Advice on Creating Music Loops
Short music loops are used by many music producers and film editors today in their media projects. Set in a specific tempo and key, music loops are of a single instrument such as a guitar and edited into 1 to 16 measure bits. Alternately, entire orchestrations or rock tracks can be cut into loops. The following advice will assist you in making loops that can be used by yourself or others in media productions.
1. First, determine what sort of loop you want to create before you record or program it into your DAW, better known as a digital audio workstation. You will either create a background loop such as piano chords or a melody such as a guitar riff.
2. Secondly you will need to record a performance that can then be cut into loops. Either use a microphone to capture a studio performance such as a guitar riff or use a software instrument to capture the playing in MIDI.
3. Thirdly, you may have to use eq to get rid of any offending frequencies that ruin the beauty of the loop you’re creating. An awesome flute phrase, for example, could be ruined by a terrible sounding air conditioner hum. However, if you use eq to get rid of the low frequencies you can keep the flute minus the noise.
4. Fourth, apply reverb and eq as you see fit and then mix down a rough sample of the loop repeated three times. Take this rough mix and then bounce down the middle loop of the three which will contain the reverb from the first and will result in a perfectly repeatable loop.
5. Create a stereo 48k 24bit .wav file of your recording for video editing purposes. This quality of file is highly valued by individuals and libraries that license sound effects and will earn good money.
With a little knowledge of audio editing, simply follow the above advice to transform your audio samples into professional quality sound effects for licensing in media productions.