Splice

The Lounge General Discussion
#22

So due to limited time/energy etc, i created another Splice account and payed for the basic $7.99/100 credit per month bundle.

I spent about 3 hours trying to carefully select sounds on a per project basis.

Transferred them over to the Force & attempted to put something down.

And as before I just felt zapped of energy/interest/inspiration. I know this is down to me. It’s not Splice or their sounds directly, although i do hate all the maxed out processing. The integration with the Force is amazing. But i just feel like i’m supermarket shopping.

So i deleted that account within 6 hours and i feel better.

Never, ever again.

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#23

I created an account… I realized you can use it to backup (and Collab) your live projects for free… Sounds amazing to me to have a totally free unlimited backup that syncs your live projects :man_shrugging:

#24

Splice? Imma fan :+1:t4:

Tons of great sounds

#25

I used Splice when I initially got my Digitakt (downloaded some stuff from Sample Magic and a few others), but that was it. Once you have your basic drum sounds covered the rest is up to you to make, IMO. That or sample from more esoteric places.

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#26

Same here
I prefer to take my sounds from my mic, A4, matriarch.

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#27

I also prefer sampling my own…it seems more involved - and it is, but it also creates a different intimacy and appreciation for detail towards the music I make and the process as such. Plus it is more fun and more exciting to see where I can take some of these sounds from my everyday environment.

I often think Splice would make my MPC Live more usable but then I realise that there’s like 150GB of samples on mine and that quantity / no. of samples is not the issue and so the thought passes :slight_smile:

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#28

So many samples…

Such a freakin waste of time. The more shit to browse, the less you’ll find. It’s crazy.

I read about people having tens of thousands of samples. :man_facepalming:t6:
How do they get anything done.

Where it DOES make sense to me is for the soundtrack composer that doesn’t use an orchestra and has so many samples because “Piano A” has 5 samples alone to make up its full range of sounds.

But the dude at home that has 8000 kick drums…I’ve sat there listening to kick after kick. I cant remember 20 kicks later what I heard earlier. Even if I note the ones I like, after 100, the ones I like initially don’t appeal anymore. And so goes the circle.

…less is more. :slight_smile:

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#29

I’ve thought about this recently. That is, I already have enough / too many samples to work with. Seriously, when you’ve listened to a couple folders worth of kicks, how many do you really need? How many do you end up using? I probably can count on one or two hands the different kick samples I’ve used, and they don’t sound too different from each other. Every so often, I go into declutter mode and I want to delete all the cruft samples from my OT, but I worry about breaking projects. I should probably just archive all old projects with these undesired samples and start fresh.

To be more on-topic, I had splice for about 3 months, but only used it to download maybe 80 samples. Of those, I like and have used a handful. Mostly some interesting foley sounds of being out in cities. The kind of stuff you can get from freesound.org way more easily. At any rate, I cancelled the shit out of Splice and I don’t miss it.

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#30

Something to consider. The quality of samples has improved dramatically over the years. Just something I’ve noticed over time.

No shame in my game either, my sample production skills suck so I appreciate the higher quality samples I can get from places like Splice and Loopmasters.

With that said, I have 2 folders of go-to kicks. I like Splice for top, perc, and synth loops - which get cut up and made into other loops that go into my hardward :slight_smile:

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#31

I like Splice. But their subscription model sucks / keeps you tied to their service. Last time I had a hard time to redeem all those credits and ended up with crappy Samplepacks because I didn’t wanna continue. Now I have resubscribed … and well … I’m in the same trap again. So be careful :smiley:

Well… you should ditch Splice anyways – that integration costs you 7,99€/month. Is it worth that much? I’d say no…

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#32

I got a free month trial, downloaded a bunch of Serum presets and MIDI, and called it a day lol

#33

The deed is done.

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#34

I am still not sure about Splice. Might be because there are just soooo many samples and the software is a little weird.
But at least you can cancel any month so what I have been doing is to use the service for a month and find 100 samples I might use, mostly vocals, and then cancel again and create some songs with it.
I am not a person that needs to collect millions of samples, my brain would explode. So I will probably end up using Splice twice a year for $8 or whatever. Download those samples and use them.
But I am not a professional musican/producer, might be different if you have to create content for a living.

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#35

I just found it all overly cheesy or processed. The vocal loops all seem to be mainstream vocal-fry-feats. The drum loops all just seemed to be things that wouldn’t be too hard to make… I don’t think that it’s wrong to use samples, but for me if I’m buying a loop someone else has made on a drum machine it just feels like it’s just taking my job away. If I’m not going to make my own hi-hat loop - what am I going to do!?

I’d hoped to find a load of samples or real people playing real instruments, grungy sounding samples or things that sound like samples pulled from a record. Instead I just found a lot of cheesy hooks.

Having said that I’ve watched some people make great stuff - that feels creative off splice. In many ways I wish I found it inspiring, but I found it the opposite.

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#36

That’s another story … I always feel dirty when using samples - the longer the sample the dirtier I feel. Loops are the worst – I couldn’t release anything with a bought drum loop in it…

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#37

MOTU routing matrix will let you run you computer back into itself. Record the stuff from Splice :wink:

(Certain any cards with a routing matrix can. Or just and OUT to an IN (with monitoring of that IN, off))

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#38

You’d be surprised at just how much stuff that is released is more or less a bunch of loops tossed together with a compressor and some reverb thrown in.

Sometimes I’ll when I’m listening to new releases I’ll hear a song that’s just littered with loops from a sample CD release I had. Blows my mind, they don’t even try and slice it up to make more their own.

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#39

i use optical port of my PC into my RME, same story, what my pc plays I can sample ;D

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#40

I’ve gotten a lot better at not getting too caught up with tweaking things like kicks and snares. I use to spend so much time fucking with tuning and decay, and once I finally got it, wasn’t sure if I actually liked the way it sounded, or had Stockholm syndrome. Now I grab the trusty 10 or so kicks, choose which one fits the energy of the song, tune, and slap like Ohmnicide or Blue Cat’s Destructor on top, depending on how weird, and/or hard I want it to go.

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#41

100% !!! I too always feel like I’m “cheating” when I use O.P.S. (other people’s samples :joy:) but I KNOW that tons of commercially successful tracks are built on/with sample pack elements.

I once saw an interview with I think it was 9th Wonder and he talked about sampling (from records) vs playing your own instruments.

His point was along these lines:
people have put in an amazing amount of energy to take parts (instruments, players, studio time, mixing engineer, compressors, mood lamps in the studio :), mastering etc) and transform them into a coherent, good sounding whole (eg a vinyl release). When he samples, he thinks of this whole being his new part, charged up with all this energy that he then redirects into a new vision as he adds his own energy on top of that.

I sort of liked that and it made me think of sampling less as “playback” (which I think is a bit of a sub-/meso-conscious prejudice around sampling) on more as “repurposing wholes as parts in order to make a new whole” — so now when I audition samples or when I sample my own I try to think of what I am recording as a single note of eg a plucked guitar and take it from there.

When it comes to drum loops etc unless I hear something that has this energy that 9th Wonder talked about or something I couldn’t recreate with the tools I have, I don’t use it. And as I have plenty of one-hit drum samples, I rarely use such loops :slight_smile:

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