Forum - SOUND ON SOUND : Music Recording Technology

Been thinking about this for a few days now...

I an a House music DJ by trade, but for a year or so now I have enjoyed a hobby of actually producing house music tracks of my own.

I use Ableton, a few software plugins, I have several new and old external hardware synths, outboard effects units, compressors, Midi Keyboard and synth keyboards, and I sometimes sample from old records and CD's.

I quite like making every part of my tracks from nothing. I like programming and EQing the drums, building the basslines and melodies, tweaking the outboard Synths and generally going through the whole process.

A few months ago however, Some friends of mine who are also DJ's/Producers got a Tech/Electro house track that they had made into the Beatport top 100. Nice work.

The track was really quite good, and certainly worth a purchase and a play for a few weeks by Tech/Electro DJ's.

Now, these guys aren't what you would call patient or technically minded. So, I saw them one day and we got chatting 'producer to producer' and I asked them how they crafted their nice little track. What soft synths do they have? What hardware synths do they use? Which drum programme do they prefer? etc.

The answer was: "Easy mate, We just downloaded a few of those big producer loop pack things and listened to hundreds of drum loops, melodies, pianos, FX, basslines etc until we came across a load we liked, pasted them into Ableton's audio tracks in blocks, added a few fades here and there to the tracks, few FX, built a couple of breakdowns using the 'breakdown loops' provided with the packs and bingo, decent banging track in a few days"

Now... I dont know whether to be impressed by them for being so resourceful of the tools that are now available in these Loop Packs, or whether to be disgusted that all they did was basically copy and paste perfect ready made sounds into tracks!

Or, should I be mad at myself for always spending hours and hours trying to home create drums loops, melodies, and basslines when I could just be auditioning a few hundred with a click of the mouse till one perfect one pops up out of these loop packs?

I went home, downloaded a couple of well known house music 'Loop packs' from the big names of this kind of thing. auditioned a few samples and loops for about 20 mins and then started banging the ones I liked into Ableton and guess what...within about 2 hours I had basically crafed a really funky little house track with some great drums, basslines, melodies, and complete with soulful and fruity horn and saxophone sounds. Amazing.

I'm not saying I'm converted... but it's really playing on my mind and irritating me...

And obviously the same applies to nearly all genre's now as well. Hip Hop, Dubstep, RnB, Soul, Pop... there are seemingly Loop Packs available for everyone.

So.. whats your opinions on all of this?

Loop Packs: "Great! they make producing electronic music really fun and easy, and with so many thousand loops and sounds available, its unlikely my professional sounding track will end up remotely like anyone elses! They allow you to create tracks you like the sound of without knowing anything about music which is fantastic."

Or somthing along the lines of...

Loop Packs: "Rubbish. Its basically a modern day version of Dance eJay! any idiot can knock a track up in an hour using someone elses hard work. Its like building a track from a Lego kit with instructions. If everyone did this and got their stuff published, all the tracks we hear would contain exactly the same basslines, drums and melodies."

I dont know what to think? Its cool, but somehow feels a bit lame at the same time... I wonder how many of the actual published 'chart' and club dance music out there was made either partially or in whole by using purchased royalty free loop packs?

Either way... My friends sold hundreds of copies of their track on a well known music website and I haven't!