2011 - The launch of Loops de la Crème

Looking back at the last ten years, I thought it would be nice to share with you some info about the beginnings of LDLC, and explain why the company is called Loops de la Crème and how a side project quickly turned into a main occupation and eventually became my day job.

THE FIRST SAMPLING SESSION

To explain the origins of Loops de la Crème, I first wanted to talk about my very first sampling session, which took place 10 years before the launch of the company:

In 2001, I was working as a French teacher for the military in Abu Dhabi. I had my first real home studio and was doing a lot of music productions: I was starting to work with computers after years spent on groove boxes and tape machine recorders.

I had only two microphones, and one day I went to a local music store and bought my third mic: it was a Shure Beta57.

When I brought it back home, I tested it by recording a couple of sounds: a bit of guitar, some voice, and finally some claps and snaps. When I was listening back to the recordings, I really liked the sound of the claps and snaps. I decided to record a new round of claps, and made sure I left enough silence between each sound, in order to easily save them afterwards. I then started to edit the recordings. I did some smooth fade-outs at the end of the samples to remove some of the room reverb and saved them in a new folder. I already had a few samples of my own but this was really the first sampling session where I had the goal to record samples, and where I spent some time editing, renaming, selecting and collecting the samples. Actually, some of the samples from this very first session were excellent, and a few were included in the Clap Pack ten years later. Here are two of them:

From then on, I started creating samples on every occasion, and my own collection of samples was slowly but surely expanding.

A FOLDER OF LOOPS called ‘loops de la crème’

Let’s move ten years ahead: In 2011, I was living in Vienna, Austria. Two years before, I had completed a training program in the wonderful studio 4Tune and was working there as a sound engineer doing recording and productions for clients and friends.

In the control room of 4Tune Studios, Vienna, 2009.

In the same building , a small company was doing voice recordings and music productions for TV and radio ads.

One day, as I was talking to the owner of this company, he told me that he was always looking for new music, music beds, and loops for his productions for clients. He knew I was a musician, so he asked if I had any music tracks or loops. At the time, I was doing a lot of music on my own and had plenty of beats, drums, bass, and guitar loops.

When I mentioned this to him, he simply said ‘Please compile these loops in a folder and bring this over, I’ll check it out and give you some feedback.’ So when I came back home, I went through lots of material and selected my favorite loops and beats, and compiled them in a new folder. When it was time to give a name to this folder, I just spontaneously called it ‘loops de la crème’. I thought it was a nice selection of sounds and it sounded like a cool name for the collection. I had never thought about that name before, it was simply a very inspired moment :)

When I showed him the folder, he instantly said: ‘Hey that’s a great name, let’s hear it!’  Unfortunately, the loops material was good but really going in all directions, so he told me I should focus more on doing thematic collections or construction kits that would be more useful to him. I kept thinking about this for a while and gradually added new material to the folder. And of course, the name remained…

A broken arm and a hard drive full of samples

At a jam session in Vienna, May 2011

A few month later, in July 2011, I broke my left elbow while playing football. I remember laying on the field in huge pain, and thinking: ‘What have I done? Will I ever be able to play drums again? and guitar? and Bass? Did I just ruin everything?’

At the time, I was very active as a musician on the local scene and was completely passionate about it. When the doctor told me I would have to stay three weeks at home with a broken arm in a plaster cast, it was a devastating moment. I knew I would lose a job where I was supposed to work as a front-of-house engineer during an upcoming jazz festival, so it also meant that things were going to get tougher financially.

So there I was, spending all days at home with a broken arm and just my computer. I figured I had to do something to make things change. The business with the recordings, the productions, and the live gigs was keeping me busy but all these activities were not bringing much money. I also knew that I would need some time to fully recover and be able to play again and work again at the studio.

So I started to really think about the possibility to try some kind of online project where I could share all the samples and loops I already had.

I got a visit from a friend, and I showed him my hard drive with tons of loops and samples, and he said ‘That’s cool man, just go for it, you have all the material you need! Try to share this on a website, make money with, people are going to love these sounds!’ I was just curious and already had thought about this idea for a while, but my friend’s words gave me the necessary extra motivation boost :)

One of the first construction packs available at the launch in August 2011

I already had a personal Bandcamp website where I was publishing my music, so I was familiar with their system. I simply decided to start a new Bandcamp website dedicated to loops and samples, as I knew this would be the simplest way to get started. I wanted to use the name Loops de la Crème, and just spent 30mn in Photoshop to create a simple Logo. Within the next couple of days, I also compiled some of my loops into a small series of construction packs. Each of them had about 5 to 8 loops and a dozen one-shot samples.

