In this month's newsletter, we will continue our discussion of looping and editing techniques for background music loops for your website
Tune That Loop.
Having established appropriate start and end points for your music loop,we now need to fine-tune the loop so that we eliminate any audible clicks or pops when the loop goes from the end back to the beginning. This usually involves zooming all the way into a loop-view window where you can see the waveform rendered as a wavy line. The goal is to get the end point to meet the "zero" decibel line (i.e. silence) at the same point as the start point. While this may yield satisfactory results, an audible pop may still occur based on the different relative volume levels of the end segment and the beginning segment of the loop selection.
The Crossfade.
To correct this problem, we can implement a technique called "crossfading". A crossfade creates a short volume fade-out at the end of the loop and a short volume fade-in at the beginning, with a small amount of overlap between the two. The idea is that the volume differences between the end and start points will be averaged-out so that the result will be a smoother volume transition from the end of the loop back to the beginning. Most professional audio editing applications provide some sort of crossfade tool that allows you to set duration, slope and overlap of the crossfade. There is no magic rule for achieving perfect crossfades - some will need a very short crossfade of perhaps 50 milliseconds, while others may require a crossfade of 500 milliseconds (a millisecond, "ms" is 1/1000th of a second). Using the "undo" feature of your audio-editing application will allow you to experiment until you achieve the desired result.
In order to create a proper crossfade, you will need to make sure that you have not yet trimmed the audio file to the start and end points of your loop. This is because the crossfade function needs a small amount of audio before and after the loop to use as an overlap segment. If we did not have this, the crossfade would actually shorten the loop length (remember that it needs to overlap), and you would end up with a music loop that skips part of the beat when looping back. I suggest leaving at least 2 seconds before and after the loop to give you plenty of material to work with, and the option of adjusting your start and end points if necessary. Once you create a clean crossfade, you can then trim the file to the start and end points of the loop.
In our next issue, we will continue our discussion of editing techniques for creating great background music loops.
Until next time,
EZ Edit Music
EZ Edit Music was born out of the idea that web-designers and interactive advertising agencies often do not have the time or budget to hire a commercial composer to create a specifically-tailored soundtrack for their website; but have also found it difficult to find music that not only fits the necessary mood, but is also prepared in a format that is ready for internet streaming. All of our music tracks have been specifically composed and edited to be used as website background music soundtracks, saving you the time and cost of hiring a sound editor to prepare an existing licensed music track for internet streaming(which typically costs more than the license fee for one of our music tracks). Our music library is constantly growing and offers a wide variety of music to suit many different industries and services. We have also created a unique search engine to help take the guesswork out of choosing the right kind of music; plus the ability for you to audition and experiment with re-mixes for any song before you license a music track from us. We invite you to explore what we have to offer by visiting us at: http://www.ezeditmusic.com.
