I have strong views on using loop packs.

So I have been guilty of taking a piano loop and using it essentially as is, building a track around that. I would class it cheating nowadays.
What one really should do is, convert audio to midi and at least change some of the notes/alter the sound to create some sense of originality, otherwise you are ending up with a track that predominantly features a piece of audio that no doubt hundreds of others are using.

For me nowadays I will limit myself to only using drum one shots from sample packs, and fx type sweep things that are not really recognisably samples, no drum loops (other than the Amen break which isn't really avoidable for me) and certainly no melodic loops.

The reason being I have enough synthy vst sounds and/or Kontakt banks to make my own melodics/instrumental/bass stuff pretty easily, I'm not purist enough to never use synth presets... so that's how deep the rabbit hole goes, someone will call me a cheater for that I have no doubt

 

A cheater for that? Miserable people will bring misery to you, just for the sake of elitism.

 

Yes I am guessing that using owning a vast array of presets and not always creating your own synth patches every time (nowhere near enough time to do that personally) is cheating for some people.

It's all a personal thing I guess

 

"Cheating" is showing up to a gig with your "live set" pre-recorded. Taking a bunch of samples that are already engineered and making a track is not cheating; it's how you make a bad track. Using presets and altering them so they are not simply stock is a shortcut. Using presets straight up is how many sounds end up on tracks that sell made by "big name artists". When you get a new hardware synth, you can roll through the presets and ID what famous tracks/songs they have been used on. When someone famous samples something, it is called "creative"'; but when others do it is "cheating". With the amount of incoming work that will be done using AI, playing Presets and Samples Police should be the nearly the last things to waste time with.

But I do agree that taking a sample, converting to midi and changing the sound source is great. In Logic, it takes about 5 clicks to hijack the midi data. Just because you can, doesn't mean you have to. If you happen to pay for the samples, you should use them. Sending the "label" a copy showing how you used their samples is a good way of getting free stuff.

 

the point I'm really trying to make is that, people have differing opinions on what constitutes real producing.
I think we're lumping in 'sampling', ie; the reuse of an idea to build a track around (in a creative way and building something fresh sounding), and ''jigsawing in a tonne of loops with a predetermined idea of how they'll sound together" then trying to pass that off as an original track. They're two different things for me, sampling is the basis of pretty much most electronic music I suppose in essence.

I don't claim to be 100% original or a total purist but there has to be a limit on how much loop tweaking can be gotten away with. I mean we all progressed from Dance Ejay... didn't we?

As for the AI stuff, I mean it should be used as a tool to aid the creative process, and not a leaning post for creating whole songs imo.

 

Last edited: Jun 14, 2024

I think to a certain degree your indeed right!

That said, although im aware that library is a resource, >>

"I Simply Wouldnt Get Any Satisfaction Whatsoever if I were to Exploit It The Way I Know Others Do"

"Always makes me laugh when i think of the ignorance of somebody that via Preset bashing and Extremely heavy loop use, Then thinks the productions theirs"

Ive a Close friend whos had a career in DnB /Dancehall,For the last 20 years,

The other day he sent me a copy of his latest track

"Perhaps its lazyness on his part, but i was so dissapointed with what i was hearing, for a veteran, thats respected, what he showed me was nothing more than him running a drum loop and sounded like the first time he had ever come across dnb patches in serum"

i understand that sound design is a lengthy process, But learning these things truly gives you a skill that way too many up and coming bedroom producers often dont bother to attempt to learn

 

Last edited: Jun 21, 2024

i cant remember the title of the tracks but i know kanye west "Whom i cant stand" had a piss poor release using i think, ermm The Stem Mc Hammer used years ago with you cant touch this.

While Jay Z Released a bloody masterpiece using the very same breaks, stem etc only completely reimagened to a degree where you wouldnt even have known what he used had we not have been told!!

I think if somebody wishes to do that, do it properly

 

Sample packs are somewhat interesting to grab ideas, I use them for that purpose. My advice is to avoid them in commercial productions, this for various reasons: copyright issues, most of them claim to be royality free but they are not and if you score a hit with those samples, you are going to deal with lawyers. In case instead you’re using real 100% royalty free samples, then the issue is that everyone can legally replicate your song, vanishing your hope of having a revenue from the music. When production is a business, avoiding sample pack is the way to go

 

in this thread all get thrown in same bucket , a proper sampled dm with proper og breaks played by a drummer with samplephonics with genre shit packs with etc etc
...pointless

 

"Construction kits" as opposed to "loop packs" offer more flexibility. You don't just get a 4-bars loop of a genre specific musical sequence / drum pattern, but an entire arrangement seperated into it's individual elements. Usually these "construction kits" are similar to an EP or album release, just that for every song you get access to all the individual tracks.

Most construction kits also contain the MIDI. So if you like the drumbeat of one song, you can only use that specific element and play your own melody on top or add the melody from another composition etc.

I think they can be a great shortcut if you are an intermediate musician (as opposed to total beginner), but don't yet have access to a bunch of session musicians of a specific genre you like. Especially those construction kits produced by seasoned musicians / producers can be valuable, because usually they understand the needs of their specific genre and they tend to use real instruments, not VSTs or sample libraries in the creation process.

So they can provide very authentic source material, that otherwise would be very difficult to recreate and once you bought a license, you won't run into legal troubles further down the line (read the licensing conditions though). There are some construction kits I've heard that sound so great, that I would buy them for pure listening pleasure, but there are also some sub-par ones.


Here are examples of construction kits that I find quite valuable.

 

like everything in sense of human markets which growed for decades the amount of shit products grows tremendously and the real good stuff is hard to find for a not knowing new customers , its niche and sort of kept hidden for different reasons .

 

You find a place for it to "sit" in your arrangement. If you find it fits. Understanding at least the basics in chords/notes/scales helps a lot, because then you are able to identify what it is you are hearing and chop/re-arrange and/or re-pitch it to fit your needs. Like it or not digital sampling is more than 50 years old although only 40something commercially (Fairlight).
So, the majority of hiphop/rap music is based on two things. Drum machine beats and a loop from someone else's released music. Once you learn programming the beats and how to cut loops from other people's shit and incorporate them in your arrangements then you have the basic aspect covered. To my ears the best samplists are the ones who can sample something and manipulate it in such a way that even its original creator cannot tell it's theirs. For instance once you hear the Prodigy, you 'd probably think, oh that's some heavy synth usage. Errr nope. Prodigy's music is mostly sample based. Liam Howlett is a natural in this, he can make a slamming rocking big beat out of a smooth 70s funk/jazz track and noone will understand a thing. A very talented dude in YT remade Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up going for sample after sample and layering. That's a good example to let you see how it all comes together, although in the beginning you 'd probably think wtf. Here 14 years ago..shhh time flies.

Personally i love sampling, especially from vinyl, there's a certain vibe to it. Too many will argue why sample it when you can replay that lick... Sampling occurs when a certain music passage sounds so unique that once you recreate it, it just doesn't have the same vibe. So then sampling comes to save the day. When i use sampled parts, I always try to make sure that i make fair use of what i sample, that's why i always try to find a new musical identity for my samples and put them in a whole new context than what they were made into originally. For instance we all hear too many times Middle Eastern samples in major hiphop hits. There's a right place for everything you just gotta find it.
Cheers
PS: I hear Eminem's Whodini. So yeah by all means he's the best rapper alright but a loop from Steve Miller's AbraCadabra? This is so obvious it's eye and ear popping. And also annoying because it's done poorly. But don't mind me saying this, that's just the old fart in me hehe.

 

Last edited: Jun 27, 2024