Loop and Sample Tips

"Some day - we'll live as one family."

Hi folks... reading Kemmler's great post "Matching Tempo - The Hard Way" got me thinking about some of the other methods I've used over the years to get loops in time....

It's a long story and involves a bit of "audio tech history" - but hopefully by the end of it you might come away with a new perspective.... and a few more mashup tactics up your sleeve. :)

When you download a loop, usually you know the BPM. If not, it's usually an exact number of measures, and is easy to fit to your project's BPM. Most of the time, it's no trouble to fit a loop into a project with a different tempo.

Sometimes, however, you might run across a situation where you don't have a neat, 1-bar sample, and you're not sure what the BPM is, either. In this case, you need to match the BPM by hand. Here's one method to get that done:

If you're like me, free VSTs and samples are your bread and butter. Over the years, various programmers have made numerous contributions to the pool of available plug-ins. Some are great and become accepted as classics, others are not so great and are cast off into the dustbin of software history.

Here is a short list of 10 of my favorite VSTs in no particular order.

• Much ink has been spilled answering this question in books, magazines, and online. If you really want to know "How to mix", you need to get a good grasp on fundamentals of sound, digital audio, phase, dynamics, EQ, compression, etc... Then you'll want to practice these skills for years and develop a well-trained ear. You might want to invest in some good, flat monitors and acoustically treat your workspace. Then you can really mix properly.
• But, you're working on a track now. You don't have time to work at becoming a world-renowned mixing expert. While mixing is equal parts art and science, I once read a quick, rough method for mixing that should improve the sound of your track in short order.
• First, make sure all of your instruments or samples are assigned to their own mixer tracks.

Dedicated to the aficionados of the Akai S950, the EMU ESi32, K2000, MPC1000, etc.

"Sampling" may have only been around since the 1980's but the idea of creating music from other recordings has existed since the time of Musique Concrete - a form of music invented in the late 1940's by Pierre Schaeffer. French composer Schaeffer experimented with the manipulation of tape loops to create new compositions.

While Schaeffer's work arguably expanded the repertoire of music to include deconstructed recordings and "any sound", the idea of borrowing and building on existing music has probably in essence been around since the beginning of music itself...