How to make a loop sound less like a loop

[opethguy81]

Hey everyone, hoping someone can help me out here. I've been recording a metal tune with lots of different tracks of harmonized guitars. Since this was my first project I'd ever done with Ableton, I decided to do it in a loop based format so as to shorten down the time it would have taken to get down the entire lines with punch-ins, etc. I was very happy with the whole experience, except that when the riff restarts itself, you can tell that the loop has ended and restarted. What's even more curious is that there's two main riffs in the song, and this tell tale looping only affects the first riff, and not the second one. I've uploaded this song to lightningmp3 so you can hear it for yourself:
http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=10252
Anybody have any ideas? I'd definitely appreciate it

[laird]

Live doesn't crossfade the way something like ProTools does... still, corssfades can help those loop points sounds less obvious. You'll have to create at least one extra audio track to make a crossfade.

I do loop-based guitar recording, and I usually try to not loop at the start/end.... but somehwere in the middle.

Record your riff one and half times through , have it start on the start... but then set the loop start/end points at the 0.5 and 1.5 time-points. That way, that telltale loop point is in the middle, and much less noticeable.

Also, Live applies a very short fadeout at the end of all clips, and a fade-in at the beginning of all clips/loops. If you have 10 clips all looping/starting at the same time, you've got 10 fadeouts/fadeins all happening at the same time, which sounds like a very little hiccup. Offsetting these fades can help mask them.

Also, I haven't heard your mp3, but beware of effects that build on a sound, like reverbs or delays. If your loop starts off dry, and then gets wet.... you don't want to loop it from the start, or the reverb/delay will be cut off. Record your riff 2X, and set the loop points at 1.0 and 2.0 (and you might want to save the "tail" end, too. Before you set "loop" to on, take the reverb/delay/feedback sound that occurs after the 2.0 mark, and cut it. Save this little snippet of fade-out sound for whenever you stop your loop.

[opethguy81]

Well, I tried out the starting it in the middle trick, and that definitely did seem to help...I can't really tell completely though, because not all of the clips are long enough to do that with.

Now, in terms of offsetting the fades, could you go into a little more detail with that? Are we talking about the track delay setting at the bottom of the track? Sorry for being such a n00b about all of this

[laird]

nonono... ignore those offset settings.

what you have:

Loop A stop. Start Loop B stop. start Loop C stop.


Instead of just stopping loop A instantly, let it fade out.
And instead of just abruptly starting loop B at the end of loop A, let it start a little beforehand and let it fade up as loop A fades out.

DJ's do this, they'll cue up record B, get it playing at the same tempo, and slowly fade out record A and fade in record B... rather than just hitting stop on record A and play on record B. This makes for a smooth transition. You want the same thing

So in this random picture I found, your loop start/stop times might be at that red line, but what you really want is for the actual sound of one sample to start a little early, and the other to fade out.


[/img]

[laird]

PS, programs like ProTools and Cubase make crossfading easy. In Live, its not so easy... you gotta make (at least) two audio tracks (like in the picture above) and manually fade one out as the other manually fades in.

[Tzadik]

[4ace]

If you have any FX on the audio that'll give away the loop points everytime.

I think the start point in the middle of the loop is the best way around this IMO.

And also stagger the other tracks start points as well,this will give the track as a whole more life.

Good Luck