Loop Destruction View

[Starship Krupa]

I decided to give Cakewalk's Loop Construction View a try. It's not gone so well. It did at first, but then things went into the hay in a big way.

I'm trying to use a 4 bar intro of an old rock song as my loop, and I've opened it in the Loop Construction View, hit the "Loop" button, set the correct number of beats, adjusted the pitch using that control. I dragged the loop onto an empty audio track, then opened the Loop Construction View and there it was. I 

It all looks fine and plays perfectly using the Loop Construction View's preview button, but when I engage Cakewalk's global Play it makes this horrendous plastic jackhammer sound like one of those old cheap aquarium pumps.

I tried exporting the project and it did the same thing.

Also, the fist part of the clip has one of those weird diagonal lines across it that Cakewalk sometimes puts on my audio clips for no apparent reason. I never know why they appear or how to make them go away, but they don't seem to hurt anything, so I've just written them off as a cosmetic thing. But I would kind of like to know if they mean anything, and if it's possible to make them go away, I would like to do that. While I'm asking here on the forum.

 

We're Floating Inside the Cloud.flac

Pretty trippy, eh?

It's not how I want it to sound, obviously. As you can see, there are no FX on the track except for kHs Limiter. There are no FX on the Master bus, which is where I'm taking the export from.

Please help me cure my project of Spurious Diagonal Line Syndrome as well as Cacophonous Aquarium Pump Syndrome.

[Helios.G]

21 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

I decided to give Cakewalk's Loop Construction View a try. It's not gone so well. It did at first, but then things went into the hay in a big way.

I'm trying to use a 4 bar intro of an old rock song as my loop, and I've opened it in the Loop Construction View, hit the "Loop" button, set the correct number of beats, adjusted the pitch using that control. I dragged the loop onto an empty audio track, then opened the Loop Construction View and there it was. I 

It all looks fine and plays perfectly using the Loop Construction View's preview button, but when I engage Cakewalk's global Play it makes this horrendous plastic jackhammer sound like one of those old cheap aquarium pumps.

I tried exporting the project and it did the same thing.

Also, the fist part of the clip has one of those weird diagonal lines across it that Cakewalk sometimes puts on my audio clips for no apparent reason. I never know why they appear or how to make them go away, but they don't seem to hurt anything, so I've just written them off as a cosmetic thing. But I would kind of like to know if they mean anything, and if it's possible to make them go away, I would like to do that. While I'm asking here on the forum.

 

We're Floating Inside the Cloud.flac 1.45 MB · 2 downloads

Pretty trippy, eh?

It's not how I want it to sound, obviously. As you can see, there are no FX on the track except for kHs Limiter. There are no FX on the Master bus, which is where I'm taking the export from.

Please help me cure my project of Spurious Diagonal Line Syndrome as well as Cacophonous Aquarium Pump Syndrome.

I haven't used cakewalks/sonars x's loop construction view in ages.  I'll say this.  What I do now a days is get the bpm of the loop working in my project, create the loop manually by hitting control L, then I make a region effect with melodyne and experiment with the different algorithms to see which one pitches the loop the best, least destructively.  Loop construction was useful back in the day when acid loops where being used a lot in music creation, but frankly we have so many tools that do that now, and with less artifacts, that I haven't even looked at it anymore.   Also, if my way of doing it doesn't work for you, you could also load up a vst for this like Serato sample or something similar.  Serato sample pitches things and stretches them with so little artifacts that sometimes people don't believe me when I let them listen to the original source clip.  Hope this helps. 

[Starship Krupa]

19 minutes ago, Helios.G said:

What I do now a days is get the bpm of the loop working in my project, create the loop manually by hitting control L, then I make a region effect with melodyne and experiment with the different algorithms to see which one pitches the loop the best, least destructively.  Loop construction was useful back in the day when acid loops where being used a lot in music creation, but frankly we have so many tools that do that now, and with less artifacts, that I haven't even looked at it anymore.

So it's kind of a dusty feature that is now of questionable utility?

If the alternative is Melodyne, though, yeesh. I get that it's the best tool for pitch correcting vocal performances or whatever, but it's been so user unfriendly to me every time I've ever tried to use it that I avoid it if I can. I'll roll the golden turds (as I call it) if I absolutely need to, but otherwise, no thanks.

I've started a completely new project using the same samples and so far no Spurious Diagonal Lines have appeared and I can hit the spacebar without unleashing the miniature chainsaw.

The pitch shifting from within the Loop Construction View seems to work well enough for my uses, although I still have to walk it in by ear. Since it's a guitar sample, I have A|A|S Strum Session on one track and just compare the chords in the sample to the ones I'm playing in Strum until they sound in tune.

