Eastern and Western musical styles have been cross-pollinating for decades. Even so, that exchange of musical expression has only recently become a fully flowered hybrid style. Sonic Foundry's World Pop Loops for Acid ($59.95), produced by Richard Michos, is a construction kit of Eastern and Middle Eastern instruments and vocalizations that lets users experiment with world-pop styles. A fair chunk of Western instruments is included for good measure.
Take Two Tablas
Creating successful world pop involves coming up with the right blend of Eastern and Western rhythms, and this CD-ROM does not disappoint. For example, World Pop Loops for Acid contains 26 tabla patterns, which are mandatory for a collection such as this, and a small assortment of miznah, rahiz, and dumbek loops. In addition, a few shaker, rattle, and tambourine loops add just the right spice to the drum-kit and percussion patterns. Unfortunately, a few conga and marimba patterns don't quite fit with the rest of the percussion loops. I would gladly exchange those patterns for more dumbek, miznah, and rahiz loops. The CD-ROM also contains a variety of straight pop and rock drum-kit loops as well as a limited number of drum kits with effects that worked well in my projects.
Indian, Pakistani, and Middle Eastern vocal phrases are also important components of world pop. In that category, the assortment of female vocal loops is too small. Furthermore, some female vocal loops sound suspiciously masculine — I'd prefer more examples of the high, lilting style of classical Indian female singing. On the other hand, the CD-ROM contains an enormous assortment of male vocal loops. By and large, those are excellent except for the five Classical loops, which have a solo instrumental background that diminishes the loops' usefulness. My Waste of Space Award, however, goes to the sound file Yeah 2000. Its reggae-inspired rap is not only incomprehensible and grating to the ear but also incompatible with the CD-ROM's remaining loops. The disc space it occupies would have been better filled by extra dumbek patterns.
All Strung Out
No collection of world-pop loops is complete without a good variety of Eastern wind and stringed instruments. World Pop Loops for Acid contains a small but excellent assortment of flute, bansuri, ney, and shenai loops. Many are long phrases that you can easily divide into smaller phrases or combine into extended melody lines. With the exception of the shakuhachi loops, however, many of the non-Indian and Middle Eastern ethnic instruments usually don't fit well when used with the rest of the loops.
The entire Stringed Instrument group is something of a disappointment, especially the Chinese violin patterns. Although the eight violin loops are uniformly excellent, they are too few in number — the violin is an essential element in many non-Western styles. Similarly, the limited number of santur and surmandel loops offers limited variety in that category. The worst omission, however, is the complete lack of sitar, sarod, and oud riffs; adding those would make up for the deficiencies in the other stringed instruments. The best thing about that group is the set of 62 guitar loops, which range from clean acoustic, 12-string, and electric riffs with an Eastern flavor to straight-ahead rock chords and riffs.
In addition to the drum kit and guitar loops mentioned, the World Pop CD-ROM has other Western electronic-instrument sounds. For the most part, they are synth-based drones. Although not extensive, the collection consists of deep single-note drones and drones with evolving textures. Similarly, the keyboard sounds could almost be classified as drones, but they are actually low, slow-moving chord progressions. The least-useful Western sounds are the eight bass-synthesizer loops. I would consider using only two from that small group.
Sins of Commission and Omission
The World Pop CD-ROM contains too few loops of certain instruments and completely lacks loops of other essential instruments. I could also argue that some loops don't belong in the collection. Even so, loops on the original Acid loop CD-ROM (and perhaps on other libraries in your collection) can easily compensate for some weaknesses. Overall, the World Pop CD-ROM offers much to the Acid user who wishes to create music in which East meets West. The collection may not let you create every style of world pop imaginable, but it takes you a long way toward that goal.
Overall EM Rating: 3.5
Sonic Foundry; tel. (800) 577-6642 or (608) 256-3133; e-mail customerservice@sonicfoundry.com; Web www.sonicfoundry.com