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Overcoming Loopitis
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| EddieZilker |
I think "loopitus" is part of the natural progression of being a producer. I used to have a bad case of it, myself, but as you start hearing good music and experimenting with new lines to add to loops, you start developing a feel for how to progress a track and eventually start being able to write consistent pieces of music which aren't constrained by the everlasting "loop" gobstopper.
Loops are tools that, while musical and even essential, don't constitute a song. The songs which are well reviewed in the music producer's promotion forum all use loops but manage progression quite well on a balance of their component tracks.
I think that bad producers stagnate in their "loopitus" phase. They become good at tinkering with the ear-candy, enough to make it interesting for a little while, but when push comes to shove, eventually fold and stop making (or attempting to make) music, altogether.
I think that there's a mythology perpetuated both by computer/electronic music critics and both its amateur and professional dilettantes: that making electronic music is easy. That, essentially all that is done is that you press a button and the computer does the work for you. There are ancillary industries devoted to creating pre-fabricated loops and products like Sony Acid are marketed with ease of use, in mind.
No slight to people who use prefabricated stuff. Some of my songs contain loops right out of the box with Reason. It's all about what you do with them. If it's a good song, it doesn't really matter where the source material came from.
If making good electronic music is easy, however, than so is computer animation. If the same ethos that the "loopy" music producer uses were applied to computer animation, I don't think it would be as fundamental as it's become to the movie and software industries. |
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| XDR |
some great inspiring posts in that blog, thanks a lot for the link! |
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| Zombie0729 |
| the only thing i don't like about that blog post is the fact he's using song structure examples as verse/bridge/chorus where in dance music there isn't a lot of that. usually there's just an A section then an A prime section and so forth. the tracks tend to "evolve" rather than change that much (don't get me wrong i can think of lots of indie/nudisco & trance that do have song structure like this but not a ton) |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zombie0729
the only thing i don't like about that blog post is the fact he's using song structure examples as verse/bridge/chorus where in dance music there isn't a lot of that. usually there's just an A section then an A prime section and so forth. the tracks tend to "evolve" rather than change that much (don't get me wrong i can think of lots of indie/nudisco & trance that do have song structure like this but not a ton) |
Yeah. I agree. Really, Trance along with other EDM genres seem to follow Jazz and classical song structures. By super-imposing a "pop" song template, they ignore some key features of the form. |
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| EddieZilker |
I re-read the essay and posted this, there:
Firstly, I'll say that looping is a fundamental part of developing as a producer. It allows the producer to explore different combinations of notes and listen to how they relate to the other elements in the song. I think your observation is correct in that many producers become stuck there, not having enough familiarity or discipline to push past that point, but, being that most songs, from classical to Jazz to RnB to et al, have some form of Leit Motif which repeats throughout, be it at a macro level as in 2 to 8 bars, or otherwise, looping is part of the essential building blocks it takes to become a composer.
Your criticism seems to be well aimed at what I call, when I am critiquing a composition, a lack of progression. I think a lot of producer's I have heard are guilty of what you call vertical thinking which basically translates into building a pattern in which progression is "simulated" by un-muting existing tracks.
Tracks which are successful, however, use evolution in each individual track in order to obtain progression. A loop, which started as a simple hi-hat cadence with one pedal-hat followed by three closed-hats on each quarter notes for four measures, will therefore evolve in to more contrapuntal variations as the song progresses.
While it's fine, however, to adhere to a traditional Verse, Bridge, Chorus MO, many styles of music from Early Jazz (circa D. Ellington - M. Davis + their contemporaries and acolytes) to Classical, ranging up to contemporary electronic dance music (EDM often rightfully associated with loopitus) do not consistently follow those structures.
