PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists RealBand Wishlist audio-midi looping a-la acid

Sonar has a feature I use all the time that I'd like to see in RB...
I forget what they call it, but here's how it works:
you can record a measure or two of either audio or midi, then turn that snippet into a loopable acid-like sample that can be dragged & stretched to fill whatever space is needed. The advantage is that you can still play the passage to get exactly what you want without searching through megabytes of pre-recorded samples, but you only have to stay in time for a measure or two... when you stretch the sample, the software adjusts it to keep it in time. The result is that you can throw together a very customized song derived from your own playing, and the software sews it together seamlessly for extremely rapid development

"groove clips"
that's what they call it in Sonar.

Sonar does a nice job of that Pat, but nothing makes loops like AcidPro, i love the Render looped region only command, that makes the best and most seemless loops you will find.

According to the SonaramaWIKI, groove clips are, in fact, "acidized" loops.

I've played around a bit with both Acid and Cakewalk/Sonar, and groove clips are quite the stuff. (For them as is interested, you can get a free copy of Acid 7 Express at acidplanet.com.)

Per the above article, Cakewalk's $99 Project 5 will make and play groove clips with the Cyclone DXi. Can we use them--or the Cyclone DXi--in RealBand or PowerTracks? Don't know, myself. Anybody?

R.

I would tend to think that the programming required to make this happen would be very similar to what they are already doing in order to make Real Tracks stretch to fit a song...

RealTracks can pick from one of three -- or four -- "base" recordings that are in different keys, usually a half step apart, for the stretch.

In Acid, there is only one wav file in whatever key it is in, but the Acid algorithm has the ability to pitch shift that one file to any key without digital artifacts showing up.


--Mac

A recurring request in the wish list forum is "how can we make our own real tracks?"

another advantage of providing a way to easily copy-paste-loop our own passages is that it empowers users without PGMusic having to give away any trade secrets about real tracks

I did a tutorial on loop making a few years back for the entry level Cakewalk program, that would work in most applications, i will try to dig it up. The base level Cakewalk is called Music creator, and is only $39 and until PTPA or Rb does looping here is a cheap option

Making Loops in Cakewalk Music Creator:

The loop making page in the lessons area of the cakewalk site has some good information, but also has some confusion along with it, as it mentions some features are for Sonar. I spend three years using AcidPro software and became fairly adept at making loops with that program. It has some very advanced loop making tools that make it the king of loops. Having said that loops can be made fairly well in MC as well, it is a decent workable tool, the one feature it lacks is the render looped region only feature that Acid has, to take the fight out of the process. But since Cakewalk is a great all around program bringing both midi and audio together in a very powerful package, and for most of us here a cost effective one at that, it is good to explore the full capabilities of the program, so I put together a simple process to make loops.

As was mentioned in a previous post, loop making helps us where we want to add an instrument we might not be as adept at so that we can have a good outcome, you want to make a song with three chord in it C, D and G, and for instance maybe you play the guitar a bit, but every time you try to play a song and record a whole track of backing acoustic guitar chords you make a mistake somewhere in the track and have to start over, well looping can solve that problem, he is how:

First plug in the guitar or mike it then get ready to play, then open an audio track and arm it. Let’s begin with a “C” chord, Strum a few measures of the chord till you feel that it sounds like you want, now hit record, and strum the “C” chord for about six measures, then hit stop.

Now look at the wave file in the audio track it stretches for six measures, but you only want two measures of the “C” , so listen to the whole track and it sounds pretty good, but the middle two measures are the best sounding, no mistakes.

Take your cursor to the middle of the wave file, and left click, and the whole wave file will turn dark, then slide the cursor to the ruler bar above the track and right click in the gray area of the ruler bar, and a box will appear, find “set loop points”, two yellow arrows will appear above the ruler bar and at each end of the wave file.

Slide those loop points until they are at the beginning and the end of the area that you want to keep as a loop, then hit play the looped area will play over and over, you can fine tune this loop by sliding the loop points until the loop plays perfectly as if you were strumming the guitar on the same chord over and over seamlessly, now that loop area is a perfect loop. (Note that the loop point will only slide to the snap points of the grid, most likely the beginning of each measure, that may be right, but it also may not be a perfect loop, if so then you will need to undo the snap to grid feature, at the bottom of the track view window there is an icon next to the plus (+) and minus (-) icons that looks like a box with a four smaller boxes in it, unclick that and the loop point arrows will slide anywhere you want them too, unaffected by the snap to grid feature.)

Once you have the loop playing flawlessly, then slide the cursor to the ruler bar again and right click, then click on “select looped region”, the area between the loop points will turn dark, now in that area, right click, and choose split, a box will appear, in the box it will have a smaller box that asks for the time to split at, insert the ruler position of the beginning of the looped region, (this will be displayed in the boxes above called “loop from and loop thru” these boxes are on the tool bar between “loop on/off” and “set to loop selection”. If these are not visible on the tool bar then you need to add them from the View/toolbars) and click okay, then repeat for the end of the looped area.

You will see that the area that is looped will split off from the proceeding and following areas of the wave file, now click on and delete the extra areas outside the looped area, now only the wave file in the looped area will remain, the process in not done, to lock in these properties, right click in the middle of the looped area and click Groove-Clip Looping, this will turn the wave file into a groove clip with the tempo and key signature embedded, and make sure that the part you deleted is gone from the file. Now this can be exported to a folder for safe keeping.

Now repeat this process with the “G” chord and the “D” chord and save them now you can import these clips as loops in an audio track and used to build a song add the chords as needed, to make the song structure. This process can be used with drums, bass piano anything to make a complete song.