi track, modify song tempo, reverse all notes on piano roll ...
Sometimes, sample packs are interesting, but you have to test 100 to find the good one, the others end up in trash

 

I love sample packs, just not the construction kit loops. they are almost always comprised of sounds from the pack itself. Often mixed together or processed. From one perspective, they are possibly adding more difficulty. but I delete all the demo spam, so these usually meet the same fate right away. They are yet another clever way to bulk up the data size of a pack.

 

Construction kits are the way to get to the another producer's kitchen, to know how all his dishes are cooked or at least they could be your reference tracks (if well produced/mixed/mastered, of course

 

Most Construction Kits sound worse than my own songs, and I'm not even a good producer.

Yeah, if they are good enough, of course... Good construction kits are always much fun to me... But I think at least 70% are kinda bad. Some of the good ones are really inspiring, but I never really used a complete construction kit, mostly I just keep one or two loops, or even less.

 

Construction kits are cheating, you are basically mixing some one elses track, i use the one shots or midi

 

How To Work With Samples/Construction Kits:

1. Find something you like.
2. Incorporate it into your track and build around it.
3. Replace it with your own sounds.
4. Take it out of your track.

 

Everything you believe comes from your soul has actually already been created and played much better by some other artist of the past.
What you do (when you think you are composing) is only to take solutions already found by others and make a collage of them. When you compose, you are just reworking everything that is part of your musical culture: you pretend to compose, basically you are just using a mental samplepack. Obviously, if you manage to add a little bit of your feeling in this process, then you are in the right direction.
This is why it is so important to listen and understand to what others are playing: by doing so, you create an archive of valid solutions to tackle any topic, then, with the help of other composers, you are ready to say what you want.
This is exactly the purpose of having a culture.

 

I agree

 

By the way another interesting purpose of construction kits is...
to sell them to friends who does not know those good web addresses as well as we do!!!

> ricbm710: The post was irony although I see you didn't get it

However, I think the biggest problem with Construction Kits/Samples is that there are too many of them and they are all similar! Nowadays it is rare that I listen to any.


Dear uploaders take a summer rest with the Samples... look in the requests: there are dozens of important plugins wanted by everyone (AU for me), and we need those badly!!!

 

Last edited: Aug 11, 2022