Removing tails from drum loops

[magritte]

Hey guys. I am trying to take a short (20 second) drum loop and have it repeat. The problem is there is some transient tail at the end of the original loop. How do I remove that transient at the exact spot so when I duplicate the entire loop it is seemless? I'm using cubase if that matters, but I am more interested in the concept of how to do this. Right now I am trying to time it manually but there has to be a better method.

[vvv]

You could just do a micro-fade (like a manual gate).

You could cut the tail off and paste it on the front of the loop so it continues each time you repeat the loop.

You could start the next loop before the previous loop ends.

[kslight]

You just need to trim it off as close as you can get, then make a fade, and then add silence to make the loop the right length again.

Alternatively, Propellerheads Recycle is pretty good at giving you fast control over the transient and tails.

[Nick Sevilla]

You just need to trim the end until it is exactly the right length for your tempo.

Just zoom in, use your tempo grid view, or whatever gives you a grid to look at in your DAW while you do this.

You may or may not need to do a fade on the edit afterwards. Use your ears to listen for a nice clean transition through the next loop edit.

Sometimes these end transients are a result of shitty conversion algorithms. Typically I have found this the case more with Windows machines than any specific DAW.

Cheers

[RoyMatthews]

It also depends on the loop. Sometimes people add the "one" of the next bar of the loop so trimming right up to that last transient gets you the correct timing of the loop.

[digitaldrummer]

or if it sounds unnatural to trim it off, you could use 2 tracks and paste one segment every other 20 seconds - into a grid, checkerboard style. then maybe they will blend together?? just an idea... but hard to tell if it would work without hearing the loop.

Mike