[Fmpro] are loops ok to use?

[onephatcat@earthlink.net]

As I was writing my original post, I realized i was being an enormous stick-in-the mud, and not accepting the gifts that technology, and the loop creators (there are people who enjoy doing nothing but creating sound and drum loops and sell them as libraries) and the programmers of software like Acid and other loop manipulation programs have given us. 

Someone has already been paid to record the loops that you can find in your Apple royalty free loop libraries. I'm sure Apple has a signed contract with real blood on it somewhere to make sure of that one.

Personally, I'll probably never use a drum loop that I didn't create myself. I try to avoid loops and samples in my music altogether, except for live performances, I use a step sequencer or two with some loops I pre-programmed into them & can switch between as I want to. I try to avoid samples too and use synthesizers for everything except for drum sounds. 

If you have a few TB of samples that you use to make your music,  are you sure all the musicians who made those string and other non-looped samples got payed? Should there be a water mark on each sound so that someone can track how you used each sound in any composition so that if your music gets played on the radio, each person who was involved with the making of that sample gets compensated too? 

How far do you take your "highest ethical standards"? Do you take them to the point where it stunts the evolution of the art of music? Because through loop based music, the art **has** evolved. Young people have taken loop based music and run with it and the world has changed. Those of us who use older methods because we have developed a certain amount of spiritual kinship with those techniques probably continue doing things the way we are doing them. 

The young people will create their own new forms of music and then someone will come along with some new tool/method/approach and they will go "but... you can't do that! It's wrong! unethical! violates the rules of 21st century loop theory! You're putting musicians out of work!" etc.

Joel