Loops vs. Samples vs. "The Real Thing"

[abacomedia]

Loops, Samples or the 'Real Thing' - Production Tools Compared

In today's electronic music production, the use of loops and sample libraries has become commonplace. There aren't many songs on the radio right now that don't use at least one of the two. The advantage of loops and samples is obvious. Both allow you to 'play' an instrument that you don't actually need to own or even have in your posession. Loops and Samples allow you to introduce hard to find Vintage Synthesizer sounds to your composition or even exotic Temple Gongs or Shakuhachi Flutes. Most producers will have a hard time to find the 'real thing' when it comes to exotic instruments like a Shakuhachi so In this comparison, we focus mainly on Synthesizer and Keyboard Sounds. Analog Synths are commonplace in today's music. The question is, when to use loops, when to use samples, and when to use the 'real thing'?

Music Loops, Acid Loops, Apple Loops and others
Obviously, using loops in your musical composition doesn't require much musical skill. You don't need to have to much knowledge about notes, keys or even paying technique to create a decent sounding musical piece. You do however still need to have a 'musical ear'. If you are totally tone deaf or have no sense of rhythm, you won't be able to create something really good even with pre-produced loops. There are quite a few good loop based production tools out there like Acid for the PC (this one is even being available as a totally free version) and Garageband for the Apple Computer having a very affordable price of $49. There are also more professional pieces of music creation software like Logic Pro and Cubase that allow you to use loops as well as record in live instruments or Virtual Instruments and Synths including virtual samplers. The nice thing about pre-recorded loops is that you have an enormous selection of loops CDs to choose from. You can find loops containing exotic instruments, you can find hot guitar licks, classic synths, even entire Symphonic Orchestras. You can get a good cross section of Loops CDs at http://www.acidmusicloops.com Unlike other loops producer's products, all of their loops CDs contain loops in both PC and Apple format. Of course there are many other sites that offer music loops CDs for either the PC and Acid or the Mac and Garageband. Loops CDs are a good way to widen your music horizon even if you are a good musician already. You may be an awesome keyboard player but not that good on guitar. Just get a few good Guitar Loops CDs, problem solved! Overall, we gave Music Loops a 10 for selection as you can find the largest variety of instruments and playing styles on Loops CDs. Anything from Electric Rock Guitars to Reggae Horns, Indonesian Gamelang to Classic Moog Bass sounds.

Here is the score card for Music Loops CDs:
Available Selection - 10
Ease of Use - 9
Sounds 'Real' - 9
Flexibility - 7

Sample Libraries, WAV Samples, SoundFonts and more
Once you have access to a sampler, whether it be a hardware sampling keyboard like the new Workstation keyboards from Korg, Yamaha or Roland or a virtual (software) sampler, you can expand your musical horizon by using samples. No longer are you limited to the musical notes played by somebody else on a Music Loop but you can create your own lead lines, chords, riffs and more by using a sampler. Of course, you need to be able to 'play music' to use samples. All a sample library will do for you is make a particular sound that you want to use available to play on your keyboard. You need to do the playing. Through the magic of sampling, you can play all kinds of exotic and rare (and mostly expensive) instruments without having to own them. It can take hours to create a good sounding unique patch on an analog synth but with a good sample library, the programming work has been done for you already. You just pick and choose the sound you like and you are ready to play. When it comes to classic synthesizer sounds, this is quite an advantage since none of the old synths had any way to store programs once you made them. You turn the synth off, your hard programming work is gone. You can find a good selection of Classic Synth, Vocoder and Keyboard Samples at http://www.samplingsounds.com They also have a handy comparison chart that shows you which sample format to use with different hardware or software samplers. Overall, we gave digital sample libraries a 6 for 'realistic sounds' as some of the nuances of the real instruments may get lost when reproducing them with a sampler. For instance, an electric lead guitar or saxophone never sounds very realistic when played on a sampler. Music Loops or the 'Real Thing' are strongly recommended when it comes to guitar and most horn sounds. Other instruments sample just about perfectly and will sound just like the real thing when played back on a sampler.

Here is the score card for Digital Samples:
Available Selection - 8
Sounds 'Real' - 6
Ease of Use - 6
Flexibility - 8

The Real Thing - Classic Synths, Keyboards etc.

