I don't like to stretch audio.

Most of the times I have attempted it, the results were not good.

I have tried copy and paste but if the sound is a held chord fading.... good luck with that... trying to match the pasted part to the end of the previous one's fade is nearly impossible. characteristics of the sound change in the fade. You end up with a held note that "jumps" at the edit point.

Using Melodyne or some other stretcher is equally disastrous. I have used it to stretch a sax note one time and that did turn out OK. It really depends on the circumstances and each time is different. Stretching a short distance..... say taking a nice quarter note and making it a half..... usually not a problem...... stretch the same quarter to 5 measures.... generally a total disaster. Reason being is a note held that long by a real player has subtle articulations in it that the stretch does NOT impart.

Using the Cakewalk groove clips is pretty seamless.... I have played around with them and yeah, they do drag out nicely. In my style of music, I don't have much use for groove clips.

On the latest song I have up currently in the User forum, I faced a similar issue on the last held chord. The real tracks had weird artifacts and I needed to pull the levels down rather quickly to avoid the majority of them being heard. That left me in the position of having a faded chord that ended unnaturally early and sounded strange. After trying several things to remedy the situation, none of which sounded any better, including regenerating the tracks, I opted to try something else.

I faded the tracks quickly to avoid the artifacts in the fade. I added a new synth track with a grand piano sample. I was thinking it would take several attempts at trying samples to get a decent match to the existing piano sound..... but as it turned out, I hit the chord on the last note and the new grand piano faded nicely.

So... the end of the story is, I try to find a way to avoid stretching audio.

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.