Do "professional" producers use loops? What is your view on loops?

[kbridge]

As long as I've been producing my own music (if you can call it that), I've steered as far away from loops as possible - part of some moral issue I have within myself where I challenge myself to make a loop myself of the same quality so I can sleep at night knowing I haven't fully ripped someone else's work.

What is your standing on using loops in your productions, does it bother you?

Interested to know everyone's viewpoint on this one, quite an interesting topic to me.

[Patch]

There is no reason NOT to use loops. It's just an extension of taking samples from old records, except, "loops" are being presented as pre-created samples for you to use.

Do what ever you want. No-one really cares.

[Kwal]

No one can really tell you weather or not to use loops.... When it comes time to learning how to produce, or learning a new DAW, loops are your best friend. I feel that once you get a better understanding of production, you would maybe want to stay away from loops and just make everything yourself for creative purposes. If you plan on eventually sending out promos of your work, people who know what they are doing will recognize your loops instantly. I'm with Patch when he says do whatever you want, but the whole "no one really cares" thing doesn't fit here, because we all know that there are types out there that will and do care. Me, personally, I used loops when I started, but now my goal is to do everything from scratch. Makes it fun and challenging, plus you can really surprise yourself

[Superfreak]

Yes they do, whoever produced Rhianna's 'Umbrella' track, used a loop from Logic Pro, It's the 'vintage funk kit 03'. Take a listen to it.

https://soundcloud.com/the-garageban...it-03-umbrella

[grazz16]

What kind of loops are you talking about here? Percussion loops or melody loops? The answer to your question is "yes" they do on both fronts.

Imo percussion loops are fine. That kind of stuff won't make your tracks sound cookie cutter or anything like that because unless you are really paying attention to a ridiculous degree, no one can really tell what is going on there, especially if its been layered with other drum sounds.

Melody loops or pre-made MIDI loops, however, I think start to become a little shady. Now we are talking about definable aspects of the song you simply didn't write. That may be ok for genres like hip-hop where nearly everything about a song is sampled, but in the house world I think you need to strive to do better, especially if you are a producer just getting started and want to be taken seriously at all.

I mean the ultimate of this is the Steve Angelo example where he used like all Vengeance melody samples for that one song, and that was a hit. Thus proving that the general public has no idea any of this stuff even exists, nor do they care as long as it sounds good. So take that for what it's worth.

[ImNotDedYet]

You could always cut up the loops and play them in a different order, etc to make it less recognizable as well. Personally, I have no issue with using a sample or loop as a background part of the song, I love hearing familiar loops and samples that cause me to want to hear that song from 1989 again. But, I believe it has to be a very small, complimentary part of the song.

[PjAndreasson]

Loops is fine. Aslong as you don't build up a whole freaking track consisting of just loops. That would take away the fun of producing.

[Polygon]

Fort minor used a loop from garageband...

[Chrxstxxn]

This is just MY advice. Don't use loops. Sample from them. Like that snare? Take it.

[djchriswoods.co.uk]

sure drum machines and old hardware sequencers were essentially creating loops...