Even though it may not be practical for most people, if you use the 'real thing', a classic keyboard rather than a digital 'copy' in form of a music loop or sample library, you have the most flexibility. You can play exactly what you want in your own playing style and you can program your Synth to sound exactly the way you want it to sound. On the minus side, you will a) need to know how to play b) need to know how to program c) need to get access to a vintage synth and d) watch out for tuning problems. A lot of classic synths and keyboards do not stay in tune very well so they need frequent adjusting. On the positive side, analog synths and keyboards respond very differently to your actual playing style and some of the nuances that you get by playing the 'real thing' or a music loop made with the 'real thing' may get lost when using digital samples of the same keyboard in a sampler. That's why only 'real thing' got a 10 for 'sounding real'. We had to give it a 4 for availability as Classic Keyboards are harder and harder to find at a 'realistic' price and in good playing condition.

Here is the score card for Real Classic 'Analog' Keyboards
Available Selection - 4
Sounds 'Real' - 10
Ease of Use - 4
Flexibility - 10

To sum it up: What to choose has a lot to do with your level of playing ability. Music Loops CDs come out the winner overall because of the large selection and ease of use but for a 'real musician' I guess nothing will ever beat the 'real thing' For the rest of us, Music Loops and Digital Samples are a great way to expand our musical universe.

Alan Steward
Producer and Sound Designer - http://www.musicleads.net
Worked with Grammy winning artists like the Temptations and the Baha Men

[Kassen]

[Blue Hell]

Welcom Alen, to EM.

That's a lot of text for a new member :-)

This could be a good introduction to the subject I guess, although the text has plenty of room for discussion.

[abacomedia]

Groeten van de USA - Alan

- Always the same Ones -

Quite correct. Especially in Techno and Dance Music, a certain sample catches on and you hear it over and over. There's something to be said for discovering something new and to NOT buy the same loops and samples everybody uses. There are a lot of samples and loops out that are not over-used and there are a lot of smaller companies that make loops that are not already on every record.

- Lots of Material - Room for Discussion -

Absolutely right too. This is a discussion starter on the use of samples, loops etc. The post was more of a basic primer on what to use and when. My advice, never rule out any of the options. No matter how good a player you are, somebody may have put a loop together that sounds so different from how you play that you can't possibly pass up on using that to get the right feel for your musical piece.

[Kassen]

Cool.

I kinda like sampling. I used to hang out with Amiga trackers and cought on their ear for details, sinippets, suitable for recontextualising. Usefull, fun skill but I hardly finish any tracks containing samples anymore. I mainly like it for it's conotations and the way of listening. I'd never buy samples.

To be honest; I wondered about your post for quite a while before posting a small provocation. You see; i wasn't quite sure wether you might like to sell something, convince or start a debate. I'm quite happy with how the truth turns out.

So; I'd like to know; why did you leave out modern digital synths as emulations? How do you look at the loops stored in grooveboxes? If I buy a sample cd and a loops is "not quite there" then it's a different matter from a groovebox preset that's "not quite there"; How do you see those in comparison?

Nice topic for debate.

[abacomedia]

So; I'd like to know; why did you leave out modern digital synths as emulations? How do you look at the loops stored in grooveboxes? If I buy a sample cd and a loops is "not quite there" then it's a different matter from a groovebox preset that's "not quite there"; How do you see those in comparison?
______________________

Yes, indeed, I left both of those out. That would have made the post even longer. The new breed of Analog Synths like the Nord Lead etc. are excellent and if it's analog sounds you are after and you have the pocket book to match, they are great. Pretty much 'the real thing' with none of the disadvantages excelt for the price tag maybe. Then there are also Virtual (Software Synths) which do a great job and pretty much fall under the 'real thing' category with no heavy price tags (most of them) but you do have to have a host application like Cubase, Logic And then there are the Groove Boxes with lots of flexibility but also not cheap.
So yes, there's a lot more out there than the three options I concentrated on. I was trying to concentrate more on the Samples vs. Loops issue as both of them have very distinct advantages and disadvantages.

[mosc]

Welcome to electro-music.com, Alan. We are virtually neighbors. I hope to can meet in person in the near future.

I don't care for loops. Well, I should say more accurately, I don't care how loops are so overused these days. They can indeed be used to make beautiful music, but far too often they are used for mindless boring dribble.

I can see from your website they you are providing loops and samples so I assume you might be quite good a looping. I'd like to hear some of your music.

