There are beat makers and music producers out there who think using Sample Packs and audio loops from other music producers in your creations is cheating or wrong. We from Beats24-7.com are here to show you that there are no standards to this game and motivation comes in a wide range of forms. Furthermore, most of the biggest artists out there use samples and loops. Does it mean they are all cheating? What about people who use synth presets, or take a preset and just tweak it a tiny bit? Are they cheating too? In this post, we’d like to address exactly what the potential outcomes are upon using Loops and Hip Hop Samples in your music productions and what you can do with them to join them with your own unique compositions.
How to start a Beat?
It is simpler to get inspiration based off a reference, than to get creative out of nowhere. Even famous producers and artists at a professional level use these procedures. Utilizing others ideas and input as starting point can take your music productions to the next level. It can encourage you to begin from a perspective you never would’ve thought of.
If you are beginning productions with drums first, load up a chord progression or melody loop and build your drums around that. Then, discard the progression or melody after you’ve finished your drum track and come up with something different. In case you begin with harmonies and melodies first, utilize drum loops and build on these. After that, remove the drums and build your own drums fitting your loops and chords.
How to create MIDI Loops out of Samples & Loops?
There are several tools out there to convert samples and loops into MIDI files. Tools like Melodyne and even DAWs like Ableton have features which allow you to convert audio into MIDI. If you’re a FL Studio user you could e.g. do it with Edison. You can basically turn any chord progression or melody loop into MIDI. Simply rearrange the chords and notes to something you like and what fits your own style afterwards.
This is perfect if you have just started out or are not that familiar with music theory yet. There are many DAWs and tools out there but Melodyne and Ableton still can do this job the best.
How to create your very own Drum Samples?
Use Drum and percussion loops to create your own Drum Samples and kits including kicks, snares, claps and percussions. Utilize a sampler, regardless if it’s Native instruments Maschine, Akai MPC Live, KORG microSAMPLER or just chopping in a DAW like FL Studio, Logic or Pro Tools. Separate the drum samples and make your very own one shot samples.
As these drums matched together in the loops, you know that the one shot drum sounds will also work together in any drum line that you will create. Granted that, simply load them into any Sampler or DAW like FL Studio and create new tracks using your drum samples.
How to use Audio Loops and Samples to create instruments?
Another approach to use loops and hip hop samples that’s very popular is to load them into a sampler and spread them across the keys to play them as an instrument. Perfect examples for this technique are tunes like for example DJ Khaled’s “I’m The One” ft. Justin Bieber and Major Lazer x DJ Snake’s “Lean On Me”. These tracks have billions of views on YouTube and are number one hits. They took one shot vocal samples and played them as synth for the hook or background melody. This is a widely used technique in many of today’s modern Pop, Hip Hop or Trap songs.
If you haven’t tested this technique using vocal samples you should give it a try. Use various parts of a sample or loop kit, chop them up, spread them across your keyboard and create your own instruments.
How to use Chords and Progressions to learn from
If you’re not good at music theory and have problems creating your own chord progressions, melody loops and chord progressions included in Sample Packs from other producers can be very useful. Analyze them, learn how chords and melodies work together and figure out the function of each chord. This will help you unlocking the mysteries of harmonies. Transpose the progressions and chords to other keys and move them around to give them a new context. Furthermore, you can change inversions to get different tones. Altogether, this will change the vibe of your chords and fit your own tracks by simply using already existing progressions as inspiration.
How to Use Samples as Reference Tracks
Much like you utilize reference tracks for mixing your own music, you can do the same with audio loops and samples. Use this technique to create your own melodies and tracks if you aren’t sure which type of instruments sound great together or how to blend different instruments together melodically. Get high quality Loop and Hip Hop Sample Packs and listen carefully.
Understand how instruments complement each other, chords work together and which inversions and melodies each instruments are playing. This teaches you a lot about musical compositions and helps to improve your own productions and beatmaking.
In conclusion, you can use loops and samples for many different purposes and your options are almost endless creating your music productions. Of course, it’s still a matter of taste but if you wish, you should definitely buy Loop Kits and Sample Packs. This will help expanding your creativity and challenge your abilities as describe above. In the growing sound design market that supplies today’s music industry with inspiring and high quality sounds in form of Construction Kits, Loop Kits, Sound Libraries, Sample Packs and even more, this will give you almost endless opportunities.
Hopefully, this information will help you guys clearing up some of the common myths out there in the producer community and show you a few ways how to use samples and audio loops in your daily work.
To help kick-starting your career Beats24-7 also gives away free Sample Packs and Producer Kits for upcoming music producers and beat makers! We think it is important to give the producer community all the help needed to start picking up their game. This way you don’t have to browse through dozens of different sites to find the perfect samples you need. Finding good quality Kits and Samples can be really time-consuming… Therefore, you can find a list of our best and free Sample Packs, Drum Samples and Kits on our website https://beats24-7.com!