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. 

GREAT POST. SORRY FOR CAPS. ON CELL, IT GETS STUCK ON CAP LOCK.

I DONT USE 99.9% OF ANY OF THE SAMPLES THAT COME WITH SONAR. BUT THEN AGAIN IM JUST AN IGNORANT REDNECK THAT MAKES DUE WITH JUST A SNARE KICK HIHAT ON 99% OF MY TRACKS.

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've always been a fan of electronic music but do agree with you on the content that spills off every cover disc and freebie.  Even a lot of the paid stuff from the likes of PrimeLoops suffer the same.  You can take those one-shot  notes and map them into RomPlers of course, but you might as well create the sounds yourself.

I quite like some of the bassline loops - if only because they can often seed an idea, and drum loops are useful.  But I'd also like to see many more midi patterns, basslines, keyboard hooks etc.  Those can be edited, transposed and generally messed about with much more effectively.

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.

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

you get what you pay for me thinks.

Free loops have always been crapola

The stuff isn't free.

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

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?

slartabartfast


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 disagree that electronic music is a tragedy - like all genres, it has its unmitigated crap, and yes a lot of it IS repetitive. But I don't think there is anything tragic about electronic or repetitive per se....there is a lot of very creative, musical electro out there that is both harmonically and rhythmically inventive. I'm thinking of, over the years, artists like Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Clark etc. Take a listen to this Clark tune, even if it's not your kind of "sound" you cannot deny this is a guy with a lot of musical talent and the music definitely has a soul to it:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nq4M7QBxt4