Looping Sampled tones for synths

Anyone have any tips for finding loop points for synth tones to make them play continuously?

[Mario-C.]

if it's a continuous tone like a saw or a sine wave it's easy, just find the zero crossings and put the loop there, if it's a complex tone look at the waveform and search for a place that has more or less uniform amplitude and loop it there ...

hope I'm making sense

[Ethan Winer]

> Anyone have any tips for finding loop points for synth tones to make them play continuously? <

This is the art of sampling!

Seriously, I've looped hundreds if not thousands of Wave files for sample playback. Not so much synth sounds, but violins and cellos and trumpet sections etc. Sometimes you find a great loop point quickly, other times you realize you've been at it for 30 minutes and it still sucks. I'd think synth sounds will be easier to loop than acoustic instruments. If your time is worth more than $40 buy Seamless Looper here:

www.beatcreator.com

This is what I now use, and it works really well.

--Ethan

[sasha222]

xfade loop and reverse loop can make a loop sound smoother sometimes too. finding the right length for the loop takes trial and error.

Man, I've been thinking that I never really got into using my fantom rack. With the Roland piece you can use both your own samples as well as the internal and expansion card tones together to make patches. I'm thinking this should lead to some nice sounds since my own samples ALWAYS sound fuller than those on a Rompler. But I 've gotta learn to turn out loops faster (OR sample longer tones )

[jimmyz]

hi guys,

what, on average would you say makes a good loop length; when considering saving space etc.

5s or so...?

thanks

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by jimmyz

what, on average would you say makes a good loop length; when considering saving space etc.

It depends entirely on the samples!

--Ethan