Sustaining a music chord

[Jeff Kirkland]

Probably the only way is to grab a section of the chord that works as a loop and paste it a few times. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It all depends what’s happening musical in and around the chord. Alternatively, you might throw a bit of reverb on the last note to add some sustain and a longer decay to fool the ear into thinking the final chord lasts a bit longer than it does.

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Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Evan Fitzer]

Brian, I’m wondering if this might be of some use…a handy little tutorial from an episode of Mac Break Studio from the guys at Ripple Training…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uismrA-h6tM&list=PLj5Nh9NxSxdlDLI_z-GBII8_vTXD7J5AL&index=143&t=0s

Evan Fitzer
Kamloops, BC

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[Brian Thomas]

Thanks SO much for the ideas gentlemen – much appreciated. I tried all sorts of different lengths of loops cut in slightly different places and I used a good selection of effects but there was always an underlying echo sort of sound to one degree or another. You know what I hit on in the end – I just retimed the actual chord to 50% of the normal speed. It kept the pitch (of course) and sounds perfect! Really happy, clever FCPX!

Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Tangier Clarke]

I’ve had this issue several times in projects where I just needed that last note or chord to hold a little longer. No amount of features in FCP X did what I needed to make it sound natural. Ultimately I went into Logic Pro X, recreated the sound for that one note or chord (as close as possible/passable), exported the audio file, then imported/edited that into my cut. Each situation may be unique though depending on the note/chord being played and for how long in the original, along with the attack on those notes.