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Drum Loops (How To) <<when
I loop let's say a drum beat after sequencing it,
I'm having trouble making the loop flow. Either I
let the last note breathe and a bar of silence is
added, or I have to cut off the last note just so
that it will loop, making it very noticeable when
it loops. Is
there anyway I can loop a sequence and still make
it flow? Thank
ya
mucho!
>> Yo! What's
up all - this is an old question, but one I thought
I could address
correctly. It
sounds like you may be the victim of any number of
problems in making
smooth
loops; from my analysis and experience, there are 4
things you need
to
have a smooth loop: What
the hell's all this? Lemme explain. 1)
Let's say your song tempo is 120bpm. If your loop
is 124 bpm, well, it's
going
to be off - and noticeably so after a bar or so;
Best advice is to
tweak
your loop up or down using the pitch transpose on
the pads and then
fine
tune it. If you really want to get it tight, have
your loop play for 4
bars
nonstop, i.e., without re-triggering, and get it
close that way. If it
can
stay tight for 4 bars, you'll have no
problem; But,
retrigger your loop! If it's a 1 bar loop,
retrigger it every bar and
quantize
- that way you know it'll be as tight as possible.
Of course, if you
want
your loops to be *really* tight, export them to
ACID and use that
proggie,
but that's a whole nother topic... Even
if your tempos don't exactly match, you still
should have some
leeway.
Depending on the style of production, etc., you may
not even give 2
shizznitz.
I heard some hip hop on the radio the other day
that the loops
MUST
have been purposefully out of tune - it was
amazing. The
more loops you have laid one over the other, the
more important it is
to
get this tight - use a REFERENCE - i.e., the ASR's
click. Tune all your
loops
to this reference. 2)
If you don't have a smooth zero-cross, you will get
a click; set the
Auto-zero
cross to ON on the X. 3)
If you have this huge reverb on the track (a drum
track, let's say) and
it
cuts off every time your sound restarts, that may
give you problems; my
advice
is to add some room reverb to the sound (just send
the track or pad
thru
your effects). This will smooth out any rough
edges. Another trick is
to
do like you were doing - cutting the loop off and
letting it breathe for
a
bar; I often cut it off on beat 4 of the
bar. Also,
you can chop up your loop into pieces - get a well
tuned loop, copy it
(parameters)
to 4 different pads; set the start points of each
of those
loops
to 0%, 25%, 50% and 74% - freak around with this -
it's way cool 4)
If the drummer sucks in your loop, or is off time
internally - perhaps
beat
2 is a little ahead on loop #1 and behind on loop
#2 - this can give
you
problems (if you've ever used an unedited version
of the Funky Drummer,
you
know what I'm talking about...) See the above tip
to get around this -
but
regardless, use your EARS and your GUT. If you
ain't bobbin' yo head, it
ain't
happening. CHOPPING
YER LOOP ---------------------------- The
only only ONLY way to get your loop from a transfer
to the proper length
is
as follows: When
you sample the thing, sample the full loop, PLUS
another beat - if you
stop
your recording/ transfer of the loop before the
actual next starting
point
of the loop, you're screwed - even a few samples
off can make a
difference.
For example - your drum loop gooes: ooma-tss-n-paaaaa
ooma-oom-pa When
you transfer (I'm assuming you're recording or
resampling to the X)
let
the friggin thing play once ALL the way thru the
loop AND into the
downbeat
of the next repetition. THEN, go back and trim your
loop RIGHT on
the
down beat (the "ooma" I'm assuming) To
tweak it even more, put it in SoundForge and ACID.
(To go to the next
level,
this is the only way - using a GUI sound editor
like Forge, CoolEdit,
Wavelab,
etc.) Of
course, this all applies if you're resampling from
the X's sequencer too
(a
nice way to get tight-ass loops) Happy
Looping! Unkhakook. |
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