Need a Custom Loop?

I’ve been working with Reason and Abelton Live creating loops for worship songs both original and covers for a few years now. I’ve released most of them on this site and made them available for all to use for free. I’ve had a lot of inquiries about creating custom loops for people and I am now accepting these offers. Please browse the loops through the link above to get a sense of my musical sensibility and if you think my style is a good match for your needs. Here is some info on the process.

Pricing

Price varies based on the request details. How much instrumentation you’d like and so forth. The range is $100 – $200 per song, if you require live instrumentation/vocals to accompany the loop that ranges from $25-$50 additional for each live track. Again depending on the complexity of the live track.

What you receive

• loop (uncompressed aif, high quality stereo mp3, master Reason/Ableton file)
• Arrangement details (like a readme file navigating you through the song
• Vocal Cue track (another track that cues you into each part and can be used alongside click track)

Terms

I will be very honest an open about my schedule and when you can expect completion of your loop. Ongoing communication through loop composing process is key to make sure you are happy as a customer. Your custom loop will not be given free to anyone but I do reserve the right to resell the custom loop for any price I deem appropriate. In order to make this worth the time and to keep the initial investment cost as low as possible to you the customer, I need to make these available for resell. On average a loop takes me 15-20 hours, if you do the math, without resell I’d be making about $5/hr-$10/hr.

If these terms sound agreeable to you please use the contact form below to contact me for a quote. I will follow up with you and we can discuss arrangement details of the song.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

This is a cool tutorial on some techniques to slice up drum patterns in interesting ways. Great because it’s tool agnostic, meaning you can use the same technique in whatever application you are using, Abelton, Login, Reason, etc… Click through to his vimeo account to see more tutorials.

Trifonic: Editing Beats – Part 1 from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

[via CreateDigitalMusic]

Pretend I gave you $1,000 but you had to spend it on music gear. What would you get?

I’d get the new Abelton Suite and have a few hundred left over to buy a decent condenser mic, like a Shure KSM27 or Rode NT-1. What’s next on your list of music goodies?

I ran a recent poll here on ORS that asked where your team was at with looping. 25% of you said you’d like to start using loops but don’t know how to get started. This post is intended to address that and hopefully get you some detailed information on how to get going. First here are some articles to help you decide whether you should even consider using loops:

• Why should I consider using loops in my worship service?
• Won’t using loops cause a congregation to get bored?
• Do loops leave any room for spontaneity in worship?

If you’re wanting to get started looping here are some articles helping you with that process:

• 8 steps to configure Ableton with loop and vocal cue tracks
• Configuring Ableton Live to run your click tracks – The link above showed you a more comprehensive loop setup that runs your loops and click. But if you wanted to just use Ableton for running your clicks, this is a great tutorial for that, as well as just general Ableton Live info.
• How to send click tracks to monitors and not mains
• How to transpose a loop in Reason
• How to create your own click track in Garage Band

Some sites where you can download loops:

• www.OurRisingSound.com – here of course
• www.themonobox.com – Matt hasn’t been posting for a long time, but he does have some good loops and tutorials still available.
• www.sacredloops.org – Again, not much content here, but hey there aren’t many people doing this kind of thing.
• Bwacks Forums – good place to ask questions on loops

If you have questions that none of these articles and tutorials address please don’t hesitate to ask. If you have any suggestions for loop links above let me know and I’ll add to the list.

A vocal cue track is an audio track set to a click, and usually ran along side of a loop, that is sent to your in ear monitors only and serves as a helper track, guiding you inside your arrangement. The primary purpose is to keep the band in sync with the arrangement and is especially important when using loops. If you get off the loop disaster can come quick and hard.

You can create a vocal cue track in your audio recording software of choice. What I do is just import my loop to GarageBand, create a new vocal cue track and record along side the loop, then just export the vocal cue track by itself. If you are running integrated clicks inside your loop, that is panning a click in the left channel with the loop in the right, then you’d just add the vocal cue track to the left click channel as well. I don’t do this because I use Ableton and it handles my click track dynamically which gives me more flexibility. Once you have a loop track and/or vocal cue track here’s what you do in Ableton, this is a complete tutorial of running loops and vocal cue tracks in Ableton.

