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. Second, either record or program the loop material. Use a virtual instrument to record a performance in MIDI or record with a microphone.
3. Third, some frequencies may affect the quality of your loop and you should use eq to get rid of this sonic annoyance. A great sounding violin loop, for example, may be compromised by an offending air conditioner. But, by cutting all frequencies below 200Hz you can get rid of the AC and keep the beautiful violin.
4. Fourthly, after using your chosen eq and reverb line bounce down a rough sample of the loop played three times in succession. Next, bounce down the middle part piece of the three part rough mix to create your final single loop which has the reverb throughout from start to finish and loops perfectly
5. For video editing purposes, create a loop with a 48k 24bit sample and bit rate in stereo. Libraries and individuals who license your loops with value this format over all other since 48k is ready for use in video editing.
The above steps provide a simple but effective outline on the process of creating high quality and sell-able loops from your audio samples for distribution in professional loop libraries.
