I recently got the MIDI Drum Loops Complete library from Smart loops. Very impressive collection of MIDI drum loops. I'm taking down my "Drummer Wanted" ad.
Seriously, I can see myself using Smart Loops as my go to for beats on future recordings. MIDI Drum Loops Complete includes a wide variety of beats, fills and patterns. I was impressed with the fact that each groove includes a ton of variation. For instance, if you need a double kick fill, there are 10 different patterns to choose from. Making it very easy to find the fill that would perfectly fit your particular part. Some of the grooves have as many as twenty different variations, now that's awesome.
These loops are versatile and sound great in different tempos. Most of the loops are in 4/4 or 6/8 with some double-time and half-time feels. All of the beats, fills and patterns have a great natural human feel to them. They are very well played and can be placed quickly and easily into a song. You can listen to loop samples on the Smart Loops website.
I attached a short techno-metal track to the bottom of this post that I created using only Smart Loops MIDI patterns. It was done in Reason so the drum kit could sound better, but the Smart Loops patterns are awesome. The loops required very little editing and tweaking to get them to fit into my parts. I'm looking forward to trying these loops with something like a BFD2 or Superior Drummer kit and Pro Tools.
According to Smart Loops:
All of the loops were performed live with no quantizing, keeping the original feel of the performance by professional session drummer and Smart Loops founder Frank Basile. The loops are professional-quality, real-feel MIDI drum loops and can be used with any PC or Apple MIDI-compatible music software or hardware sequencer capable of reading standard MIDI files. All of the MIDI Loop libraries include loops in four formats for compatibility with nearly all hardware and software MIDI sequencers. Formats include Standard MIDI File (.MID) type 1, Standard MIDI File type 0, Cakewalk Session Drummer 1, Cakewalk MIDI Groove Clip (Compatible with Cakewalk Session Drummer versions 2 & 3).
You get all of Smart Loops' 5 MIDI drum loop libraries for only $59, which regularly goes for $145. Needless to say, this is a great deal for this set of loops. There are over 1,000 MIDI drum loops, beats, fills and patterns covering various styles such as metal, hard rock, blues, country, disco, funk, hip-hop, jazz, latin, pop, rap, reggae, r&b, shuffle, swing, and more.
In addition to MIDI Loops, Smart Loops also offers Acid, Apple and Rex2 loops as well as professionally recorded drum, guitar and bass samples.
Smart Loops is very affordable, you simply cannot argue with the $59 sticker price. It's definitely worth looking into if you want some professionally created beats. Check it out!