There is an old adage I learned years ago about music composition, Always twice, never trice. This is generally great advice, IMHO. I wish loopers were sensitive to this. I think this applies in some ways to the use for reverb and delay. At first hearing, these effects are quite intriguing and fascinating to the ear, but they soon become predictable and trite.

[Kassen]

Interesting points there, the two of you.

I think my additude towards modern synths and grooveboxes as mostly the same, at least in comparision to sample libraries. Yes; hardware has it's price (and so do softsynths!) but I always saw synths as a tool; something you buy once, then have at your disposal forever and libraries more as a finite resource that would once be used up. That last thing never alealed to me that much.

I won't contest that libraries are a very quick and effective way of getting to the stage of a finished track. That's good, I think; that's what many people want. Many people want to have finished good tracks so they can go to the club in whatever form and get praise and atention (let's be honest; this happens a lot).

However, libraries, to me, take a stage out of the process of getting to that stage and this is a process I myself am fond of and often value more then the result.

Of cource that doesn't apply to everybody; some people use libray-loops as real instruments, as a starting point much like a oscilator and come up with end results that have about as much to do with the starting point as a good synth sound has with the oscilators it's based on.

To adress Mosc's thought; I think the use "loops" here is unfortunate since it has so many meanings. Compositionally a lot of music is based on loops, great blues tracks are often just one loop (notes wise) that get played with minor variations for as long as it takes to sing or recite the lyrics. Those would get a lot less hypnotic and interesting if the "always twice never thrice" rule was observed there (of cource they'd also suffer if the basist would only play the frase once, then have Live on a laptop deal with is so he could smoke!). I drifted between extremes there; for a while I worked largely sample-based and would cut and edit every measure seperately, never repeating the exact same material anywhere. I also did tracks that were nearly all repition with slow morphs, enchanted with the psychological effect of repitition on the way the material was preceived. Currently I'm quite facinated by making repeated material apear differently by varying what it's contrasted against.

It struck me that people writing loops for libraries muct regard these topics in a way nearly oposed to (or at least in compliment of) the people that buy them. In a way they are making electronic music a colaboration again instead of a solitary persuit but this time without real contact between the colaborators. Interesting.

[Done Studio]

I am new here also but just my 2 cents and btw - what a great site with some really great info - (you can never learn enough!)

What I have found is this: People who don't use loops sometimes not always though look at disdain at people who do. I use loops and "real stuff" together. However without loops I could not even get the string quartet I need for a piece even using soundfonts etc. Loops also give me an ambience or background I am trying to achieve, leaving the rest for me to experiment with.

The beauty also is that with any loop I can make subtle changes to the loop by using ACID, Sound Forge,etc to change the original loop into my own creation. I did that with a lot of acoustical pieces to give the piece a unique flavor. In fact 9 out of 10 musicians did not know that the piece I composed was not someone playing classical guitar and that was using Acid loops.

The other key that people forget is that all that sound has to be mixed and engineered and recorded. That is where it can get really fun, because I use some simple techniques with Acid so to speak - ie: no effects, set up my busses, vary the volume where I need it, make sure nothing goes into the red zone (The thing I hate with digital is you cannot overboost your db meter like you can analog - that is one of the advantages I miss with analog for a richer sound).

Then I will run the file through Sound Forge for the final mix. I hate using equalization, since everyone has a Bass/Treble control on their stereos etc. I use a tad of reverb to expand the sound and only use compression on wave files. Why recompress a compression? This way I get the sound not only what i want but I hope the listener can appreciate as well.

I look at it like being a gourmet chef...too little of anything is bland, and too much is way over powering, it is finding the right balance and that is why I figure even using loops and stuff still qualifies the user as a musician or at least a very talented individual. My hat's off too for all that cam make music either with your hands and instruments or minds and the technology we have today. Either way it takes imagination.

[deknow]

[periurban]

It seems the OP is predicated on the idea that you need to purchase soemthing that someone else has made in some way.

What about playing real instruments and making loops and samples of them? That way you have the best of all worlds.

I'm not a violin player, but with my battered old violin I can scratch out enough notes to construct an "authentic" string arrangement, then I sample the best performances and loop them. If I need to play something more complicated, that my arthritic old fingers won't do, I make a sample, or I use a plug in.

Electro musicians can use any of the techniques described in this thread, in any combination, and shouldn't need marks out of ten to figure out when they are appropriate.