# How in the world do I do this?



## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

Is it possible to take a field recording and use a snippet of it to create a continuous tone with the same timbre? For example if I were to take the sound of a bird and record it, could I take that sound and extend it for a long period of time without sacrificing the timbre? The only way that I know of right now is looping the track which produces a repetitive effect, but has a strong attack at the beginning of each loop that destroys what I'm attempting to do.

Here is an example of the kind of thing I'm attempting to accomplish:






As you can hear, there is a continuous drone throughout the entire track, I believe that this drone was taken from a much shorter sound clip and spread out to the lengh that you can hear on the track. You can also probably hear that the drone isn't simply one simple tone, but a complex, more organic sound which makes me think that this was taken from some sort of acoustic sound origionally. This is what I'm trying to do, but the loop feature on garageband is not satisfactory since it produces a "loop effect" where I'm looking for a continuous "drone effect".

Not sure if anyone can help me, but if so please feel free to help me out, this is driving me crazy.

Thanks.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

What you have to do is loop only part of the sample. Ideally, the sample should be split into three parts: attack, hold, and release. The hold part should be quite short, and should be reversed with every loop. It should be played forward directly before the release. For example: Attack, hold, dloh, hold, dloh, hold, release. You won't be able to accomplish this with GarageBand very easily.

You could do this in Audacity by creating three tracks out of the sample: one for the attack, one for the hold, it's reversal, and their repetition(s), and one for the final hold and release. It'd be much simpler, though, if you could find a sampler to do that automatically.


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## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

So essentially I should layer a track and it's reversal over oneanother in order to level out the sound? Or do you just mean that I should alternate the tracks like "reverse,regular, reverse, regular" back to back? 

What sort of sampler would that be?


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

The easiest way to do what he's talking about would be to get a digital delay pedal with looping capabilities that has reverse delay to cut off the attack. I'm sure you're aware of how to get feedback out of your amp. You may also want a sustain pedal or some type of reverb, along with the delay. I've also read that some people play with volume off and slowly turn up the knob on their guitar. Might be helpful to invest in a volume pedal. Of course, you can get these pedals as physical pedals or on your computer.


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## juergen (Apr 9, 2012)

I would say, that the audio example you have posted is created via granular synthesis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_synthesis


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