Looping Music Tracks

[Michael Mcintyre]

Hard to teach a good ear on a message board but if you can’t find the drum beat on the fly, turn on waveform audio data in the timeline and trim that way.

So, play the track until you want it to loop again and add-edit or set an in. Cut in the top or trim back to the start of where you want to begin the loop. Match up a snare, bass hit, guitar chord, whatever and trim them to sync up in the timeline. Massage until it’s seamless. Fudge it with a short dissolve if you have to. Match frame from the head and you have your in-point. Option-match-frame from the tail and you have your out point. You could subclip that bit, drop it in the music bin and you’ve got your loop.

Having just read that, I don’t know if it helps or not. Definitely need audio-visual aids for looping.

[Grinner Hester]

I typicly have a intro or big swell of music up top then a back-timed finish. I hide the seam in the middle with a lil dissolve under some vo. When really wanting to loop a clip, I just mark in on a kick drum toward the end (on the sequence) and an in point on the same beat at an earliewr point in the clip in the source and repeat it. This is kind of like driving. It’s instinctual for some and ya just can’t explain it to others.

[Dan Archer]

These guys are spot on. The only thing i would add is the best advice ever given to me on audio cutting. Tap your foot. I swear it helps.

[Grinner Hester]

what?
man, you have to feeeeeel the music. You can’t do that just foot tappin’. No man, I’m talkin full on air quitar, fist in the air with a healthy “thank you good night!” when the track is finished.
When your head bangs, the potential in points are the ones where your head is actually banging… the front part.

[Michael Mcintyre]

Ditto to Lecherro:

I agree that foot-tapping can definitely help with timing. Sometimes, you gotta close your eyes too. Sounds silly but no amount of finessing visuals on top will take away what you ears hear underneath.

I also like grinner’s mention of hiding it under something else. Even if you don’t have V.O., you can use lots of nat sounda to hide music cuts. Door slams, door closes, crowd ambience, explosions, swish F?X, you name it.