My beefs with these free "loops and one shots" from the Content Club

Well first of all it's the genre. Don't get me wrong, I love electronic music, and in fact that is what I do most of all in Sonar. But even as someone who likes techno, I find it a little disappointing that the vast majority of these samples seem to geared toward the cheesy OMG DEEP DUB HOUSE NUSKOOL PROG DRUM & BASS OMG OMG crowd. In other words, if you're 18 and wear your cap sideways and "booyakasha" is in your everyday vocabulary then I'm sure there's lots to be going along with here. But come on, most of this is pretty cliched stuff. 

Some of the "one shots" are nothing more than one note of a pretty drab synth preset. What am I going to do with that? As it is, if you give me 500 synth presets to sift through, I'm going to reject 450 of them as unusable right off the bat. But one note of a preset? What am I going to do with that? 

And there are too many "all in one" type loops, where you have a beat along with a bassline. Not very versatile is it? Drum loops, yes. I can sometimes do something with those. I can chop them up and mix them up and do interesting things. But drum loops with bass lines and other melodic elements in them? I'm not really sure who these are aimed at. They have pretty limited use. 

What I'd like to see from the Content Club is more bare bones drum loops, and not just techno. Rock, jazz, folk, country, blues....there are some of us who would like to be creative with these types of music but who don't have access to a drummer or a full band. 

What I'd really like to see is MIDI drum patterns that I can use with Superior Drummer and other drum instruments. I'm sure most of us would get far more use out of 100 good MIDI drum loops than we would out of 2000 cheesy techno stabs. 

Apart from anything, going by the free Cakewalk content alone, anyone would think that techno is Sonar's largest user base. But from reading this forum that is quite clearly not the case. 

I do not loop. At least not while sober. And the only use I have for a one shot is a spring piston air rifle at 10 meters. To me the greatest tragedy of electronic music is that it is being used to make "electronic" music. From a couple of hundred classical instruments, we have gone to a virtually unlimited sound palette in less than a generation, and most of the use of this new virtual orchestra has gone to connecting bleep-bloops into inanely monotonous phrases. I have to hold my nose to use samples, (aside from putting good musicians out of work what is the point?) and now someone is going to give me free loops. Whoopee.

I have to agree.  there's nothing for me here.  these are not the content I'm looking for.  move along.

Free loops have always been crapola

mike_mccue


The stuff isn't free.

It's costing Cakewalk a lot in terms of credibility.

Like the way a noose is a type of loop, ya?

Wood67


The one other thing I would like though would be a lot more vocal samples.  I am not allowed to sing for fear of causing permanent damage to anyone who hears it so spend quite a bit of time trawling for A Capella files which I can cut up.

Yes to vocal samples! Even if it's just a few "oo's" and "ah's" to add texture to an otherwise instrumental track. Another thing I'd like to see, but you never do, is acoustic guitar. Would it kill them to piece together some tasty strumming or fingerpicking loops? I'm not just having a go at the creators of this particular content....look at packages like NI's Komplete Ultimate too. They'll find the space for African drums and Balinese percussion instruments, but nothing in the way of acoustic or electric guitar licks which are REALLY going to be useful to a producer (unless you count their "Scarbee funk guitar"  which isn't really that hot). 

I like samples and loops for spice. The hardest thing about loops is finding something that works.
The Cakewalk freebie thing reminds me of stuff I had back in the 90s.

 Some songs I play and never use any loops at all and others I use loops on. The metadata or finding the right catagories can sometimes waste a lot of time. There are some categories under specialty titles like loopmasters but by and large the loop classifications are  splintered. It would be nice if all of the drums were simply under a title called drums,no matter who made the loops. Same for bass, synth and so forth.

 The loops themselves do seem centric to that crowd but I have found some useful loops in there I could use. The beatz crowd has mostly built a genre on only loops so I guess it makes sense that there would be more loops catering to them. I have a few small collections of outboard loops I occasionally use that are made more for the typical structured pop/rock song.

 The largest problem I usually have with loops is that they seldom if ever fit with my scratch ideas unless I allow myself to change my song to fit the loops instead of the other way around. In that case the feel of the tune is usually lost. I know we can change tempos and keys but sometimes it still isn't a fit.

sharke
 

What I'd like to see from the Content Club is more bare bones drum loops, and not just techno. Rock, jazz, folk, country, blues....there are some of us who would like to be creative with these types of music but who don't have access to a drummer or a full band. 

What I'd really like to see is MIDI drum patterns that I can use with Superior Drummer and other drum instruments. I'm sure most of us would get far more use out of 100 good MIDI drum loops than we would out of 2000 cheesy techno stabs.  

