Do “professional” producers use loops? What is your view on loops?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I’ve actually been wondering the same thing so I’m glad I came across this topic. I’m not a fan of using loops overall, mostly because I like to create everything myself however sometimes they’re nice to have around. Personally, I think that if you edit the sounds for your own personal preferance then nobody should really be able to fault one for using them.
I think loops/loop packs are a great way for beginners to understand all the different components of a song, especially remix stems. It’s funny that today there is such an emphasis on production for DJ’s if they want to really stand out or get noticed. Yet the advice usually starts and stops at: “you have to learn to produce, get a DAW, and just start messing around.”
I think more people should suggest loop packs for beginners and from there just start extremely small and basic. Take a song you like and maybe try out different drum loops from a loop pack. This is especially useful with remix stems. Take the original drums out of the mix and you can cleanly throw in your own drum loops, or just take the bass out and try adding in your own bass/bass loops. That’s what I mean by starting small. Don’t try to completely remix the whole thing, just start by switching one element of the track.
I agree lots of great party tunes are used taking loops. Many of the Hip Hop producers and many of the Drum and Bass producers take things directly, check out Shy FX’s new tune with Liam Bailey he’s just taken Lloyd Charmers’s “Hi Shan” and remade his version. Sounds nice!
My view has changed over time on the use of loops, the way I now see them is either to add “spice” to your loops, things such as shakers which will have a much more “live” feel than programming them yourself.
I also try not to use loops that I don’t think I could make myself.
The other use is to mash them up and warp/time stretch them so that they are barely recognisable as the original!
This is something that musicians and recording artists have done…forever. Mozart “sampled” Bach all the time. Fast forward to jazz. The way so many jazz greats learned how to play was to transcribe improvised solos of their favorite musicians, and then they’d find the little “licks” in those solos that really moved them and practiced the crap out of them until it became part of their own repertoire.
Everyone uses loops, every big producer uses loops.
There are many things you can do with loops, not just simply place the whole loop onto the track, but you can isolate individual sounds. For example, if you’re looking for a certain type of clap and can’t find it as an individual sample, maybe a certain loop contains the clap you’re looking for, so you can easily isolate that sound and simply sample it onto an individual track.
