It really is a very personal choice but to me loops are an absolute joke and IMO is 100% cheating.
As far as one shot samples I feel like it’s okay with drums only if you’ve sculpted/mangled/layered or other wise edited it into something completely different than the source material. As far as sampled synths and/or presets that’s also a huge no for me. I don’t feel like the work is genuine unless I’ve made everything myself. I wouldn’t go around dunking on people for using one shots and presets (though I might if they were using loops ) but it’s just my take on it. Also it’s like dude we have all these amazing sound sculpting machines that are made to create it’s insane to me that someone with access to synthesizers and drum machines and very deep soft synths would even want to use premade sounds…why not just go buy a ROMpler at that point, why own a real synth i feel like if someone is using loops and presets and saying they made a track then they’d be better off just being a DJ.
But anyways yea I don’t know man that’s just my opinion I’m told I can be pretty judgmental but I see it as I’m passionate about actually creating music and when I hear an artists work when they’ve hand crafted everything it always sounds authentically better than when I hear someone using over used drums and/or loops and/or presets even if they’ve tweaked them a little.
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I would add though that there are some exceptions to my rules: sampling as I’m taking a sample from a record or whatever and flipping it is 100% okay and using samples that are necessary to define the genre you’re working in (IE the Amen break) then that’s 100% okay too. Obviously some genres require specific sets of sound of a specific palette of sounds/samples in order to remain within the definition of that genre or to give a nod to the genres that inspire the track all those cases are okay to use straight up samples as well for obvious reasons. BUT other than those few exceptions it’s all hand crafted or gtfo to me
agree 100%
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