[tina m]

my youngest is into dubstep & wanted to make the music
 he tried dance ejay but decided now he wants to create his own stuff so we downloaded a load of drum loops but is there a easy way of looping them? they are quite silly for example a 6 second drum sample is 3 secs of drums & 3 secs of silence at the end
surley he doesnt have to work out approx where to cut it to loop it
hes using reaper like me....i know dubstep seems to be a bad word here...but we all have to start somewhere.... remember the embaressing music you used to listen to
has anybody done this before?
 

[Michael]

Hmmm... do you know the tempo of the drum loops (BPM?) If so, you could just set up that tempo in the DAW and then cut the loops along the grid.
Not sure if there's a way in Reaper to automatically detect the tempo of the samples, might come in handy though...

remember the embaressing music you used to listen to

shhhhh, don't remind me

[The Corsair]

The program to use is Reason. It's a bit costly, but you can probably *cough* 'acquire' *cough*, quite cheaply (free), a version of Reason 5 if you look around the web.

There's plenty of tutorials online about how to make your own drum loops (and places you can get some pre-made ones to play around with). It all looks quite complicated, but in about an hour of playing around with it I'd made a basic DnB beat back when that project was still going.

[tina m]

no corsair i wont be doing that...cough ..what sort of mother do you think i am..cough... theres a lot of coughs going around isnt there? i will pass on the cough to my son..ta!

michael ...no reaper didnt show the bpm of those beats but i just downloadsd some more & they did & bingo what you said worked! thankyou i will now hate you when i cant get to use reaper cos hes using it for his awful dubstep

[Michael]

i will now hate you when i cant get to use reaper cos hes using it for his awful dubstep

haha, mea culpa 
glad I could help though

Just make sure those loops all have the same tempo, or the result's gonna be messy

[estreet]

Mac. Garageband.

It doesn't neeed to be expensive at all - e-bay is flooded with cheap G5 power-Macs ditched by Publishing/Graphic Design houses after the switch to Intel. They still run the version of GB that came with them flawessly.

[Binladeda]

Might be able to help you here tinam   A very good friend of mines' son is getting a name for himself in the world of dubstep, I'm sure he could answer all your questions ..his soundcloud name is CliffHanga. Tell your son to message him.  I'm seeing him this Thursday and will have a word if you want.  He's a really nice kid (23).....and helped me out with Wmd (in review forum). I know he will help your boy,if I ask.... been playing with his dad for over 40 yrs, and he owes me £20.....so I'm well in.   I don't know much about dubstep....but I do like some of what I've heard of his stuff.  Anyway, he knows computers inside out, reaper/cubase...all of that sort of thing...He's making quite a bit of money, doing remixes for people and selling loops and samples on 'loopmaster' and sites like that, so he's 'well good' I suppose   .....he gets loads of messages, so if you give me your boys' name I'll tell him to watch out for him and help him.........if you want  

[tina m]

estreet when i read your post i wondered if he could get garageband on his ipod touch but it seems you cant   we looked on ebay & the 2nd hand macs are still more than he can afford hes only 13

binladeda that is realy sweet of you! i think from what weve found out now we just need to know can you make dubstep in reaper & how ( maybe he knows a tutorial) ...& if not whats the cheapest program for windows that my son alex can do it on
we will look at cliffhangas soundcloud page  thanks

[flossie]

I second Reason  Loads of scope for making drum loops, loads - I'm generally to lazy to do it though!!!
x

[seriousfun]

This is probably no help, but I use a plugin called EZdrummer cant even remember what it cost me but you can buy lots of extra midi loops for it from the site and also from third party sites that cover a wide array of genres. I am unfamiliar with your software as I use cusbase, but as long as it handles plugins vst's ( and most ef em do) then this could be an option worth looking into. It is extremly easy to use and edit.

regards
Al.

[Ramshackles]

Section 8.1, page 145 of the Reaper manual (which can be got here: http://www.reaper.fm/userguide/ReaperUserGuide426C.pdf)
 is called 'Creating Loops'   

[mihkay]

I use Linux operating system. But some of the stuff there is available for Windows.

A FREE, yes FREE bit of software here might suit your purposes. It's called Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS).

Download from here:-

 http://sourceforge.net/projects/lmms/files/lmms/0.4.13/lmms-0.4.13-win32.exe/download

Also there are loads of on-line and you tube tutorials. For example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEesnnMks0o

[tina m]

thank you evryone for all the ideas & info!
to update you all... i have told him all thats been said here
 but as hes a man now (hes 13 ) hes ignored evrything ive said & found a crap program i used to use called ntrack & got his loops from looperman & got it all to work somehow!  hes happy anyway & thinks hes making his own music

[jim morrison]

Tinam ,I've got logic express which is cheaper than the full studio version for the mac and it's taken me a while to learn it (i still have a long way to go ) but i think its amazing! If you take apple ready loops they synchronise themselves into the correct tempo and you can also chop them up quite easily to suit. I can't recomend it enough

[tina m]

thankyou matt i think we will see how long this interest lasts & if hes still doing it at christmas & wants something  like that instead of bb guns & video games