How mamy out here in the mixter comunnity agree with the title? I for one make all my beats. we all know that if you make all your own beats it takes some time, but then you can claim it as your own.

My thought is this: loops are a cheap way to creating music.
I am not saying that anybody that has used loops is lame at creating something beautiful cus then I would be stripping you of the title “producer”. but like me Im a on the part time music maker and I dont use loops, due once agian to the fact thats its a cheap way to making music.”any nods to my thought?”

I dont know if someone has said this already, but the soundfonts or sounds you fed into your midi arranger were created by someone.

At the end of the day while we’re still worrying about whether loops and samples should be respected as real music, someone is using those loops/samples to express him or herself and has reached many fans who get something from his/her music. Isnt that what matters the most?

It depends so much on the genre. For some types of music you really need the repetative loops.

I’m a looper, although I often create my own loops, or heavily tweak somebody elses. I believe that the way I use loops define my sound very much, and I don’t find that a negative thing at all.

Loops may be a cheap way to make music, but that doesn’t necessarily make the music built on loops cheap. (I think It takes me more time time adjusting the loops than creating sample patterns, but it’s quite hard to say as I haven’t gone with only samples for years.)

I don’t really see the issue as “loops v. samples”, as both terms are just ways of expressing stylized forms of manipulations of sound. I’m not opposed to simple ways to make music—but to me, originality is the most important thing, whether accomplished by making—and warping—loops or by sequencing samples.

I make all my own instruments by hand from scratch material I mine from the Earth. I’ll kill a cat (or possum if available) and cure its guts for guitar strings, I’ll smelt the metal for fittings on my home made piano, right down to fabricating the silicon for the computer I’m typing this on.

Anything less and you have no business calling yourself a musician.

superstar : )

so i guess these guys, guys like henry kaiser, are losers.

personally, i think your thread title is pretty short sighted and retarded. i’ve been playing original music twice as long as i’ve been remixing stuff, including loops. i really don’t see your point. songwriting requires much more than the resources needed to create the actual music, it requires a sense of arrangement, key, meter, and vision. what’s better, some chucklehead throwing together a bunch of stock loops without much effort or some mediocre “musician” who doesn’t perfect their technique playing something out of time, or singing out of key. you make your own loops? wonderful. how hard is it to record myself pounding my fist on the desk. not hard at all. how hard is it to do it well? probably more difficult than i care to find out.

a cheap way of making music? hell yes. and what a fine thing it is. all the great folks that have donated their “cheap” source here, i really want to say thanks!

because frankly, i’m cheap. really cheap. free even.

Just to add my 2 cents.
I make music for me, & for the simple joy of it. Sometimes i use samples and sometimes i don’t. I’ve been making beats for many years, but i can’t always create a certain feel that i may want. By looping a sample and adding my touch to it does not make my mix any cheaper. I believe that i’ve added more or maybe improved on the original.
It is my belief that if you add or enhance, you also create. I could be wrong, i’ve been wrong about more than a few things in my 47 plus years on this planet. ( I thought Milli Vanilli would be around for years and make great music, boy was i wrong )
Bottom line…..who cares… make music with loops or no loops, just have fun doing it. I’m sure you all have more important things to worry about. I’m more worried about my Secret Mixter mix.

Music does not know any kinds of limitations. There are no borders, this is not a sport game.

You have rights to state your personal opinion, its fine. Seems we do like different things, because i love Roni Size, i like listen to FatBoy and Thievery Corp. and many many other artists who use to give to shape thier music thx to the loops. I would never call em losers, rather the superstars, everything depends on your personal taste.

I played bass and sang in a live band before going near electronic-based stuff. When I did take the digital plunge, I used to get all bent out of shape about unoriginality; all i had to make noise with was my 4-track, M1, EZVision and my Mac LC.

I don’t remember off-hand how many drumkits there were on the M1, but the variety was not exactly endless, and back in the early 90’s, every friggin’ commercial, TV show (seinfeld, anyone?) or cheap movie soundtrack used the M1 for EVERYTHING, the way DX-7’s were everywhere before that. I can ALWAYS pick out M1 sounds on a track (Freddy Mercury used the M1 quite a lot on Queen’s last album).

I digress… I grew to HATE the M1’s drumkits for being un-punchy and obvious, for being so “M1-y”. I found myself pitch-bending the kits an octave up or down, using extreme FX settings, anything to get it to sound different. I hated the idea of someone listening to my track and thinking, “Oh. M1.”
I got so caught up in trying to sound different, i was neglecting what i was trying to say musically in the first place.

Going out with a field mic to the remotest corners of the world, in order to build a sound library no one else has, is all well and good, but what do you make with it? Sheer sonic novelty can only carry a listener’s intrest so far, just as slick production can’t hide a poverty of musical ideas (insert K-Fed joke here).

Everyone is at different places in their creation of music. Someone like, say, Loveshadow, who is very experienced and knowledgeable about music theory, arrangement, engineering, and mastering, could probably go through my page and carpetbomb my tracks with point-by-point critiques about everything that’s wrong with them in those four areas, if he wanted to (I hope not, even if I learned something from it), AS LONG AS MY INTENT WAS CLEAR.

But unless my track’s description was wayyy off (like earnestly calling “Oh Lord” a frenzied blend of Western swing/speedmetal disco) he can’t sit there and write “beautifully executed, but your idea behind this remix sucks.”

I like to think i’m pretty eclectic when it comes to taste/genre, but there’s stuff i either haven’t to enough of to have an informed opinion, or i’ve heard so much of it i’m burnt out on it, and can’t be objective any more.
Yes, sampled loops can be tired and lazy; there was a point where i wanted deeply to find and flay the next jerk who regurgitated another track using either the drum intro to “When the Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin, or “Ashley’s Roachclip” by the Soul Searchers. But to me, it’s all music- I have to understand the INTENT of the artist before I’m gonna get all up in their grill about what i don’t care for.
Shutting up now.(hops off soapbox)
-END RANT-

all music is made of varied loops, live instruments or not. so it’s should be more like

Lazy Artist = Loser
Creative and Productive = Superstar

look at moby for instance, nothing but loop’s layered and layered, and yet.. superstar…..

just a thought…

I just had a thought, Fourstones one and only review he has ever left me was a mix I did using clarences vocals, now that was the only mix I ever loaded onto cc mixter that I used all loops from someone who created them and sold them, which I did buy, now my point is that Fourstones had felt never the urge to type out something about my other stuff in fact in his review he even stated something along the lines that ” now this is good” meaning the rest of my tracks was garbage or lacked appeal, My Main point its I want to get to the point to where everything I make cause’s that same reaction to people. “DAng this is HOtt” Ive since tookn the track down, because although it was allright, it was not really me.

Music is always going to be derived from an already derived source. If people choose to pull it directly from source, mix and morph it into a beautiful new track. Then I am all for it.

Other people’s music is my Instrument. Call me what you want. I won’t stop :)

Remixing is like admitting you got it wrong first time. Lets ban all sampling and looping.

Kidding of course :P
My view on sampling and looping, is that i do both, as well as using real instruments and virtual instruments. Where a guitarist can make a pretty song, I can bend sound and make it sound literally any way i want. If I take a recorded guitar part, reverse it, chop it up and effects process it, then loop it over a drum loop and another guitar loop, does that make me a loser? Or does it mean that ive in fact done more musically than the guitarist that played the original loop?

I’d opt for the latter. However, I don’t do any loop only based work, so i’m safe ;)