Mixing Loops

[Rusty K]

I'm old school and just getting a handle on working with loops. I've worked with Pro Tools but I've recently moved to a Mac and I'm currently considering Logic, especially since I've done a project in GarageBand. From a songwriters point of view I find the GB/Logic approach fast and to the point.

I use canned drum tracks/loops to flesh out my songs and I had a couple of question about mixing loops.

1. Do loops need to be cross-faded? A friend told me that digital samples do not but that wav loops do. Honestly I can't hear any problem in my GB mix but then my gear may not give the most accurate representation.

2. I also don't understand how the loop remains useful (no tone change) when the tempo is changed. Is that just because it's percussion as opposed to an insturment loop that must remain in key?

3. Though I've looked online often for collections of percussion loops, I've had a hard time finding one good collection with a wide variety of beats in logical useful sets. There are many out there but knowing which are quality and which are not is difficult without hearing a good demo first. I could blow a lot of money before I found the right one for me.

Suggestions welcomed! Thanks

 

[andymawson]

3. Though I've looked online often for collections of percussion loops, I've had a hard time finding one good collection with a wide variety of beats in logical useful sets. There are many out there but knowing which are quality and which are not is difficult without hearing a good demo first. I could blow a lot of money before I found the right one for me.

Suggestions welcomed! Thanks

This is the only one I can help with. I'm a new convert to the utility of drum loops. The collections I've looked at all have their pros and cons. I eventually settled for Drumcore -- mostly because the loops are real drums played by real drummers -- not only real drummers but really good drummers! I got the Steve Gadd add on and the default loops are all played by highly renowned drummers (Steve Gadd for example) -- it's also easy to cut up the loops are reorder things and Drumcore has a neat feature called'Gabrialize' which generates variations on the default library loops to mix things up a bit. The drawback is that you have to go with their mix as all the drums are part of the same wav files so it's hard to treat the kick, snare, toms seperately EQ wise. Some of the drum patterns can be exported as midi files which do send the drums to seperate channels - but because it's midi you loose a bit of the spontanaity of the playing. Other places to look -- OddGrooves (www.oddgrooves.com) and http://www.groovemonkee.com/home/

 

[andymawson]

...by the way you can download a free demo version of Drumcore which will give you a basic idea of the quality of the grooves...

 

[Rusty K]

This is the only one I can help with. I'm a new convert to the utility of drum loops. The collections I've looked at all have their pros and cons. I eventually settled for Drumcore -- mostly because the loops are real drums played by real drummers -- not only real drummers but really good drummers! I got the Steve Gadd add on and the default loops are all played by highly renowned drummers (Steve Gadd for example) -- it's also easy to cut up the loops are reorder things and Drumcore has a neat feature called'Gabrialize' which generates variations on the default library loops to mix things up a bit. The drawback is that you have to go with their mix as all the drums are part of the same wav files so it's hard to treat the kick, snare, toms seperately EQ wise. Some of the drum patterns can be exported as midi files which do send the drums to seperate channels - but because it's midi you loose a bit of the spontanaity of the playing. Other places to look -- OddGrooves (www.oddgrooves.com) and http://www.groovemonkee.com/home/

Thanks...I'll look this over...some of the Drumcore packs look interesting.