Do you ever feel guilty when making simple loops?

[Les Braun]

Do you guys also feel guilty when you loop a part of a track without really chopping and rearranging? It makes me feel like I'm really stealing.
I really don't take as much time to see if I can rearrange a part of a song, probably because it takes too much time to spread it out on numerous pads...I think I might get a sampler where you can press the pads while recording and the samples are spread equally to each pad and shit(do you call those velocity pads?). What samplers have that feature?

[nyquest]

yeah man . . the basis for a track i started on yesterday, and am almost close to finishing, is based off a 2bar unedited loop..

its pretty plain though really, just simple strings... I do feel I owe alot to the record though, because it really makes the 'atmosphere' of the track..


I think as samplers, it's just important for us to recognize and respect the records - its like.. I dunno. . Pokemon or something... pokemon trainers are nothing without their pocket monsters.

Or maybe like, the ingredients of a sacred medicine - we're the ones brewing it, but its the plant-spirits we have to thank for the powers.

Obviously if your loop contains like drums, bass, guitar, and vocals.. then maybe you're pushing the boundary a bit, unless you really flip it.

[tape smoke]

if i listen to a song a few times and really connect to it, i feel guilty if i chop it up. when i connect to an old track I feel it is my right to use it regardless if someone else has. I been chopping alot more latley, but i'll still use the straight up loops in the song. I almost forgot about chopping, there was a phase i went thru where i was striclty 1 hit chops no loops ever, but things change. My favorite stuff is the records that are too complex to sample or there is just way to much, then i just listen to the record .

[hurlingdervish]

i try to make sure i keep the feel while making it unrecognizable. i think the 80's and 90's were like the "frontiersman" times of sampling where you could just base your songs off of really cool "found" loops off records, but nowadays with all the technology and effects and slicing i think it should be a little more effort involved.

not to mention playing instruments or other samples on top to disguise it even more. but there are times where the loop takes control and theres really nothing you can do about it

[tape smoke]

synth over top sample is so dope. i miss my mc 505. i'll get it back soon though. i use to play some 505 over every sample beat , now i just use bass .

[fauna]

i know whatcha mean, for sure.

but i have some stuff that's all hacked and chopped to hell and other stuff that's just built over a nice wee loop. i sort of figger that sometimes the simplest route is the most direct. i have stuff that goes in all sorts of directions, but one loop remains constant thru the whole piece.

howevs, as mentioned above ^^ i don't fink you can feel super great about yr productions skills if the ONLY thing yr doing is stringing together full loops containing drums, bass, keys, horns, etc. as someone once said "i wanna build MY song, not rebuild some other man's song."

but i don't feel like there are hard n' fast roools on this stuff.

[tape smoke]

sometimes i record a whole song and slap it on soundclick ,

and on the copyright, i put i wrote this and take lots of pride in my work .

[Chuck]

Nope. Some of my most favorite songs/beats are just straight loops with drums over the original.

[hurlingdervish]

i sampled my friend getting slapped in the face, and felt bad about that. just kidding... but that would actually be a funny song. "slap de la face"

[Les Braun]

The thing is, I showed my latest beat to a friend of mine, and he asked to hear the original sample...then he just said that the only thing I pretty much did was add drums to it, and...he was right, pretty much. Anyone can add drums to a sample... it's finding the awesome samples and chopping them that seperates the good producers from the...decent.

[hurlingdervish]

The thing is, I showed my latest beat to a friend of mine, and he asked to hear the original sample...then he just said that the only thing I pretty much did was add drums to it, and...he was right, pretty much. Anyone can add drums to a sample... it's finding the awesome samples and chopping them that seperates the good producers from the...decent.

yea same reason i dont use presets, the feedback i got was pretty much the same, "so you really didnt do anything..." but then again its all about fun

so DO WHATEVER.

maybe just let the song play and record yourself saying "this is the remix"

[nyquest]

i think people are too worried about 'making it all themselves' ...
do you really think you're gonna come up with a sound that's never been used before in these times?

The complete pallette of possible sounds has been available since the advent of the personal computer.. so its all been milked for decades.

As much as I believe creativity is something special. I think people are fooling themselves if they think their sounds are new and innovative anymore.

Sure maybe a sound has never been pressed to a record and become popular, but someone has made it before you. I bet if you collected every user made synth patch off every synth on the planet, you would find that every possible sound already existed.

Nobody creates anything new anymore... Dont let that be depressing though,
you still have your own journey to make through music, because you've never heard 99.9999% of whats out there.

[hurlingdervish]

The complete pallette of possible sounds has been available since the advent of the personal computer.. so its all been milked for decades.

definitely not true. maybe the basic square wave and boom bap boom bap yes, but theres so much you can do with routing, resampling, and looping it really shouldnt be underestimated

i keep hearing new sounds out of resampling synths, and more innovations keep coming .

heres a good example in another field:
fractals are based off of a fairly simple equation, just repeated into infinity, a luxury we could not afford before powerful computers.
many of the programs and samplers and synths we have today were not even possible to dream about 10 years ago and it would be a HUGE assumption to say that more advances are not coming. while phasers, filters, pitch shifters, oscillators have all been around for a while the way they interact with eachother has changed drastically. look at your sp, all the effects you need in the palm of your hand. you may take that for granted but it used to fill up a whole studio. so the sounds may be similar but the bar gets raised because of ease of use.

do you really think aphex twin was possible in the 80's? or flying lotus? or madlib? maybe so but the effort involved would be mindblowingly ridiculous

[hurlingdervish]

i cant find it right now but there is a great tesla quote

he says that the greater our discovery the greater the illusion that there is nothing left to discover. but in fact it is just the opposite, by combining each discovery you open up a new world that opens up a new world etc...

[nyquest]

a recording of music can be represented digitally as a string of values.

bitrate/samplerate.

beyond a certain bitrate/samplerate, it becomes impossible for a human to discern the difference between that and higher qualities.

Which string of numbers is not possible to produce on a computer?
None of them... a computer can produce 16, 5, 2, 8 just as easily as it can produce 6,8,5,7

Every sound that we can envisage can be produced using a computer.

There is no more invention required to unlock more possibilities.

Someone could start a number-string-generating program at '0' and make every combination of values that took up say, 5 minutes of time at a samplerate of 44.1khz.

Wouldnt take tooo long on a reasonable supercomputer. You'd have every piece of music ever invented that went for 5 minutes or less included in with all the other possibilities of 5 minutes of sound..