Interesting that Loopcloud tends to be a bit darker…I’ll have to check that out. Are there any particular searches that are helpful for uncovering that sort of thing on Loopcloud, or is it just generally something you notice while surfing through the samples?
A ROMpler/sampler like Kontakt is something I had never even considered. Might have to give that a shot too! (Although it seems like one would have to guard against the threat of falling down an endless rabbit hole with all those options lol).
I’ve made some abortive attempts with swathing my vox in reverb/delay and then throwing some autotune from one of the free VST’s on there. It’s OK but I’m probably not using autotune to the best of its abilities. Do you have any preferred plug-ins for that side of things?
I’ve been pitching myself up with a time stretch and then do my best to filter/eq my voice in various ways to push my voice to a little more neutral/femme and compress to get it a little fuller then when I sequence it I generally add some subtle pitch modulation just under fm rates and a modulated bandpass filter and rever/delay to taste… that said I am doing more spoken word stuff aiming for that kind of good cheesy vibe from the 90s 2000s vs the generic cheesy… so I can’t say I’ve actually tried singing much.
Thanks for that. Just took a look and already have a few cool samples. I am a sucker for chopped up spoken word stuff. Too much 80s and 90s industrial I guess,
Not really actually! I’ll go digging and exploring and find something I like, I do occasionally search for themes but it’s not always easy so tend to enjoy the hunt haha.
For our sampling challenge we pull from our own record collections, I can’t speak for aarb but I’m normally grabbing something I’ve listened to recently that I’ve shortlisted - I bought a big stack of random 80s/90s records a few months back that I’ve been using as my main source recently it’s got lots of treasure in it!
Yeah it’s just something I’ve noticed. Personally I only use one-shots from these libraries for the most part to build kits. In general, if you wanted (say) some Future Garage or Dub Techno type stuff, you’d stand a much better chance of something non-plastic sounding on loopcloud. For vocals, while they do have some pop stuff, I find digging around in their Cinematic and Soul/RnB stuff has some interesting phrases that can be very good for dance music. I just have a search around in there with “dry” as a search phrase to avoid the processed samples.
It is a rabbit hole, but it is also pretty limited. A lot of the Kontakt libs err on the side of the cinematic or operatic, and there aren’t many that cater for more electronic type genres. So that narrows down your choices again. What I like about this is the fact that you’re using a library forces you to choose something from that interface. As good as Loopcloud is, and I do use it, sometimes I have a tendency to search rather than decide. Well, with a sample library, you’ve already decided, so you have to find something that works with what you have.
I imagine at some point I’ll end with a combination of these tools, but these are the 2 that interest me at the moment. And as I mentioned, there’s no need to worry about releasing stuff with these tools either. I find this a good route if you have only a few hours a night to make stuff.
I very much dislike most vocal samples that are bundled as part of larger sample packages. They so often fall into those generic house sounds that are useless because they sound like absolute cheese, with cringe-worthy lyrics. Typically, I’ll just delete any vocal sub-folders of these kinds of larger packs out of hand, no need to even audition to know beforehand that they’re going to be crap.
Both my wife and I are versatile singers, so I have access to custom vocals or spoken word stuff any time I need. But that doesn’t always translate to any style.
As a for instance, I’m doing a set of material that needs a bit of an Arabic or Indian feel. My wife and I can’t sing in those styles. So I’ve had to track down some vocal samples to sprinkle in the mix that support those sounds. I settled on a couple of “sacred vocals” type packs, and they’re already adding something special to the tracks I’m working on. I’m getting some great, evocative Eastern vibes, VERY far away from any overused down-pitched “drop that bass” cheese factor.
There’s some great stuff out there, but you have to get past the generic cruft to find it.
Just a bit of an update for you on this one @seven7hwave. I’ve been experiementing with Kontakt libs, samples from big libraries and also some sample creators who are not on the mega sites. I’m finding that 80% of what I need to do is coming from sample packs, and then I add the Kontakt elements for colour and harmony. The Kontakt libs are fun and useful, and they are great for creating a vocal phrase that doesn’t exist in a sample pack, but they usually have non-verbal words and there’s only so far that will go (and it takes an age to put together.)
