Scorbit – Layering & Looping in Interactive Music

Oliver Getz

Is there a reason why you do not use “Bounce 2nd Cycle Pass”? It just seems less time consuming. Especially when working with a lot of tracks/stems.

Chris

@Oliver Hey Oliver, thanks for pointing this out. To be honest, I’ve always done this the old school way and have never used the Bounce 2nd Cycle Pass function. Upon further review, it seems to do the job well, though it doesn’t seamlessly take care of pops due to looping at non-zero crossing points, so I still brought it back in to clean those up. It only works when bouncing in real-time (as I’m sure you knew), but I probably won’t go back to the old-school method 🙂
Thanks for improving my work-flow! I’ll make an amendment to the video to point out this function.
- Oliver
  
  Any time! Glad I could help. I usually bounce in real-time to listen for errors with my work, and so there have not been any clicks or pops at the beginning or end while using Bounce 2nd Cycle Pass. It is still useful to know the old school method though, as not all DAWs have this feature. Thanks for a great tutorial! 😀
  - Chris
    
    You’re welcome Oliver! What other types of tutorials would you find helpful to have as a resource here?
    - Oliver
      
      I think it provides great insight when established composers break down some of their earlier work, both technically and their thoughts on the process. Also, good panning and EQ is something I would like to learn more about.

Jason

That last section was so helpful for my entry to the 1st Scorbit contest! Is there a reason you listen in Audacity instead of Logic? I’ve created zero-crossing points in my layer 1 stem, but when I duplicate the region or loop the first 16 bars I still hear a pop. When I extend the region with the loop cursor I no longer hear a pop. I’m assuming this is why you use Audacity to double check?

Thanks for the great tutorial

Jason

It might be useful to comment on mixing/mastering stems if you’re still planning on making an amendment. I put a limiter on my master bus and mixed my 3 layer track that way. When I bounced my stems separately, my stems had more headroom in the limiter and now when I play them simultaneously post-bounce I’m clipping by about 4 dB. In the future I suppose it would make more sense to put a limiter on each stem?
- Chris
  
  Good thought on a follow up tutorial. By the way, anytime you want to make a tutorial request, fill out this form: http://www.scorbit.org/request/
  Regarding the clipping, my first thought would be that perhaps your normalized the stems while bouncing. I know in Logic you can check or uncheck this option (what’s your DAW?)
  This is definitely not what you want, as normalizing each stem not only destroys your mix the way you intended it, but would also drive the gain up when layered with the other stems. Bouncing each stem “as is” should fix this without a need to use limiters. Let me know if this helps…
Chris

Hey Jason, no reason for Audacity over Logic. Everyone has their own workflow – I actually always find it interesting to see how different people do things.
I actually really love Logic’s audio editor, I just find it reassuring when you bounce out audio, and it works in other environments as well.
Regarding the “pop”, if you really got the start and end of the audio file at a zero-crossing point, there shouldn’t be any noise on the loop. When you bounced out, did you include the effects tail, or did you do an exact bounce at the loop region start and stop? You could open the bounced loop stem, and fade in and out the first and last waveform to take care of the pop.
Let me know if that helps…

Kevin

This was great!!! The small but necessary details of Zero Crossing Points and Reverb Tails are something that I haven’t thought about before.

Chris

Thanks Kevin! Yes, I’ve had to learn these things the hard way with nasty clicks and pops, and not-so-seamless loops 🙂

Matthew

Hi Chris!! Just got the chance to have a go at the competition. Just wondering about something. I bounced all my stems and I have them looping nicely using the audio tail and everything. The only problem is that when I play all the stems together, i am clipping by about 2.0 dbs. What would be my best option? Thanks a lot!