A week later, things were ready, and I launched the website. I remember trying to spread the word on forums and sharing the news via emails with my friends. Honestly, that launch was nothing special: a few people downloaded the packs, one or two wrote back to share some feedback, and a couple of friends shared a few encouraging words. But overall, it was a very slow start…

Here are the first three logos for Loops de la Crème, created in August 2011, December 2011, and July 2012:

The CLAP PACK - the start of a series

About a week later, I started to think about the next move, realizing that I should try something else since these construction packs were not going to do so well.

I thought about all the claps and finger snaps samples I had collected over the years: I now had a very nice selection of sounds, and I would often use them for my own productions. Through my work in studios, I had also collected a wide range of unique sounding claps using different mics, rooms, and gear: Every time I would prepare a recording session with an artist, I would first set up the microphones on my own. In order to check if my gear and levels were good, I’d start the recording, go in the live room, and clap a few times. This was a way for me to make sure that everything was working as it should. Afterward, when the session was finished, I’d simply go back to these clap ‘test’ recordings and edit and export one or two clap samples for my own collection if the sound was nice.

So I decided to do a small thematic sample pack dedicated to Claps and finger Snaps. The material was already there and it was well organized, so it was more a matter of selecting the best and most useful sounds to create the pack. Within one day, I did a selection of 110 samples, wrote a small text, and prepared a simple graphic, and I published the Clap Pack as a ‘Pay what you want’ donationware.
I went to two audio forums and wrote a quick post to present the product, and to my surprise, it got quite popular pretty quickly: within a few days, it was already downloaded several hundred times, and a german audio website wrote an article about it, which helped spread the word. I got some really nice feedback, and a few users asked me to program the sounds into a Kontakt instrument. At the time, I had never used Kontakt, so I got myself a copy and started to experiment and learn the software.

The plan and financial goal I had in mind at the time was to release new content on a weekly basis. I was honestly aiming at getting around 100€ per month from the distribution of samples after a period of 4 years. It was an extremely low goal! :)

The launch of the Clap Pack was really a turning point. I realized samples were going to be more of a focus for me from now on. Also, the feedback I got was very positive and many comments were mentioning the sound quality of the acoustic recordings. I knew it was one of my strengths, and I thought that I should use this as a direction and do more of these acoustic sampling sessions.

At that point, I started to develop products with more of a strategy,  doing small thematic sample packs and planning recording sessions for the samples that were needed for these products. Within a few months, I released a few of these sample packs: the Snare Pack, the Bass Drum Pack, the Rim Pack….

They’ve been very popular and are still available today on the Bandcamp website.

CYMBAL ESSENTIALS - setting the direction for the years to come

A couple of month later, in Nov 2011, I went to the studio and brought a lot of percussions and cymbals, and did a session dedicated to recording new samples. 

I started to record a lot of cymbals, cymbal rolls and various hits, took some pictures and video of the session, and got back home with lots of material.

I selected the best cymbal samples from the new recordings, and started to work on a new Kontakt instrument called Cymbal Essentials.

The instrument was a collection of crashes, rides, hihats, splashes and effect cymbals, and also featured a couple of pre-recorded rolls. I also tweaked the samples with filters, pitch-shifting, and effects to create an alternative preset dedicated to sound design.

Cymbal Essentials was released in January 2012, and it was the first time I released a product that was not donationware. The price was set very low, with a 50% intro offer.

I remember launching the product and being super excited to get quite a few sales on that same day. The product also got some very nice feedback.

That was the first day where I thought that this project could really turn into a job. I knew the path would be very long, with much work and learning necessary along the way, but I was filled with motivation and hope.

Launching this product gave me a clear idea that I should really focus on creating new Kontakt instruments, try to make them as good as possible, and try to sell them as well as I could.

I started to approach this project like a day job, even though it was not possible at the time to fully support my family with it. I would still get recording and playing gigs, but from then on, all my free time was spent recording samples and working on designing instruments. 

I had already surpassed my financial goals with the project (well that part was easy, the goals were just so low!!) and made a complete shift in the product and material I was planning to create and publish. The way was paved for the future :)

 I started to release new Kontakt instruments almost on a monthly basis, and within a couple of years, I was able to quit all other activities and fully dedicate my time to Loops de la Crème. 

Ten years later, it’s fun and touching to look back at these first couple of months: I realize how much of an impact they have had on my life, and how grateful I am that things went this way.