I have to admit that although some of the sounds on these services are cheesy at times; I’m finding this is mostly the case with the popular packs, and there is some gold beyond that. What I think is worth pointing out is how bad the search can be on these sites. Instead, I prefer to search for a certain for something specific via Google (eg: “dark pop vocal sample pack”). After doing this for a bit on google, forums and other places; I have a list of labels I rate that I keep coming back to because they do either good instrument one shots or vocals that aren’t cheesy or fake sounding emulations of a genre. As a result I’m not thinking of Loopcloud or Splice as such, but whether or not my preferred sample makers are there.
Back to your original point; Splice isn’t exactly known for dark sounds, but here I am listening to black metal growls (note Soundiron make Kontakt libraries out of these non-word phrases too.) I guess what I’m seeing is that certain labels have an authentic sound, where they’re only posting packs once in a while, and it just feels like they’ve put some thought and effort into recording something actually useful for producers. Not what you’re looking for, but 91Vocals at the poppier end of stuff do have some dark pop packs that occasionally veer into cheese, but actually have useable words, phrases and lyrics that won’t always make you cringe.
Another example of this would be Touchloops. They are on Splice, but they offer (to my ears anyway) really interesting sounds and samples and they seem genuine about what they do. To be fair, you can also buy direct so actually you can avoid Splice in most cases if you want to support them. But I find that some labels have a level of quality and attention to detail, and it’s about starting by searching for that, and then just using Loopcloud/Splice as the payment mechanism.
Also, just posting this here in case this is useful for others. Something that isn’t often mentioned when discussing frustration with the major sample libraries is the jankiness of the search function. Personally, I think this has a massive impact on why people are turned off by them - it always feels like you’re in a maze that only leads to the most popular packs.
This matters because they all have vast catalogues and searching through them well is critical to finding what you need. I’m finding that to dig deeper on the major sample libraries it helps to go offsite and use a fairly simple google search (I know you’re a smart bunch here, so you probably already know this trick, but if not - read on!)
Example: Let’s say you like Bonobo and fancy using some of his famously lush and organic samples in your track. Should be easy to find with these fancy smart search functions, right? Well if I search Loopcloud or Splice for Bonobo, I get this…
Yup… A grand total of FIVE samples… As far as I can tell these results come out because the sites only recognise the search terms in either sample or pack titles, since most pack makers try to appropriate a genre or a mashup of genres and artists. So this kind of searching isn’t exactly great for honing in on something you’re looking for. Now let’s try Google with a couple of search operators in there…
… and would you look at that. Eight packs full of sounds influenced by Bonobo. And you can apply this to pretty much any sound or thing that’s in your head as you’re searching for sounds. So yeah. Just thought I’d share in case anyone is banging their head against the brick wall trying to find stuff on the mainstream sample sites.
Thanks for the further thoughts! This is super useful. Will check out some of these labels.
I just checked out Soundiron’s site and found some stuff that might work. Your search suggestion is spot-on too; they really need to work on their algo when Google’s more effective. At least they have decent SEO to help track those down.
I’ve been synthesizing some of the various ideas in this thread and already came up with some cool results where I a.) started with a song that I already have the bare bones of music for, b.) asked ChatGPT for some conceptual and lyrical ideas (with suggestions for number of syllables per line that I was envisioning for the cadence of the lyrics), and then wrote complete lyrics based on that.
Then it’s a matter of figuring out how to get a good sound out of my own vocals, with the assist of perhaps some of these Kontakt libraries providing backing support. Or at least that’s the idea right now.
One cool idea that might make these libraries or samples more useful is to feed them through a harmonizer like Waves Harmony or Harmony Engine. (Maybe Kontakt makes it simple easy to do harmonies on its own…but a harmony VST looks like it could be very helpful for regular samples or recorded vox. (As an Iron Maiden fan I just love the idea of harmonizing the shit out of everything if possible.)
I also came up with a cool vocoder riff based on a line I pulled from a audiobook about Zen Buddhism. Just used that one line as inspiration, then fed more complete lyrics through the AI voice generator suggested in this thread.
No worries - for Kontakt libs, you might want to check Vocal Colors Bronte if you don’t mind the lack of true legato. For stuff like chords and little flecks of vocal melody, it sounds great. As always - no words but I think it competes very well with something like Mimi Page which is about 2x the price. Less content for sure, but because indie sounding voices are rare in this area, it’s a bit of a gem.
