Article	Rating
Music Tech Magazine	7/10

Greg Adams’ Big Band Brass is the latest release in the Performance Loops series, which takes performances of complete songs and slices them into loops to provide samples and loops which don’t have the stale feel inherent in many other samples collections.

This latest release takes a number of recordings made by producer Stephen Sherrard with the Greg Adams Jazz Orchestra and provides the user with more than 4,600 loops and samples cut from the original recordings. The complete song is included alongside the loops and samples to help the user identify where the samples originated from and how they can be used in a mix. The theory behind this method of sampling is simple: while recording loops can be a boring experience for the musician – resulting in stale samples – a full recording environment can stimulate a performer – and if the recording is good enough to be used by Greg Adams, then it should be good enough for everyone else. While not all theories work in practice, of course, the samples that make up Greg Adams’ Big Band Brass go some way to support this one – they’re brimming with energy and swing.

Everything needed to create a big-band jazz track can be found here, although why anyone would want to create big-band music from samples we can’t think. These samples are much more likely to be found in hip hop or dance tracks. While big-band composers are unlikely to turn to a samples collection, if hip hop or dance is your bag, this collection could seriously enliven your sound. 7/10