1. In Session View add your loop track to the Audio channel

2. Add additional Audio Channel for vocal cue track

3. Add vocal cue track to accompanying loop “scene”

Read the rest of this entry »

To my mind the best song to come out of New Life is Everlasting God. You won’t hear too many melodies better than this one, and the production is really top class. Glenn Packiam’s vocals on this always impressed me, his tone is fantastic on this. We do this song quite often at LCC and as far as corporate worship goes this is one of the more engaging ministry type songs we have in rotation.

You can stream the loop below but you are not able to download the loop. In order to download the loop files you need to send payment through PayPal. The price for this loop is $2.99. Once payment is received I’ll contact you and give you download instructions. The following is what’s delivered upon receipt of payment:

• Loop (high quality stereo mp3 and aif)
• Vocal Cue track (aif)
• Master Reason 4 file (rns)
• Arrangement Details (rtf, shows exactly what parts come in at what time)

As always though please comment and rate the loop to let me know what you think. I had a lot of fun making this loop and I’m pleased that the original customer is very happy with it.

Song: Everlasting God by New Life Worship, My Savior Lives album
Key: Em
Bpm: 148

Note: the free podcast file is lower quality mp3 (128kbps)

 Everlasting God by New Life Worship (loop) [6:13m]: Download

Here is our second installment of answers to questions on the post, “Why should I consider using loops in my worship service?”

How easy/difficult do you find it to break out of the song/set when using loops?

This was one of my main concerns when I started using loops. How was I going to be able to leave room for spontaneity? What if we absolutely needed to repeat the chorus again? Am I going to feel chained to some arrangement and wish I could break out of it live?

I’m going to use an oxymoron to describe what I’ve done but it’s the most descriptive phrase I have.

Planned Spontaneity

If you’re done laughing I’ll explain. There are typically two camps on the topic of spontaneity in worship.

1. Very little practice or preparation goes into the worship set and the band just follows the worship leader wherever he goes in the song.
2. Every part of the song is rehearsed and there is no room for improvisation vocally or instrumentally.

I try to find some balance between the two. I think you must have a mindset and heart that God will speak and lead you in the planning, preparation and practice just as He would during the actual worship set. When you get out of balance on this you over emphasize one place to the exclusion of the other and you act as if the Spirit leads only in preparation or only in execution. So if we believe God can and does do both how do we accommodate this musically and specifically when using loops?

I’ll play, practice and most importantly pray over songs and see where there are good spots for instrumentals, breakdowns, extended refrains, etc… If it’s a slow song that may be used in ministry time it would most likely be the end of the song that can loop over a few bars until ministry time is coming to an end. There are a few ways to so this in Ableton, I won’t get into the technical details in this post, but it can be done dynamically where a section loops until you tell it to stop.

If it’s a song being used in the middle of the set it’s more likely a breakdown in the middle of the song where there’s an opportunity to sing out what God has put on your heart, but that time is more strategically assigned. Perhaps it’s a 12 bar breakdown, so you got that amount of time to say whatever you felt led to say. Putting these kind of parameters I’ve found is very helpful for the band and congregation. I think a lot of times bands don’t realize that their extended spontaneous riff moments don’t come across nearly as good as they think. Quite often they are confusing, uninteresting, repetitive to the point of exhaustion and it can cause a disconnect between the band and congregation.

The more planning you do around these times the better. The Holy Spirit won’t leave you because you’ve tried to put some musical structure around your “spontaneous” moments. Many times my band will practice the breakdowns musically so we know exactly what’s happening, what we’re all playing and get the instrumental side real tight. But I’ll give my vocalist freedom to sing what she feels led to sing, or I’ll lead it or we’ll both kind of weave our vocals together. Many times a melody we’ve done spontaneously will get incorporated into the song as a permanent piece if it went over well.

