Teft’s Blog

I remember when I first started out in music production not having a single clue how samples and loops were constructed. I was like “how do people produce these sounds?!” One the goals for this blog is to help people learn production techniques and to give away production material (loops, samples, kits, etc). My first post on audio loops was under producing “electro loops“. I decided to go a more generic route and produce basic, backbone type loops for this post.

The great thing about creating loops for the purpose of loop production, is you can start from ANYWHERE! I had produced a set of loops about 3 years ago that were alright, but not spectacular. I decided to load up a loop from that collection into Native Instruments Kontakt 2 and slice the loop for individual hits. Kontakt makes this relatively simple. I always start by sequencing a click track with the hihat-like sound. Then I play the beats with M-Audio’s Trigger Finger. Here’s the result:

It sounds a bit dull (which can be a good thing), but let’s make the snare SNAP. I added Logic Pro’s LinearPhase EQ on top of Kontakt and boosted highs and bumped the low around 150hz. Much more snappy. Again, depending on the song, this may or may not work for your taste. Samples are all about personal taste in what you choose to use. I used the LinearPhase EQ because it’s very transparent and maintains the audio fidelity, but it uses more CPU power and you can’t use it live. Here’s the result with the EQ:

Now let’s get away from that sound, but still build on it. I loaded up Sonic Charge’s MicroTonic onto another track and played a 4-to-the-floor beat with an accompanying snare. I loaded up a preset first, then adjusted the kick to my liking. Then, I ran my Kontakt sounds through Reaktor 5. For Reaktor, I used an older ensemble, FusionReflections, and used a preset. Here’s the result:

Next, I removed Reaktor and loaded up AudioDamage’s BigSeq onto my Kontakt beat. These guys are great … small audio software company producing awesome bite sized plugins at a very affordable price (I can’t wait to get my hands on Replicant ). Again, I just loaded up a preset for speed. Here’s the result:

It’s great just building on top of things. Building loops/samples is all about personal taste, and speed! The more varieties you have, the quicker you can get to what you want. Try to keep your loop production fast. You don’t want to split hairs over the eq curve, because it’s likely to be altered when used in a production. All these loops built here took about 30 minutes to produce.

Here’s all the samples in 24-bit AIFF format (10.4 megs):

Download All Samples/Loops Here.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

QUICK NOTE: When exporting loops, it’s best to bounce them in 24-bit format without any dither. This gives you the fullest dynamic range to work with in your productions. Also, all these samples had an iZotope Ozone limiter applied at the end, just enough to raise the volume within 5db of 0dbfs (just enought to not clip or distort the peaks).

Happy loop building!