my loop-dee loop
this is my first loop
I very creatively named it after one of the royalty free GarageBand percussion loops, “Big Cow Bell Disco Break.”
I used 3 distinct percussion tracks, two bass tracks, a “tricky funk wah guitar,” a piano track, 2 electronic piano tracks, a vibraphone track, and saxophone track. I also incorporated some vocal tracks that I used as embellishments, specifically a choir “aaahhhh” and a breath sound that makes a short, unpitched “ah.”
I mostly chose these tracks at random. I knew that I needed some basic elements: a percussion line, a bass line, a melodic guitar line. I picked some of these mostly at random, deleting them when I felt like they weren’t “right.” After I chose two or three tracks, I decided that I wanted to go with the funky feeling, rather than something serious sounding or “rock” or “trap” sounding. After I decided this, it was easier to accept or veto the following tracks that I added in at random. Basically, if I chose a sound that made me say “Oh yeah, that’s funky” I kept it. Of course, my definition of funk might be totally unhinged and I’d be more than willing to reclassify the genre if someone informs me of what I actually created here.
I followed the process suggested to us, building from the percussion and bass up. Then, I looped everything a bunch of times. Then I began to delete things, but this was done in a more thought-out way than my random adding process. I thought about song structure. I decided that I needed an intro, something that sounded like a verse, a pre-chorus leading up to a “drop” and then a chorus. Finally, I have an outro section that fades away. It was a lengthy process of deleting and re-adding. Finally, I decided that it would be best to just leave it where it was and maybe return to it the next day. When I listened to it the next day, I was less unhappy with it, made a few changes, and decided I was done. I mostly like what I created.
I do think that I participated in legitimate musical creativity. I think I came up with a unique combination of tracks, and I used a “legitimate” creative process. I used reasoning to decide what I thought sounded good. I also had to make creative decisions like when to discard a track, how to deal with transitions, and when to simply decide that the piece was good enough to call it finished. I think that this loop is uniquely mine.













