Loop making process, Part 1: main groove (audio)

by Kyle on July 21, 2010 in music, recording, worship

I’ve always wanted to blog through the process of creating a loop and include folks along the way to get feedback at each portion. Then look back and see the evolution of the song as I made changes. So this post starts that journey.

Part 1. Main Groove

I’ve started to write a loop for an original arrangement of In Christ Alone by Stuart Townend. This arrangement may be pretty far out for those that know the traditional arrangements, but I hear it all coming together in my head well and if you’re a worth anything as a writer, you gotta trust that inner head arrangement. At this point I just have the main groove looping over the verse progression. This was done all in one session, total session time was probably 6 hours or so. I think I spent 3 hours on the drums alone, finding the right kick/snares and making tone adjustments and such. Spending time on each individual instrument’s (drums having many instruments -> kick, snare, toms, etc…) tone is so important.

Here’s how I organize my thoughts when searching for drum sounds. I make a list of all the candidates (all that I think may work) for each sound and then I go through each one comparing one to another and selecting the better of the 2. Repeat process until you only have one left and last sample standing wins!

So here’s what I have so far, just a few measures looped over. From here I’ll peel it back and get the instrumentation for the verse with vocals.

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