Seems like there should be a better way to analyze and re-pitch a slice of music in this day and age, but whatever. I guess people acquire their samples by buying them in already in-tune form or something.

[Helios.G]

1 minute ago, Starship Krupa said:

So it's kind of a dusty feature that is now of questionable utility?

If the alternative is Melodyne, though, yeesh. I get that it's the best tool for pitch correcting vocal performances or whatever, but it's been so user unfriendly to me every time I've ever tried to use it that I avoid it if I can. I'll roll the golden turds (as I call it) if I absolutely need to, but otherwise, no thanks.

I've started a completely new project using the same samples and so far no Spurious Diagonal Lines have appeared and I can hit the spacebar without unleashing the miniature chainsaw.

The pitch shifting from within the Loop Construction View seems to work well enough for my uses, although I still have to walk it in by ear. Since it's a guitar sample, I have A|A|S Strum Session on one track and just compare the chords in the sample to the ones I'm playing in Strum until they sound in tune.

Seems like there should be a better way to analyze and re-pitch a slice of music in this day and age, but whatever. I guess people acquire their samples by buying them in already in-tune form or something.

Do you use wave plugins?  A quick and dirty way of doing the same thing I described before is to do the control L thing, and then instead of melodyne use waves pitchshifter.  It's not as "clean" as melodyne is for most things, but it works surprisingly well on a lot of material.  It also has different algorithms too, so if one sounds a bit wonky, you can try another.  I use that sometimes when I need to fit a part and don't want to fuss too much with it.  Try it.  

[Will.]

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I decided to give Cakewalk's Loop Construction View a try. It's not gone so well. It did at first, but then things went into the hay in a big way.

I'm trying to use a 4 bar intro of an old rock song as my loop, and I've opened it in the Loop Construction View, hit the "Loop" button, set the correct number of beats, adjusted the pitch using that control. I dragged the loop onto an empty audio track, then opened the Loop Construction View and there it was. I 

It all looks fine and plays perfectly using the Loop Construction View's preview button, but when I engage Cakewalk's global Play it makes this horrendous plastic jackhammer sound like one of those old cheap aquarium pumps.

I tried exporting the project and it did the same thing.

Also, the fist part of the clip has one of those weird diagonal lines across it that Cakewalk sometimes puts on my audio clips for no apparent reason. I never know why they appear or how to make them go away, but they don't seem to hurt anything, so I've just written them off as a cosmetic thing. But I would kind of like to know if they mean anything, and if it's possible to make them go away, I would like to do that. While I'm asking here on the forum.

 

We're Floating Inside the Cloud.flac 1.45 MB · 2 downloads

Pretty trippy, eh?

It's not how I want it to sound, obviously. As you can see, there are no FX on the track except for kHs Limiter. There are no FX on the Master bus, which is where I'm taking the export from.

Please help me cure my project of Spurious Diagonal Line Syndrome as well as Cacophonous Aquarium Pump Syndrome.

You have to set the loops key accordingly as well. I work daily with it but for some reason cant picture tge layout infront of me right now. 🤔 

Oh- yeah! Click on the  clip TAB within the LC view and enable it. Then, tweak the clip without any issues. I'm away from home and dont have a windows laptop with me. 

Edited May 8 by Will.

[Max Arwood]

I agree with Helis.G waves pitch is super light weight and good for +-2-3. 
Thanks Will I have never used loop construction but this good to know. 

[Will.]

18 minutes ago, Max Arwood said:

I agree with Helis.G waves pitch is super light weight and good for +-2-3. 
Thanks Will I have never used loop construction but this good to know. 

I use it a lot to change a key of an 808 or sometimes used it on vocals to fine tune to key. It is extremely limited, but it serve me daily with certain small edits.  Sometimes you dont need melodyne.  

Edited May 8 by Will.

[Max Arwood]

Thanks for jogging my memory. I forgot that regular kick can be tuned too. That could add a little something to a mix. I wish there was a plug-in that could track the  bass and add a little sub in the pitch of the bass when it hits. 🙂

[Xoo]

6 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

but it's been so user unfriendly to me every time I've ever tried to use it that I avoid it if I can.

This!  Melodyne has such a bad UI it's unbelievable.

[Will.]

20 minutes ago, Max Arwood said:

Thanks for jogging my memory. I forgot that regular kick can be tuned too. That could add a little something to a mix. I wish there was a plug-in that could track the  bass and add a little sub in the pitch of the bass when it hits. 🙂

There is. There are plenty out there. Waves got one. You can use Serum too. Though, if you can dive a little deeper in your "Sound Design" knowledge you wont need to use fancy plugins. 

