Libre Music Challenge #13 : Looptober

[bsg75]

Here is my submission:
https://sonnengesicht.de/sg75_-_LMC13.tar.gz

All loops are made with Ardour, Helm and lotsa LSP and AirWindows plugins.
Licence is CC0.

The idea was to start a couple of songs and pull out the interesting parts as loops, which was already lot of fun
But I can't wait to play around with *all* samples tomorrow

[nyxeles]

Howdy friends. I've missed a couple editions of this glorious challenge, but here I am at last.

Here's an archive with the 10 loops: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wOG_7K ... sp=sharing
There are both the audio and midi files for the loops. Everything CC-BY-SA, as per the challenge suggestion. The loops are only ogg files to make it easy for you lot to download. If anyone wants higher quality or the Ardour project just give a shout.

And here's a small song I made out of only the 10 loops: https://soundcloud.com/nyxeles/hidden-garden-lmc13
It's literally a copy-paste collage of the loops, with no extra tweaking. The drum loops are extremely plain. And the lead loops might sound a little strange if you haven't got the metronome reference, but I swear they work properly! more or less :)

I tried to craft the loops so that all 10 loops fit with each other, to maximize the possibilities for combinations. You should be able to place any loop together with any number of other loops and it kind of works. I even showcased how the two bass lines play at the same time in the song I made! Anything for science.

This was all created in Ardour. The only synth used was Vitalium. The piano soundfonts are Maestro and Salamander grand pianos. Guitar soundfont is Markus Fiedler concert guitar. Drumkit is the Red Zeppelin from AVL Drumkits.

P.S. Exporting indivitual tracks/regions from Ardour is a massive pain. And I swear the bounce function is definitely broken. And of course I started getting xruns just at the end when I was trying to export things. Classic!

[rghvdberg]

Thanks everyone for their submissions!
I'll start preparing the archive.org page, scoring etc etc
Might take a day or two.

[bsg75]

Ohhh, this continues to be fun

I have put all loops into an Ardour project, duplicated shorter loops to fill 8 bars, set the loop marker between bar 1-8 and muted *all* tracks.

Play around by unmuting some tracks while Ardour plays in loop mode:
https://sonnengesicht.de/LMC13_Template ... on-archive

Try e.g.:
- Nyx Eles: bass1
- aloo_shu: guitar rythm funky
- MyLoFy: Punchy Drums

or

- sg75: Tooth Pain A
- aloo_shu: guitar bass picking
- aloo_shu: bass lick
- caprenter: Yoshimi
- caprenter: Accoustic 1

*amazing*

PS: Pipewire/Jack and/or Ardour crashed several times while I was preparing the project. Hope it runs on your setup.

[forestandgarden]

nice

I wouldn't mind to find little downloadable mp3 or ogg sketches of what people do with the loops, like that, I can quickly enjoy on the phone, which is easier than getting all collections and trying the suggested combinations, for me.

for places where it's all coming together: one could do what the defunct opensourcemusicians podcast did, create one details page just to link the other ones (https://archive.org/details/osmpodcast), but what would be really nice, if the LMC threads could be moved from Producers Area into their own (sub-) topic by linuxmusicians staff, which would also make it possible to set a sticky post on top where all challenges could be summarized and linked. Just brainstorming, this is evidently stimulating me Or hey, why not bandcamp? they're a commercial page, but while they are taking a share from paid downloads, they are not pushing them, and are allowing freely downloadable material in the same conditions, which include an artist page with customization options, and the facility of structuring uploads into 'albums'. I don't remember if there are any limitations regarding links.

as for exporting: if you got all tracks on an 8 bars loop, it should be easy: mute none, deactivate what you don't want, go file - export - export stems, pick loop as the time range, in channels pick 'all channels' and probably tick 'with processing', in main tab choose format, optionally tweak naming options, export, done, your export folder in the project folder should now be populated. IME bulk renaming is easier than fiddling with the ardour options, likewise, external tag editors (I used clementine's) seemed more reliable than ardour's metadata functionality

[caprenter]

I plan on having a go with the loops that everyone has created to see if I can make something interesting. I'd be more than happy for that to end up on a compilation somewhere if someone else wanted to take that task on.

Thanks to @bsg75 for the Ardour archive - really well set out, and easy to use. I did need to google this:
mute-unmute-solo-unsolo-all
so I've upped my Ardour skills already thanks to this!

It's gonna take some time to work through all the loops - but it's a really great resource - thanks everyone.

[forestandgarden]

the obvious LMC #14 would be "Do something with the loops from LMC #13"

[caprenter]

My personal challenge is to use Luppp and make a live recording.

In Ardour I could arrange loops however I want. Cut them up to use partial loops, Use effects liberally etc.

With Luppp I might need to preprocess some loops, but then I'm limited to playing a max of 8 loops at a time. You can use external effects so I need to work that out.

