Could someone please explain anti-loop snobbery?2005-02-06T20:09:39+00:00I am curious, because making drum loops is just about the only musical activity of mine that has any contemporary relevance.
I have two bands, one grungy, one jammy, both horribly out of date.
I write semi-classical music, prog-metal, and weird polyrhythic stuff. All have been received with admiration ("wow,that's cool...") without enthusiasm ("...but it really isn't my kind of thing.")
I'm not bitching. I have fun, I can make my floors shake, and sometimes one of my bands even draws a crowd. But I don't want to become a dinosaur either.
And so, in an effort to preserve myself while staying relevant, I have taken to making live drum loops. This isn't high art, but it makes me feel more connected somehow. Plus, finding a 2 second chunk of music that repeats well is more of a challenge than I had thought.
But now I am finding that those who use drum loops are treated with contempt by those who don't. Kind of like cover bands are regarded by original bands.
And I really don't understand. I mean, songwriters rarely write drum parts. In most bands, the drummer writes his or her own part. And they are not even given songwriting credits!!
But in electronica, you are supposed to write everything, lest you suffer the contempt of your peers. Why? What if a song sounds better with a live drum loop than a sequenced one? Do you spend hours trying to duplicate the live loop with a sampler? If so, again, why?
I am just curious. I am not from the culture of electronica, and your world is new to me. I am just trying to understand it.
Thanks :) 8) :wink:herodotushttps://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=50907
For my latest track I used all kinds of synths on my disposal, as well as presets, samples and loops. Everything goes, everything is allowed. Using loops (or samples) is just another kind of workflow. In some genres, such as techno or D'n'B, it's all about slicing and mangling loops indefinitelly.
The more techniques you know, the better track you can make. Making music with guitarist + singer is kind of repetitive, in fact. In modern productions you can find all kinds of effects and synths that make them stand out from a millions of similiar songs made.
Last edited by DJ Warmonger on Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
Blog ------------- YouTube channel Tricky-Loops wrote: (...)someone like Armin van Buuren who claims to make a track in half an hour and all his songs sound somewhat boring(...)
A very good friend of mine starting getting into loops and suddenly all his music turned into ow-grade muzak. He'd have a good idea, then to speed it along he'd lay in a few loops and instantly: Blam! Same old tired crap that you hear everywhere. Loops are a guarantee that you'll create unoriginal rubbish.
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Discontinue use if rash or irritation develops.
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.
The most interesting music falls in the grey area between predictability and unpredictability.
Loops can enduce a psychedelic feeling from the repetition (hypnotic might be a better word), but it's even better if the loop can mutate subtly over time, changing timbre, having it's timeline shuffled slightly on each pass. That means not getting lazy and loading in a loop and looping it, but deconstructing it and programming it from the ground up, or straight up just synthesizing it so you can control many aspects of it's timbre and timing.
My biggest gripe with drum and bass was that it went from very complicated drum phrasing, often working on a basis of repeating every 32 bars, but with variations being added all of the time, to this wallpaper-loop type of music where the loop is just copied and pasted, and stupid, predictable fills are added to bridge together different sections of the track (anyone remember the dadadadadadadadadadadadadadada.. BOOF! *drop*? So dull)
A lot of the intricate breakbeat music I like will have a simple loop (something Frank Zappa might call the "pedestrian beat"), then a foreground drum part will work over the top of it, constantly shifting around and through it, like a weaving thread of syncopation and reinforcement. When that kind of programming counterpoints melodics or atmospherics in a potent way, it just leaves the layered loop music in the dust for me.
On the other hand, sometimes monotony can be used as a very effective musical device. I just see looping as one option of many, wheras in a lot of circles, it appears to be pretty much the only option, or at the very least, the default option. You could say - loops don't bore people, unimaginative artists bore people.