Question How Do People Use Loops?

[mobius017]

I'm curious about how people use loops. I can see where they might be good for inspiration, or if they contained instruments/sounds you couldn't make yourself, especially if you could transform them (change speed, extract stems and replace the loop's instruments with your own). But otherwise they seem a lot like trading card booster packs--you pay a decent chunk of money for a pack of loops, and then you have to hope that even a tiny number of them suit your purpose.

I guess they'd work best if you started with them--like if you had no idea what your instrumental, or maybe even your lyrics, were going to be. You could then build everything else on top of one/more of them. But if you had much more than a topic for your lyrics in mind, I think using a loop would be hard.

So, thoughts?

 

[inactive]

But otherwise they seem a lot like trading card booster packs--you pay a decent chunk of money for a pack of loops, and then you have to hope that even a tiny number of them suit your purpose.

I can't help you with your question because I don't use loops, but the above (and quite accurate) sentence gave me a sensible chuckle.

 

[IO+]

I use drums loop all the time during live performing or in the production.
The drum loop contain a few element, that can be edited (cut, chop, slice) and changing the pitch, fine tune it, or turn it into the samples so you can adjust the velocity or trigger it with midi controller.

I do something like this because, the electronic song structure can be pretty static. Some well place percussion can give a lot of movement to the song, it can be ear candy or can even make it "feel" rushing or pumping, hit hard loop is like a big explosion in action movies.

Also, it's take a lot of time, just to make a 8 bars loop.
Imagine, i have limited amount of time to setup or even just making song and spending like 30mins or even 1hr just to make a single loop and then start to realize... I need a couple more.

Example

AN1x Soundset 2

The AN1x is a first-generation that use DSP-based analog modeling since 1997

soundcloud.app.goo.gl

It have a few drum loop but i hope you get an idea.