Other Sites

Product: GarageBand Loops

Developer: SonicEmulations, Inc.

Minimum Requirements: GarageBand

Retail Price: $13.95 each

Availability: Out now

I like the rock and roll. Want proof? I live within 30 miles of Cleveland, Ohio, and I've never been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That's how much I like rock and roll.

Also, I've been in various rock bands since about 1985, and I've been writing music since a few years after that. I'm not dedicated to the task, I'm more of a rock dilettante, the kind of rock musicians who knows the definition of "dilettante." The trouble is that I'm a bass player who can also play two songs on the piano. Two. They're good songs, but two. That makes it difficult to write music.

You'd think GarageBand would help with this process, but no. Not for me. I played around with GarageBand for a bit when it first came out and when reviewing GarageBand: The Missing Manual, but I could never really get the feel for creating music using loops. It made me feel more like an engineer than a musician, and that just wasn't all that fun.

The new GarageBand v2, however, holds more promise for me. That I can now use it as a multi-track recorder is reason enough for me to dig deeper into the program, and that also has me digging deeper into loops. What better way to learn the software, enhance my tracks with instruments I can't play, and maybe even write some good stuff without having to invite the guys over for a session?

Now, the loops that ship with GarageBand are good, but they span such a wide variety of genres and styles that it's hard to put together anything coherent with them. After posting numerous press releases from Bandmateloops.com, I turned to them for help. I'm a rock guy, remember, so I gave two of their rock loops collections a try: Bandmates Guitar Player - Electric Guitars and Bandmates Rock Drummer - Rock Drums.

Electric Guitars offers over 45 rock guitar loops ranging from funky-wah to classic rock and blues to hard rock. These are 24-bit recordings taken from "premium electric guitars and feature custom amps, some processing and/or amp simulation," as explained at bandmateloops.com. This means they sound pretty good. Quite a few of these are distinctive enough to inspire songs to base around them, and that's pretty much what I did with the song I'll link to at the end of this review.

They're not without their problems, though. The recording level varies from loop to loop, so you'll need to worry about level adjustments when working with multiple loops. Also, some of the loops seem more like afterthoughts then like music you could actually use. There are a few in there that could have just as easily been someone screwing around while the tape was left running instead of a carefully planned out lick. And finally, some key signatures seemed to be favored too heavily over others, limiting the amount of loops you can easily use if you're working in an unpopular key. I guess that makes sense, though. If it weren't for C and A, many rock bands wouldn't have been able to write one song.

And is it just me, or is it impossible to write a song featuring the funky-wah guitar sounds without it sounding like porn music?

Rock Drums gives you over 90 loops that prove to be much more useful. Using GarageBand as a drum machine is much easier than using it as a full band, and the loops here are great for that. They all lack the crispness and clarity of the drum loops provided by Apple, but i liked that. This is rock music. It's supposed to sound raw and primal, like it's recorded in a basement or live at some small club in lower Manhattan. It's supposed to sound like the Velvet Underground, and these drums do. This is because, when possible, these loops are live recordings (versus MIDI sequenced multisamples). As SonicEmulations explains, this captures particular performance nuances that cannot be captured with other techniques. They luckily remained nuanced, as stark variations would be quite distracting in loops.

The 90+ loops are split into three categories: grooves, fills and endings. This is excellent, as there's enough variety to lay out an entire song's worth of beats without making the song sound stale and programmed. There are quit a few loops in each category that'll complement the others, too, so your song won't sound disjointed. My only complaint here is that the naming scheme—numbers—does nothing to group the loops. I'll apply this complaint to Electric Guitars, too. To know which loops will fit, you have to manually click on each to hear it's sound. After doing this with about a dozen or so, they all start to run together. Which loop went well with 36? Was it 14 or 78 or something in between.

Thing is, I'm not sure if there's an easy solution to this. I suppose a PDF with suggested pairings could be included, or a better naming scheme, but I also imagine that a lot of the fun for GarageBand users is the experimentation. I mean, I can't rightly fault these collections for my propensity for writing porno themes.

The clincher with both of these packages, though, is the price. At $13.95 each, they'll be worth it even if you only use a couple of the loops. If you're still not sure it's worth it, you can hear samples and download demo loops at the bandmateloops.com website. If you want to hear them in action, I've uploaded one of my songs. It's nothing too special, but it'll give an idea of how these loops sound when surrounded by other instruments. All guitars and drums are from these packages, the bass and keyboards are from Apple.

bandmate.mp3 (2.3 MB).

SonicEmulations offers plenty more than just rock guitars and drums. If you're more of a house or techno musician, more the better. There's no shortage of options there, and GarageBand is better for that style, anyway. For us rockers, on the other hand, although our Macs will never replace our drummers and guitarists, it's good to know we don't need to call them over at 3:00 a.m. when inspiration hits. Perhaps they can take the time to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Or, if they really like rock music, perhaps not.