The traditional Verse, Bridge, Chorus progression is used in EDM for songs with vocals, especially when remixing a song composed in that format, but, more often than not, in the interest of creating and maintaining a danceable groove, songs take on a diagonal attack (so far as the relational equivalent of your axis), in terms of starting with a relatively low density pattern and moving towards one or more peaks in intensity. This is also done out of practicality, since DJ's are essentially to be able to cross-fade between two different songs. While it's possible to create some interesting combinations by cross-fading at high-density, such an approach is a peak-time rarity.
For my own compositions, for instance, I will stagger my loops so that - just for hypothesis sake - I might start with an eight bar loop of kick drums with a two bar loop of hi-hats accompanying it. When I progress the kick drums, however, the hi-hats will stay the same, initially, and then change as I add more parts. Conversely, I might just let the hi-hats play for four bars, use a different loop for the next four, in order to build to a change in my kick pattern.
Sometimes I utilize call-and-response so that when one part comes in, other parts make changes in "response" in order to accommodate that part in the sonic architecture of the song. I like using runs for leading parts which almost invariably just improvisationally explore the architecture of a song. If they follow a pattern it is always a pattern in evolution and not simply unmuting and remuting individual tracks to synthesize progression.
In this regard, I tend to be the "Type 2" composer in your essay. |
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| KilldaDJ |
essentially, most music is looped (chorus, verse, chorus etc)
apart from ambient and a few other genres i suppose |
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| user19503 |
| what if u want to make extreme repetative music? you cant really put it into verse1, chorus etc then. what i do i copy my loops the whole track (like 8 minutes). then i start removing things or add automation. it doesnt work. |
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| Coyke |
Nice blog post that I catched already some days ago.
To me, there is more about this as so many loop-based sample-cds. Sometimes when I sit in the studio, I think about if this is really the way its supposed to be. I do make electronic music, but I'm not a roboter, so somehow I really got my doubts if a computer, a sequencer and all my plugins, if software and all this "unnatural" approach to it rather more is the reason for things like loopitis. This "perfection" we are able to achieve, in a program like Cubase for example, while you can work in those microscales, program everything to the best of your ability, instead of just hitting record, play the part yourself and leave it as it is, without quantization or velocity readjustment.
I think for making a decent EDM track, you got to have enough elements before you can start arranging and most of the problems I seemed to have, wasnt about the main elements like kick, bass, pad, mainlead. It was more about all those background sounds & synths, that you sometimes even dont recognize in some productions. Little bits here, some fx there, some tiny sequences playing a dreamy pattern to support whats going on. These helpa lot in getting to that climax you might wanna have. Sometimes a whole song is more about the background than about the main elements. A really helpful tip, from Kim's blog again, was to mute alle main elements and see what's left.
Another trick I kinda developd for myself was to start working in longer clips. I wouldnt just make a midi pattern over 1 bar and copy that. I would make one thats maybe 16 bars or longer. Working in these longer clips helped me a lot to make more changes in a part. Thinking more about different velocities and rhythms to make it more intresting to listen to the whole clip, instead of pasting out a 1 bar long clip.
Most important, arrange it in your mind first. Usually when you are working longer on a song and the different parts in it, you got them saved in your mind. You can go from there and develope this into a full song. Sometimes a nice amount of try & error can be helpful. It depends if you wanna go a more solid way, like letting a melody evolve nicely, or if you are more into effects and surprising moments.
So back to loops as a tool in the studio. I think some more "busy" producers, who are working on different projects at the same time and also constricted by a deadline, might be more into simple drag & drop of loops into the arrangement and also more or less into copy & paste arrangments. There was some nice interview with Armin in Sound on Sound, where he's saying, that they mostly make 3 sections and then make the arrangment from there. Also saying that some songs are finished in like 2 hours :eek: I wouldnt even want to finish tracks in such a short time, as I always like to come back after a rest to my productions. |
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| evo8 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Coyke
Nice blog post that I catched already some days ago.
