Hey!
I was wondering if anyone here knows how to deal with a looping sound, say a harp melody that comes with it's natural reverb, that pops/clicks each time the loop is replayed. I know it has to do that the ending has it's reverb going on and the first note doesn't have that reverb.. If I fade it out, it works, but then the rythm gets balled out of sync and the continuity fails.
I hope I explained it well enough!
This is kind of like making a tileable image. You want to overlap the two ends and blur them together, somehow. I don't know exactly how that works in music. If the first note is inconsistent with the rest, edit it to be consistent? Maybe record it with an extra note at the beginning, then cut that part off so you are starting with a reverbed note?
Hope it works ^_^ If not, tell me what the result was, I'm curious. (Also I totally just had a dream where I was a music production company manager putting together a new band, probably sparked by this thread, lol.)
You guys are on the right track :) you just split the audio where you want it to end and put it at the start. Therefore it's like the reverb carries on... This is how I do it :)
If you have the melody w/o the reverb, make a loop of it 3 times, run it through the reverb, cut the middle one and use that. It will have the end of the reverb of the first melody, which should be enough.
Otherwise you can record the sample once with the reverb, cut the tail, mix it in the beginning of the sample.
And always check the beginning sound sample and the end sound sample in wave for so you can see if you need fade ins/outs to avoid clicking.
If you have the melody w/o the reverb, make a loop of it 3 times, run it through the reverb, cut the middle one and use that. It will have the end of the reverb of the first melody, which should be enough.
Even better, play the original clip once before repeating the variant with added reverb: the beginning of the music shouldn't have a reverb tail out of nowhere.
Also, verify that reverb tails are shorter than your music clip; you might need more than one repeat to reach a steady state that allows looping.
In the editing technique suggested by TheChubu, the second and third repeat in the output should be identical; alternatively, if you process with reverb one copy of the music followed by silence you can directly measure how long does the reverberated output take to decay to silence.
Another thing to consider are loop editors where you can "tune" the waveform at the looping points. If one point is on the X axis and one is way above or below, you're gonna have a click or pop as well. If the waveform shape is smooth and connected, you'll have less of a chance of pops or clicks. In some DAWs you can set it up to allow you to select only zero crossings to help out with this issue.
The best way to make a seamless music loop that does NOT play the reverb tail of the end of the song at the beginning - :
1. Extend your midi past the end of the song by 4 bars.
2. Render all of the song including the extra 4 bars.
3. Select from the 1st or 2nd bar to the 1st or 2nd bars of the extended section and LOOP that.
4. Delete the remainder from the song.
You can now either
1. The audio engine (FMOD and WWise) will handle the single file with a loop section in it and only repeat the loop section not the intro.
2: For no support for embedded loop points then make 2 files : INTRO and LOOP and ask the programmer to sequence the music tracks but repeat the loop file.
This works with SOUND FORGE - if other wav editors add this meta data in please post below.
[attachment=20909:Looping2ndBarTrick.jpg]
