Whew! I've just read this topic from start to finish and it's been enlightening to say the very least.

It's certainly cleared up some of the mystery of tunes production as far as I'm concerned.

When I first started mucking around with making music I used loads of samples (from CD's not other tracks). I'd try my hardest to "disguise" them using plug-ins, eq-ing, and chaning the start-end points.

A while down the line I discovered vst instruments and started to add my own sections on top of my loops, but I still felt that my aim was to eventually sequence whole tracks without loops, which I eventually managed.

My understanding was that this was how 99% of tracks would have been produced. I can now see that this is how a number of people on here feel it should be.

I thought I was "cheating" by using loops and trying to "hide" them in fx and eq, but I think Mark's points about making loops your own are valid, and it has made me rethink my position on some of my previous tracks.

Now I can understand that you could give the same samples I used in those tracks to many people and no one would have come up with the same track I did, so in that sense my track were original.

I'd have to say that as far as the discussion here goes I think mangling samples and "making them your own" is just as valid as designing original loops, it's just a different route to an end product.