Beyond Techno

But loops can be used for far more than synth-driven techno. Sony produces loops containing all sorts of sounds, including exotic instruments from around the world, and ambient background washes. There are also plenty of sound effects loops. Their loops are sold both as single CDs, and in multiple CD sets.

The multiple CD sets typically contain a variety of loops built around some sort of theme, and their Producer's Pack kit is no exception. As you can hear by browsing the samples on the Sony Web site, this five CD kit contains a variety of percussion, washes, sound effects, drones, and other strange sounds, that can be assembled and reassembled in endless combinations (especially once you start editing them and combining them with instruments you play yourself) to add color and texture to existing recordings.

These loops can also be a great jumping off point for creating background music for TV and film productions. This track, which utilized several loops in the Producer's Pack set, was inspired by the nightmarish background score that accompanied the scene in Apocalypse Now, where Martin Sheen and his patrol boat pass under "Rainbow Bridge", at about the halfway point of the film. The electric guitar on this track is simply me wailing on my Fender B-Bender Telecaster; the rest of the sounds are loops.

Loops can also be used to introduce exotic, non-Western instruments and voices into a track. This track was created using the loops contained in Sony's World Pack, another five-CD set that loops of instruments from Asia, the Middle East, and lots of percussion from around the world, including a complete CD of Latin percussion. (The only instruments on the track not contained on the track were the strings, which were samples in Reason that I played via my Roland guitar synth.)

Getting Started

Of course, most of the individual CDs in the multi-pack sets are available separately. For anyone interested in getting started with home recording, Acid Loops are a great launching point. Think of them like a collage: just keep pasting material until an interesting pattern emerges. And then go to town with your producing and mixing your collage.

Back in the early days of Blogcritics, Eric Olsen wrote:

The parallels between music-creation software and blogging are unmistakable: both enable "ordinary people" to enter into areas of creativity and, equally important, distribution, that were only previously available to select professionals: those who were allowed to pass through the portals of either the press or the record labels by the guardians at the gates.

By enabling a large number of people to engage in these activities, both technologies are democratizing their respective fields and battering the barriers between "creator" and "consumer" in both directions.

If you're worried about where to begin, just keep in mind something Brian Eno said over twenty years ago: "almost any arbitrary collision of events listened to enough times comes to seem very meaningful." And you can make some pretty spectacular event collisions on--err--with Acid!