I’m looking for some tips and tricks for how to make very long tones. For example, I have a sample of a drone that lasts 10 seconds. I want it to play constantly, not retriggering, and not stopping (if possible). I literally have no idea where to start.
There are a few discussions and a lot of arguments on here about the best way to do this. The reason that it’s extra tricky is because you’re using samples.
I think that he only reliable approach is by manually setting up crossfades of appropriate duration for your given BPM in a DAW which are sliced dead center and then you essentially have two tracks in a constant state of play with the fades making it seamless.
Some people say the best results are when you record your audio from the loop point with the loop running so that any effects/reverb tails are always meeting up with each other and that way the loop point is less obvious.
I currently use an Octatrack, but what I like to do for drones on samplers is have a looping sample that doesn’t have a tremendous about of modulation, if any, could even be a SCWF, and then use the LFOs, filters, and FXs on the machine itself to add movement. This way you don’t need to focus so much on loop points or making sure you have enough variation…etc beforehand and can do all that dynamically, so it can be manipulated and performed on the fly. That may not be what you’re interested in, but my two cents.
Try setting the conditional trig type to 1st, turning loop on, the manually setting the start and end point of the sample until you’re happy with how it loops.
(It’s a bit painful adjusting the start/end point until there are no clicks because the DT2 doesn’t have auto zero crossing detection…)
Infinitely droning sounds without pops or clicks. I play several of them at once in this video:
