Using Samples in Your Music is Not Cheating

This is a pretty common topic among modern-day computer musicians. In this day and age, so many people create music using samples and loops for the basis of their songs. Is this “cheating”?

I don’t think so. Where do you draw the line, anyway? If you use a microphone to record a set of drums being played live, then should it be “cheating” because you did not build the drums yourself? Come on. Besides, if you have pro recording equipment, then the recording of the drum beat played live versus the drum beat played using samples isn’t going to sound very different, as long as you use the same kind of drums and play them the same way. Using samples of recorded instruments isn’t a lot different from just recording instruments to begin with – especially with these crazy, multi-sampled libraries of today, where each note / drum has multiple recordings and nuances to make the beat sound more “real.” Add to that the degree to which you can alter the sound using effects, and you can really make the sound “your own.” The biggest problem with recording things yourself is simply that in order to get professional results it’s going to take a lot more time, effort, money, and equipment. Don’t get me wrong – nothing beats the real thing, but if all you’re doing is trying to lay down a good beat, why not use samples? In this day and age, it’s almost expected.Read More

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Beginner's Guide to Making Music Using Computers

This article was originally written in July of 2008.

Please note that I’ve removed all links from this article (they just led to pages of zZounds.com).

HARDWARE

The Computer:

First of all, you’re going to need a decent computer — as good of one as you can afford. It doesn’t have to be a supercomputer, but you can’t have too good of a computer; especially when you get into the more advanced applications. Nearly all aspects of the computer will factor in, including the CPU power, the amount of RAM, the speed of the hard drive(s) and how much space they can hold, the quality of the sound card, etc… For audio creation, your sound card will be one of the most important components of your computer. You should get a sound card built to be used for audio creation, preferably from a company such as Creative Labs (or even more preferably, from their “Pro”-level subsidiary company, E-MU). M-Audio also makes good sound cards for this purpose.Read More

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Record Any Audio Your Computer is Outputting

Have you ever wanted to record the audio that your soundcard is outputting, whatever it is? Maybe you’ve Googled the name of a song, and noticed that there are tons of sites (like iLike, Rhapsody, etc.) that show up in the top of the Google searches and let you play the entire song in high-quality, for free, right there in a pop-up window. Of course, the next time you listen to the song, it will only be a 30-second demo (although this can be worked around by simply clearing your web browser’s cache – boom, you can listen to the whole song again). Well, if you simply record what your sound card is outputting, you can record that song that is playing into an MP3 file and save it on your PC. Cool, huh? And then you can go to iTunes or eBay and actually purchase the album because you like the song so much (hint, hint). I’m not trying to support illegal music downloading or anything – but this is a cool trick that has tons of uses.Read More

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