If you dont know what loops are, they are audio samples. Sounds, drum beats, bass lines, etc. Pieces of sound, that can either be played once, or ‘looped’ through a song. Its the old practice of sampling from albums, taken to another level.
There are loop libraries made by some very famous musicians, and a whole horde of producers.
Ok now you know what they are, you are asking what are they for.
Well…you can use them to make your own songs, with nothing but loops. You can also use them to add touches to songs you have recorded. Since using them to add “color” to songs is common in music production, im not going to focus on that. Im going to talk about producing loop based songs.
The pro’s of making music based on loops:
First is that you dont need to learn all the instruments or hire people to record with. You do need to learn how to make them into something people will listen to, in essence the computer and your software becomes your instrument.
Second is comparative cost. You can buy loop collections for as little as 10 dollars, all the way up to a couple hundred for the superior quality collections. That may seem expensive; especially since there is a tendancy to collect loops, but compared to the cost of hiring musicians, its far cheaper.
Third is that it gives you a whole world of sounds, styles and effects to work with, right on your computer.
Now the con’s
Mainly the problem with loops is they are repetative. All the tricks in the world wont make up for the fact, that you cant really improve with loops the way a real musician can. With a little laerning, and some tricks you can fake it pretty well, but it still removes the wonderful human element, and the chance for happy accidents during jam sessions.
It can also become difficult; even impossible, to get the sound you want. You might have an amazing drum track lined up, you found a bass loop that is killer, you even found an awesome rhythm guitar loop that works. You spent hours cutting, pasting and tweaking it to get a realistic rock sound, and arrangement. Only one things missing, and its the one thing loops cant do. Give you lead guitar that matches everything else perfectly.
The same can be said of any genre of music.
So making songs with just loops is fun, its cheaper, it makes a great hobby and its got a pretty smooth learning curve, but not having any skill with an instrument, or musicians to work with limits what you can do.
I still would recommend using loops as a way to learn music production. Then you can increase the scope of your knowledge over time to include instruments, recording other people, and all the other fun stuff producers do.
Note: Buying Loops involves a license to use them for YOUR purposes. A person can NOT pass on this License. DO NOT BUY USED LOOP COLLECTIONS! The same goes for the Production Software. Buying used means you DO NOT have a legal license to use either, and you can be sued for stealing if your music starts making sells.
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