 
Well said, a big +1 from me on that ^^^^
 
 

Drumloops, never going to be one that follows the bass idea I have in my head, so I'm going to spend hours cutting up a loop so it can fit my bass and still have it sound bad? 5 minutes later I'm done just recording my drums using a kontakt drum library or some other well articulated drum library. Sure I could accumulate thousands of loops to have a chance to find one that fit my idea, still going to take longer to find one that fits, instead of just recording it in a couple minutes.

One shot samples? They are never ever multi sampled across a velocity range with round robins so I can map them out myself, shotgun city.. useless.

Some worms at risk of escaping the can here methinks.

You might equally argue that every progression of C,F,G (or A,D,E for guitar players) falls into the same category of fake, as 12-bar blues are essentially all re-arrangements.  I would argue that William Orbit has applied musicianship to some of the arrangements he has done in the 'Pieces' series, while Tomita copied the entire Planets suite, and aside from adding some robot countdown at the start of Mars, he left the original instrumentation largely untouched.  In fact, that album was a significant factor in getting me to 'borrow' my schools mini Moog from the music school for extended periods of time!

There's clearly a line here that is not set at the same point for everyone, and I do admire those who can genuinely make new or different out of an existing arrangement, whether that uses loops, samples or new instrumentation.  My credit goes to anyone who can conjour something creative that was not there before.

I haven't been to a club for probably 20+ years, but sometimes I really enjoy listening to extended dance mixes, particularly the euphoria styles.  Something about sequenced 16th notes and loops has always appealed to me since TD's Phaedra, and then Moroder's disco patterns.

if it's free, but boring, what's the point?

Wood67


Some worms at risk of escaping the can here methinks.

You might equally argue that every progression of C,F,G (or A,D,E for guitar players) falls into the same category of fake, as 12-bar blues are essentially all re-arrangements.  I would argue that William Orbit has applied musicianship to some of the arrangements he has done in the 'Pieces' series, while Tomita copied the entire Planets suite, and aside from adding some robot countdown at the start of Mars, he left the original instrumentation largely untouched.  In fact, that album was a significant factor in getting me to 'borrow' my schools mini Moog from the music school for extended periods of time!

There's clearly a line here that is not set at the same point for everyone, and I do admire those who can genuinely make new or different out of an existing arrangement, whether that uses loops, samples or new instrumentation.  My credit goes to anyone who can conjour something creative that was not there before.

I haven't been to a club for probably 20+ years, but sometimes I really enjoy listening to extended dance mixes, particularly the euphoria styles.  Something about sequenced 16th notes and loops has always appealed to me since TD's Phaedra, and then Moroder's disco patterns.

^^^^This


Using loops falls into the category of "arranging" and it's still all music. You cannot create great music from loops unless you have a musical ear. And the musical ear is, after all, a huge part of what being a musician is all about. Who is the better musician:


1) Someone who cannot play a musical instrument but who has good musical judgment and can pull together a number of loops and samples from different sources and arrange them into a great sounding tune that didn't exist before
2) Someone who can play Flight Of The Bumblebee on guitar at 600BPM but who can't write for toffee? 

2) Someone who can play Flight Of The Bumblebee on guitar at 600BPM but who can't write for toffee?

sharke

That be true.  Which reminds me (and advance apologies for any fans), I worked a session for a few days with Yngwie Malmsteen.  Now there was a man who could indeed play Bumblebee at near 600BPM.  And for my money it sounded terrible.  Technically impressive yes, but musically drab.
 
I ended up recording about 15 minutes of him warming up and playing scales.  Then I burned it to cassette and took it home to my flat.  I had a neighbour who was just learning to play the guitar, and knew I was an engineer in the 'business' so was always asking the 'Who are you working with today?' questions.  I put the tape on super loud while he was in, and never heard him play again.  In the context of this thread that was probably a terrible thing to do and now I feel guilty!

Different strokes for different folks.  Loops are just another tool in the toolbox to me.  And the more tools the better.  No one says you have to use 'em.  Isn't music about producing a "pleasing" sound?  (A treat for the ears.)  Kinda like a great picture is a treat for the eyes.

I can make a pleasing sound utilizing loops in my creation in much the same way I can make a pleasing sound with my guitar.  And lord knows I can make some terrible sounding crap with my guitar as well!!!!   LOL....  not music at all!

Some people like chocolate, some like vanilla....  So what if a fellow creates something pleasing using loops.... I'd rather see him attempting something musical and creative than say, throwing a baseball 97mph.  (just using that as an example...)

Peace, out.