Rarely if ever, will I give instrumental freedom to the band, that is just ripe for disaster. It’s not that I don’t trust my band’s taste or ability, I just want us to put the work in practice where we find what sounds best and we can all count on each other to play just that live, don’t surprise me. My bass player isn’t going to be happy if the drummer all of a sudden surprises him with a new groove he just fell in love with. If it’s that great of a part, then prove it in practice and let the band work off it.

Thanks for the question. I hope I answered it at a strategic level. I’m going to start a series soon on how to get started looping that takes care of the technical side. Stay tuned.

I deal a lot with worship loops on this site as you may have noticed. More and more worship leaders are becoming interested in using loops but many still don’t see the point, think it’s too complicated or a waste of time, or don’t understand why anyone would use instruments that aren’t live. All of those are valid questions and I’d like to attempt to answer them. The purpose is not to convince everyone that they should use loops but rather to explain the idea, concept so you can make a more informed judgment on whether you should consider it.

Move in Creativity

Worship leaders need to push themselves, stretch and reach creatively. You’ve been blessed with a musical gifting, you’ve been called to lead a body in that art, you serve a creative God who is deserving of all praise and you have been appointed to reach the lost. The culture around you is moving creatively, music is not stagnant, if you stand still you make yourself increasingly irrelevant to the culture around you and isolated in your church bubble. The tension between leading a congregation and staying relevant to culture musically and reaching the lost is intense and we shouldn’t ever shy away from it.

It’s a challenge and balancing act we probably won’t ever get right, but we have to seek God in it and not just rely on where we feel comfortable.

Raise the level of musical excellence

Loops help raise the level of musical excellence in at least a few ways.

1. Repetition in arrangement

Now this might be a reason many don’t consider loops due to the thought of playing a song with a set in stone arrangement. First off if you use Ableton to play your loops you aren’t set in stone on the arrangement, you are more set in moldable clay. Secondly if you come from an environment where there’s a lot of spontaneous elements like sermonettes and random prayers and such in the middle of your set then you’ll have a harder time programming loops, it’s not impossible but much more difficult.

Playing with a set arrangement makes your band much tighter and actually allows for more creativity within the parts because there’s less to worry about in the overall song arrangement. Musicians know when you’re moving from verse to chorus, what gets repeated and what doesn’t, so your band spends less time staring at the worship leader wondering where to go next. Additionally not only will your band spend less time staring at the worship leader but so will your congregation. They will know where the song is going without you singing intros to each section or waving your arms and can worship with much less band distraction.

2. Instrumental and Tonal Diversity

The church has been accused of many things, but being musically diverse is not one of them. A problem all bands will face is how do we make this song fresh, we’ve played it a lot, people are tired of hearing it played like this so how can we breath life into it. There are things you can do arrangement wise of course or changing the tempo and overall feel that may work, but that ignores the greatest tool you have. Introducing new tones, sounds and textures does a lot more for reviving songs than any arrangement change could do.

Introducing these new instruments and sounds not only helps songs individually but also prevents sets from becoming monotonous tonally which causes tired ears. Tired ears occur in the congregation and band when your set has no tonal or instrumental diversity. The same frequencies are being hit continually and eventually people’s ears stop hearing what you’re actually playing, in other words they unintentionally tune you out.

Spending time programming loops allows you so much room in experimentation and creativity. You have an avenue to add texture and layers to your songs that you’d never be able to do with your live band configuration.

3. Playability

Your loops will be mistake free, have perfect pitch and perfect time. I don’t care how much your band practices you’ll never accomplish all 3 of those. This assumes you actually take the time in your loop programming to insure they are mistake free, you’re playing the correct notes and you are quantized.

There is an added risk layer and learning curve for those who don’t regularly play to a click however. You may find a lot of your past mistakes are now being exposed with a click or that your harmony you always sing is actually flat now that you have some accompaniment in the loop. There is also risk of computer melt down, but that’s why we only recommend Macs here.

Feedback

I hope those loop skeptics out there at least consider what I have to say here. I’d love feedback from skeptics and supporters of loops on any pros of loops that I’ve either misrepresented or missed. In a follow up post I list the cons of loops and why some shouldn’t consider introducing them. Have you considered using loops? Why or why not?