electronic artists that just use loops.

I posted this in a forum discussion about whether people that just used loops can be called musicians, i try to avoid using them myself but a lot of artists use them extensively:

Theres a number of so-called "producers" that make tunes using predominantly loops, samples and downloaded midi data, often their tunes ultimately sound unfinished. Its clear to me why that is, those electronic musicians that put more into their compositions also put more into their production. Sculpting a tune from start to finish is not a simple task so cutting corners at any point will effect the quality of the end product.

That said tho, sampled beats are still commonplace and anyone who uses an amen break does so because they want that sound. On top of that a lot can be achieved by chopping beats up, mangling and generally fucking around with em to the point where they barely resemble the original recording. Also many genres of dance music are defined by their beat, anyone wanting to make tunes that fit that style might aswell just use a loop. Personally, i get great satisfaction out of creating my own beats but i often like to layer up some drumloops behind it. but then i dont like to make tunes to fit a genre.

As for collage artists then yes, you should give credit to their work, but a great deal of their talents come from finding the most obscure sounds/beats rather than picking up the latest time+space cd and creating a generic house/dnb/dubstep/whatever tune.

What about presets? I'm not gonna deny i've used a few of them with very little tweaking, however layering some preset pads from an obscure freeware vst or using an already perfect string sound in your sampler is different to building a tune in reason using only the factory soundbank.

Most rock/pop music tends to use the same 1-4-5 chord progressions, is that really that far different from using loops? Most dance music sounds similar to everything else within its own genre whether based on loops or not. A large number of respected musicians owe much of their sound to their (largely uncredited and therefore unrecognised) engineer, while many others simply rehash the same formula over and over and call it a new tune each time.

No disrespect to those that can make good music based around loops, personally i feel more original when i know i've made it all myself.