Hi to all---This is my first post. I have been a Music Creator fan for the last 10 years or so---started in MC3 moved to MC5 and finally, about 2 years ago to MC6. As I made the progression, I've updated my equipment to a point that I now have, what I consider, to be a fairly nice studio. I have been working quite a bit lately, with MIDI, soft synths, and VST's, and I find them to be incredible. I am very excited about working in the Loop Construction section of MC6---it does some pretty amazing things! To anyone who hasn't tried it----give it a go. I'm curious if anyone knows of a good program of Country/Folk .wav loops, that work with the program---I've looked at some of the"FREE-WARE" loops, but they seem to come with alot of baggage.
With regard to the post of mjbloomfield---I sometimes use a program called "MUSESCORE"---it's freeware on the web, and it is quite comprehensive for composing music from "scratch". I'm sure you would find it useful in your work.
Over the years, I have been helped through the "Cakewalk haze" by many of you, (Beagle, Guitarhacker, Gregy57, Robo, et al) I would like to say thank you, for all of your dedicated work, and I, for one really appreciate what you do. Keep up the good work!
Thanks---Pigwart12
MC6,Vista,Cakewalk/Roland UA25EX,Behringer Europower PSP1000,CasioWK110,Roland E5 synthAlesis M1 Active 320 studio monitors, Shure 58's 

Loops, by their very nature are best used with electronica and hip hop styles of music.
 
For country and folk, I suggest real instruments and a mic.
 
There is always Song Smith from Microsoft for about $30 or Band in a Box from PG music for considerably more. They will work with samples that can produce some believable tracks. Many of my backing tracks in the songs I write and post and are on my website contain tracks created in BB. I play some keys, guitars, and mandolin, so beyond that, the tracks are all synth/sampled.

Hi Herb--Nice to finally meet you. I've followed your work on your site---I especially like your song "GOING HOME"---nicely done. I do try to do my own instruments, I play guitar, and I fumble through the "keys", mostly in real time, and my wife helps with mando and guitar. Sometimes, though, we need a little help. In one composition, we saw a place where a fiddle loop would have worked great, but calling somebody in for a 4 measure loop seemed ridiculous. The "synth" fiddle kinda leaves something to be desired, I think. Some of the acidized "loop" programs I've seen, are played by real session musicians. It almost seems like the way to go. I'll certainly look at what you suggested----thanks a lot. 

Welcome to the forum.
If you need any musicians, post a request in the Cakewlk Songs forum. There are many folks who enjoy contributing to other's songs. They may want to hear some of your work first, so a song link would be helpful to them to hear the kind of music you play.

57Gregy
Welcome to the forum.
If you need any musicians, post a request in the Cakewlk Songs forum. There are many folks who enjoy contributing to other's songs. They may want to hear some of your work first, so a song link would be helpful to them to hear the kind of music you play.

 
Excellent idea.... and yeah, I have contributed to a number of folk's music... sometimes directly and other times behind the scenes and I have a few folks there playing on a tune or two of mine as well.
 
We have a few "bands" there too where people collab across the net on a semi-regular basis.

Thanks---- to both of you, and I'll look at your ideas.

Pigwart,  Take a look at countrymusicloops.com.  They offer midi and audio loops at reasonable prices, are very customer focused, have free samples and many helpful pdf guides.  If you want to work with song kits as well as instrument loops, sonycreative.com/classiccountry is an inexpensive ($29 US) set to start with.  BigFishAudio.com offers multiple sets of country loops from different loop developers but most are more than $100 US and work with specific players such as Kontact.  As was stated earlier, PG Music's Band-In-A-Box can be used to create complete audio backing tracks for many music genres including country.  You can get BIAB for the same price or less than some of the loop libraries and have much more variety.

I would certainly recommend even the lowest version of Band in a Box over regular loops.  you can create an entire band to back you up using chord changes in a chart window and selecting styles and instruments.
 
basically what it does is piece together loops of those instruments, changes the pitch from the chord/key you're using and stretches them according to your time sig/tempo, then creates the backing tracks from those loops.

Beagle
I would certainly recommend even the lowest version of Band in a Box over regular loops.  you can create an entire band to back you up using chord changes in a chart window and selecting styles and instruments.
 
basically what it does is piece together loops of those instruments, changes the pitch from the chord/key you're using and stretches them according to your time sig/tempo, then creates the backing tracks from those loops.

BINGO!!!  yep... listen to my music. If it's not a guitar or a mandolin, or singing, it's all done with Band in a Box and it's sampled music loops.
 
The better the package from PG the better the tracks will sound..... but creativity is only limited by you.

Thanks to all three of you---Jim, Herb and Beagle---looks like some real sound(no pun intended), advise and I'll look at all of it--Keith
 
 
 
 
MC6, Vista 32-bit Dual Core,3GB HD,Cakewalk UA25ES,Behringer PSP1000, Roland E5 Synth, Casio WK110 Keys