To me, there is more about this as so many loop-based sample-cds. Sometimes when I sit in the studio, I think about if this is really the way its supposed to be. I do make electronic music, but I'm not a roboter, so somehow I really got my doubts if a computer, a sequencer and all my plugins, if software and all this "unnatural" approach to it rather more is the reason for things like loopitis. This "perfection" we are able to achieve, in a program like Cubase for example, while you can work in those microscales, program everything to the best of your ability, instead of just hitting record, play the part yourself and leave it as it is, without quantization or velocity readjustment.
I think for making a decent EDM track, you got to have enough elements before you can start arranging and most of the problems I seemed to have, wasnt about the main elements like kick, bass, pad, mainlead. It was more about all those background sounds & synths, that you sometimes even dont recognize in some productions. Little bits here, some fx there, some tiny sequences playing a dreamy pattern to support whats going on. These helpa lot in getting to that climax you might wanna have. Sometimes a whole song is more about the background than about the main elements. A really helpful tip, from Kim's blog again, was to mute alle main elements and see what's left.
Another trick I kinda developd for myself was to start working in longer clips. I wouldnt just make a midi pattern over 1 bar and copy that. I would make one thats maybe 16 bars or longer. Working in these longer clips helped me a lot to make more changes in a part. Thinking more about different velocities and rhythms to make it more intresting to listen to the whole clip, instead of pasting out a 1 bar long clip.
Most important, arrange it in your mind first. Usually when you are working longer on a song and the different parts in it, you got them saved in your mind. You can go from there and develope this into a full song. Sometimes a nice amount of try & error can be helpful. It depends if you wanna go a more solid way, like letting a melody evolve nicely, or if you are more into effects and surprising moments.
So back to loops as a tool in the studio. I think some more "busy" producers, who are working on different projects at the same time and also constricted by a deadline, might be more into simple drag & drop of loops into the arrangement and also more or less into copy & paste arrangments. There was some nice interview with Armin in Sound on Sound, where he's saying, that they mostly make 3 sections and then make the arrangment from there. Also saying that some songs are finished in like 2 hours :eek: I wouldnt even want to finish tracks in such a short time, as I always like to come back after a rest to my productions. |
I see what you are saying about loops but i wouldnt say thats the main problem with loopitis, i hardly ever drap and drop loops into my tracks - however theres a whole lotta copy n paste going on
Ive gotten better tho as time goes on, its all about forcing myself to start extending the track rather than adding elements in that same 2 bar loop
My reasoning for it is im trying to see what is going to work - but maybe thats the wrong way - maybe i should just do the first 16 or 32 of the track, then develop the bassline, then develop etc etc
The Joris Voorn FM video made sense to me - the reasons he made stuff in Live then quit the program and opened Cubase - the fact that he closed Live meant that he wasnt fiddling around with the parts anymore - they were done and it was time to get down to arranging the track - maybe i need to rethink the whole arrangement process :-/ |
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| Coyke |
I guess, seperating arrangement and all the creative work from the whole mixing is the reason why some producers have 2 or more DAWs. It makes even more sense, if you start seeing sequencers also as another type of instrument in your studio. Cubase makes me wanna go into each individual channel and process it to what it should sound like, while other sequencers are rather for a kind of idea jamming.
I do have times, when I know I just gonna make some selfmade drumloops, synth sounds, melodies etc. I tried for a long time to do both at the same time - developing ideas, songs and also sound creation | synthesis. This really kills some of the initial energy when you having some inspiration. So now I mainly will get back to one of my own soundbanks or rather use some kind of "default" sounds.
Its easy to record something in Live pretty quick and have like some minutes you can work with, including your automations recorded. For me this is the best part of the program. But, you can also start to think and work this way in any other sequencer.
Maybe just dont try to do all at once. Focus on the music first. Then customize the sounds, work on some details and then mix your song. I stopped counting the times, getting frustrated over sound issues, when I wasnt even at 10% of something like a finished song. |
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| cronodevir |
| Heh, I strive to find a nice repepetitive loop. |
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