I've also got a launchpad controller to play with and a midi keyboard that I'm hoping to hook up.

I'm thinking that along with this there may also be a (related? separate?) Ardour project - with fewer boundaries, and the possibility of adding additional recordings.

BTW - The track I made with my loops started as an instrumental, then I added a voice track mashup thing. The instrumental is now up on Bandcamp on its own as a free download. Don't Spread Germs (instrumental)

[rghvdberg]

https://archive.org/details/libre-music-challenge-13

Ok, the page is up. It takes some time for archive.org to show all files in the player. Hopefully this will sort itself out.

please let me know if I missed anyone
here's the famous ascii score sheet

Code: Select all

+---+-----------+--------+
|   | Artist    | Rating |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 1 | aloo_shu  |        |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 2 | caprenter |        |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 3 | MyLoFy    |        |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 4 | nyxeles   |        |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 5 | sg75      |        |
+---+-----------+--------+

So, listen to the submissions , give each contestant a rating between 1 and 5, 5 being the highest score.
fill in the above sheet and post it as a reply here.

I'll start preparing the next challenge

[rghvdberg]

archive.org does something funny with the audio file names in the player, 'aloo_shu's name doesn't show ...

the file names on the [show all] page are correct however

[forestandgarden]

feel free to re-tag if needed. I might have put the full url I'd like to be the attribution, in the 'Artist'-field, if so, that could confuse a player, perhaps.
Taggology is beyond me, tbh, I've failed to get consistent results between how ardour, audacity, clementine, and the handful of music players I use, are settimg or displaying Title and Artist alone, here, what I'd really want to know, is where goes the license & attribution line so that it survives archive's automatic generation of alternative formats. But, I guess, as long as this info is given in the text, then it's there for anybody with the intention to respect it.

Thanks for putting all the energy into this

[bsg75]

Voting is easy, as I had so much fun with your loops and samples.
Thank you so so much! On what other occasion can you mix dubstep with psychedelic guitars and flutes?

To conclude this LMC, I have mixed our loops into track:
https://soundcloud.com/sg75_2/sg75-m-lmc-i-13-x

Gm is my favorite key now

Code: Select all

+---+-----------+--------+
|   | Artist    | Rating |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 1 | aloo_shu  |   5    |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 2 | caprenter |   5    | 
+---+-----------+--------+
| 3 | MyLoFy    |   5    | 
+---+-----------+--------+
| 4 | nyxeles   |   5    | 
+---+-----------+--------+
| 5 | sg75      |  uWu   |
+---+-----------+--------+

[MyLoFy]

Nice one @bsg75!
There's much potential in those samples, gonna play around with them for sure.

Here's my votes (sorry for being a copycat):

Code: Select all

+---+-----------+--------+
|   | Artist    | Rating |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 1 | aloo_shu  |    5   |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 2 | caprenter |    5   |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 3 | MyLoFy    |    *   |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 4 | nyxeles   |    5   |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 5 | sg75      |    5   |
+---+-----------+--------+

[nyxeles]

No no no, I won't go along with your 5 to everyone antics :D
There's got to be a winner!

Code: Select all

+---+-----------+--------+
|   | Artist    | Rating |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 1 | aloo_shu  |    3   | I thought the guitar loops were really cool and funky! Flute was a little bit out of tune for my delicate ears :) I actually really liked these but just voting a little lower because of not complying with the 10 loops requirement ;)
+---+-----------+--------+
| 2 | caprenter |    3   | The non-drums ones were very nice and I thought you might rather have added more of these than the less interesting drum ones. They could have all been a bit longer, as I'd imagine it's not too efficient to work with 1 or 2bar loops.
+---+-----------+--------+
| 3 | MyLoFy    |    4   | These sound really good! I just needed a lead :) I definitely need to learn how to make cool drum lines like these!
+---+-----------+--------+
| 4 | nyxeles   |    -   |
+---+-----------+--------+
| 5 | sg75      |    5   | Loved how unique these sounded! If I had to buy a 10-loops pack out of all of ours, yours would be the one that would make most sense to get due to the unique and interesting sounds.
+---+-----------+--------+

As always, great fun was had participating and listening. See you all in the next one!

[caprenter]

No no no, I won't go along with your 5 to everyone antics
There's got to be a winner!

Ha - but I'm incapable of choosing!

I've put a track together over here:
https://theargentgrub.bandcamp.com/track/hello-person

Free to listen, download, distribute etc.
Feedback welcome.

I was going to vote based on how many loops I'd used from other people - but when it comes to it
a) it's a bit random which loops get picked to get you started, and
b) e.g. I only use one of @aloo_shu loops - but what a loop! Similarly, the other loops all have their place!

If I don't use the 'how many loops I used test, then it just becomes too difficult to choose, so I'm opting out of voting - but huge thanks and appreciation to everyone involved.