You can even just use saturation, upward compression, parallel compression or the use of a multiband compressor to achieve that sub frequency. Theres literally thousand of techniques that you can use. You can even use just a distortion in the lower frequency region to bring out the thump. It all depend on the sound you're after. 

You can use two instances of XSampler (achievable with the Loop Construction too) to transpose one Kick to a lower register within the key and the other one to a higher register and blend the two together. Throw some distortion on it and EQ to taste. 

Edited May 8 by Will.

[Starship Krupa]

So I guess when I ask about using a Sonar feature and the replies are all about 3rd-party plug-ins and programs that do the job much better, it's safe to say that said feature is of little utility.😄

Well, that's good to know too.

There's at least one good trick that it can do, which is continuously loop the clip while the user adjusts the pitch and length.

It seems to me that at this point it could be repurposed more as an editor for a phrase sampler. Add a "reverse" button to it etc.

Can anybody tell me what the spurious line across the clip is? You can see it in the image I posted.

[Xoo]

Looks like a linear fade.

[Starship Krupa]

7 hours ago, Xoo said:

Looks like a linear fade.

It kinda does, doesn't it? It doesn't show up in any automation lane, nor can I adjust it at the left edge of the clip.

19 hours ago, Max Arwood said:

I wish there was a plug-in that could track the  bass and add a little sub in the pitch of the bass when it hits. 🙂

Unless the smile means you're kidding, you'll be pleased to know that there are a number of plug-ins that can do that.

MeldaProduction's MBassador is the first one that comes to mind. bx_subsynth is another.

Unfiltered Audio's G8 is a gate that can put out a MIDI note when it triggers, and I've long thought about using it in that way, to augment an acoustic kick or snare with a hit from a softsynth. Even the magazineware G8CM can do it.

[David Baay]

On 5/8/2024 at 6:13 AM, Starship Krupa said:

I'm trying to use a 4 bar intro of an old rock song as my loop, and I've opened it in the Loop Construction View, hit the "Loop" button, set the correct number of beats, adjusted the pitch using that control.

The spoken-word clip you shared doesn't seem to fit the description except for the motor-boating sound. The pertinent questions would be:

- How did the beat markers line up, and did you correct them if they weren't right?

- What tempo was detected, was it right, and how different was it from the project?

- How much much did you change the pitch?

I just did a quick test with a verbal count-in sample that I happened to have handy, and it worked fine but the Groove Clip algorithm worked better for increasing the tempo than decreasing it which is typical. I got a better result just slip-stretching it to fit the project tempo using the default Elastique algorithm, and then pitch-shifting it - even the DX Pitch Shifter worked okay for that.

[msmcleod]

Some videos on the Loop Construction View - some cover general groove clip stuff, but soon get into the Loop Construction View.

SWA Complete Sonar X2 (35/50)

SONAR X2: Get Started - Loop Construction View

Groove Clips and Looping-Cakewalk by BandLab Tutorial

[Starship Krupa]

6 hours ago, David Baay said:

The spoken-word clip you shared doesn't seem to fit the description except for the motor-boating sound.

It's actually 2 tracks mixed down. The dialog sample was left intact. The thing that's making the jackhammer sound was once a 4-bar intro from an old Fleetwood Mac song. It was supposed to have no processing on it except for a pitch shift.

6 hours ago, David Baay said:

I got a better result....

"I get better results by (using a tool other than Loop Construction view)" is certainly a recurring theme in these comments.

[David Baay]

55 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

"I get better results by (using a tool other than Loop Construction view)" is certainly a recurring theme in these comments.

Yes, but not because there's anything inherently wrong with the Loop Construction view, but rather that the Groove Clip stretching algorithm is not as sophisticated as Elastique. I believe it's based on REX, and the format has inherent limitations that make it better-suited to highly rhythmic material with sharp attacks and limited sustain (e.g. drum, bass and rhythm guitar/keys). Groove Clip looping is just not the right tool for the material in your example.

[Starship Krupa]

41 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Groove Clip looping is just not the right tool for the material in your example.

Ah, I guess I should have included the actual sample I was trying to work with rather than the "mix."

Mostly LCV did a good enough job putting in the markers, once I told it how many beats were actually in the sample.

I can't even repro the horrid result.

Here it is in MP3 form:

 

Edited May 10 by Starship Krupa

[Will.]

9 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Ah, I guess I should have included the actual sample I was trying to work with rather than the "mix."

Mostly LCV did a good enough job putting in the markers, once I told it how many beats were actually in the sample.

I can't even repro the horrid result.

Here it is in MP3 form:

 

 

What is the BPM of the project? 

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, Will. said:

What is the BPM of the project? 

70 or so.