Chris

Hey Matthew, that’s great, I’m glad you’re participating! My first guess would be that you are inadvertently normalizing when bouncing each stem. If so, definitely disable this, as you want to preserve relative volume between the stems. If they are all playing together in your DAW, and the main output isn’t clipping, you should be fine. If the problem persists, you could nudge down the volume a touch, or if you don’t want to lose perceived volume (as may be the case if you were working on a game project and you want the music to still “sound” loud), than you could explore your options with bouncing out through compressor or limiter settings. Let me know how it goes…

Matthew

Thanks for getting back to me! I totally forgot to mention that I have a mastering plugin on my master track. Then I solo each stem for bounce. Then I am left with 3 mastered stems. When I play these mastered stems together, then it clips. Without mastering, my volume levels don’t clip, but it is far too quiet. I apologize for not mentioning that in my previous message.

Chris

Hey Matthew,
Sorry for the delay. I think what’s happening is that when all three tracks hit the mastering plugin together, there is more “traffic” so to speak, more volume going through the funnel, driving the volume down so it’s not clipping. Then when you send individual tracks through the same mastering settings, it doesn’t need to compensate as much. Therefore, when all three bounced tracks are played back together again, they are all a bit louder, driving the total output to clip when playing together. I’d suggest disabling any compression/limiting plug-ins on the master track. If you want to use your specific mastering plug in, you could put three separate instances of it on your individual tracks, then whatever is going through the output is the same as it will be when you bounce out individual tracks. Does that make sense?

Matthew

Oh no problem Chris I think I follow what your saying. I disabled the mastering plug in on the master track and tried putting separate instances of the mastering track on each stem. However, it was still clipping for some reason when I tried to play them all together after bouncing them individually. I messed around with some stuff and found a little work around some how haha I don’t know why it isn’t working for me. It is very strange. Maybe it is my Ozone 4 plugin. It can be kind of finicky sometimes. Anyways, I just submitted my stems for my first entry, so we are good to go! Thanks Chris!

Kevin

I have a general question about reverb tails. I have a reverb tail that I’m bringing back to the beginning of a loop of an orchestral piece. The result is that the loop sounds amazing, but when you start the track from the beginning, it has a little blip of the reverb decay. Is this normal? It’s difficult to find the right balance between seamless loop and having it start ok. Does this make sense? Thanks!

Chris

Hey Kevin,
Yes, that is the challenge, particularly if there is some harmonic dissonance, like if you end on a V7 chord, then have the reverb from that overlapping on the I chord at the start. There isn’t a great solution for this as that reverb tail is necessary for the seamless effect. A few things you could try:

-thin out your composition in the last few beats at the end right before the loop so that there is less to reverberate
-change the end of your composition so that it is utilizing the same instruments, in the same range, on the same chord degree
-use less reverb so it’s not so obvious, or automate the reverb so that the amount subtly drops down at the end
-take the reverb tail and fade it out so that it doesn’t last as long

On the implementation side, you could see about having the audio fade up when it first comes in so that the beginning isn’t jarring
One thing to consider – it likely is more obvious to you than it would be to anyone else, including the game developer. They may not even notice at all.
Would you be willing to post up the audio file, maybe with one loop iteration? You could put it on soundcloud (or elsewhere) and embed here.

Anyone else have suggestions?
- Kevin
  
  Thanks so much for all the info Chris! It’s for the game comp so I’d rather not post it. 🙂 I’ve been working on it for a few hours and have gotten it sounding good. It was just a matter of thinning out the end, like you mentioned, so that by the time it loops back around the problematic part is mostly faded out already. Sounding good! Can’t wait to submit it! I’ll probably have it done by next weekend. Thanks again!!!!
  All of your suggestions are super helpful and I’ll keep them in mind moving forward!

Kevin

Thanks so much for all the info Chris! It’s for the game comp so I’d rather not post it. 🙂 I’ve been working on it for a few hours and have gotten it sounding good. It was just a matter of thinning out the end, like you mentioned, so that by the time it loops back around the problematic part is mostly faded out already. Sounding good! Can’t wait to submit it! I’ll probably have it done by next weekend. Thanks again!!!!

All of your suggestions are super helpful and I’ll keep them in mind moving forward!

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Layering & Looping in Interactive Music