Has anyone made their own acoustic guitar loops?
I want to try and make a library of simple rhythm loops in various keys. Now I imagine that I should record a number of bars of each chord so that they line up with the bar boundries, and then split them at the zero crossing points to avoid clicks. I will then have a number of samples at a fixed tempo and key which can be saved.
 
What do I now do to make those samples able to be used at different tempos, within reason, to act like "acidized" loops? Is this even possible in Sonar? My limited understanding of "acidized" loops is that they will stretch or shrink to follow the host tempo and also are able to be raised or lowered a couple of tones.
 
I eagerly await hearing of anyone's experiences.
 
 
 
 

(Bearing in mind that I'm still on Sonar 8 and things may have changed) - when your clip is how you want it, right click and select 'groove clip looping'. It takes a bit of trial and error to get it to work, and I've not had much success with anything longer than a two bar clip.

You can also set these up using Strum Acoustic and midi if you have Sonar X3 Producer.  I assume you want to use this as a songwriting/arranging tool.  If so, that would probably work well.

dwardzala
You can also set these up using Strum Acoustic and midi if you have Sonar X3 Producer.  I assume you want to use this as a songwriting/arranging tool.  If so, that would probably work well.

Yes, it is about quick songwriting/arrangement, however my keyboard skills are virtually non existant, which probably rules out midi based solutions.
 
I have tried Googling for information, but while there are many sites offering loops of all kinds, I can't seem to find anything on their creation.

Ok, I have made and edited my clip and read the manual references and watched some tutorials on Cakewalk and Youtube. But...... I am missing something.
 

jamesg1213
  - when your clip is how you want it, right click and select 'groove clip looping'. 

I can't seem to find that particular command.
 
My clip wont stretch or roll out or do anything but play just it's one bar length. I can't seem to get anything happening in the Loop Construction editor. After watching the tutorial clip in the Cakewalk videos, it appears to be only for existing loops, not for construction of new ones.
Is it possible to make groove loops in Sonar? What am I missing?
 
 
 
 

jamesg1213
(Bearing in mind that I'm still on Sonar 8 and things may have changed) - when your clip is how you want it, right click and select 'groove clip looping'. It takes a bit of trial and error to get it to work, and I've not had much success with anything longer than a two bar clip.

It still works that way in X3. It's dressed a little different, but it's functionally the same as it's been since Sonar 4.
 
Optimus, yes, you can create new loops from your own material in Sonar. It's not difficult, but as James noted, it can be tricky.
Tell us what you've done (please give details). and we can try to fill in the blanks.

This is so frustrating. I have a clip which when clicked will open the Loop Construction pane ... then...... nothing works.
Yes, it plays, but none of the options are available. The Loop button is greyed out, nothing in the tabs works and nor does the No Slice button work and the Beats and BPM indicators are greyed out.
The ruler shows only numbers and there are no markers to be had.
The only thing it does is loop around itself. Bleh.......

optimus

dwardzala
You can also set these up using Strum Acoustic and midi if you have Sonar X3 Producer.  I assume you want to use this as a songwriting/arranging tool.  If so, that would probably work well.

Yes, it is about quick songwriting/arrangement, however my keyboard skills are virtually non existant, which probably rules out midi based solutions.
 
I have tried Googling for information, but while there are many sites offering loops of all kinds, I can't seem to find anything on their creation.

You can create them in the Step Sequencer (point and click) pretty quickly and save a one measure sequence for each chord/strum pattern.  Then just drag and drop them in where you need them.

Hi, Optimus. Not sure why this is giving you a hard time but it should be rather easy. I just went and tried it out to make sure I remembered how to do it.
 
I'm going to assume you have recorded your clip to a metronome so it matches up to the timeline and that you have used your Snap settings to trim the clip to fall within a measure, beat or whatever musical time based period you want the loop to be AND that you have "Split at zero crossings" set in Preferences OR you have made sure the beginning/end of the clip have been faded appropriately to avoid pops when looped.
 
1) Select the clip you want to loop.
2) Right click the clip and select "Groove Clip Looping" from the context menu OR simply press Ctrl + L
 
Your clip is now a Groove Clip. If you drag it out it should repeat and the start of the next instance should appear at an exact Beat, Measure, whatever on the Timeline.
 
Now here is the part that might be causing you problems. If you want the Groove Clip to follow any time changes you have to...
 
3) With your clip (and only that clip) selected Press "I" to open the Inspector
4) Click the "Clips" tab at the top of the Inspector window
5) Click where it says "Groove Clip"
 
This will show you the Groove Clip options for the selected clip. You can see various information and options for the clip.
 
6) Checkmark the option that says "Stretch to Tempo"
 
Now if you change the project tempo the clip will adjust to follow the new tempo.
 
You can do this with any audio clip. You can export it to a special folder on your hard drive (that you create) and then just drag it into any project you want. I am not sure if the Groove Clip info will follow it (in which case it should simply follow the current project tempo) but you can always drag it into a project as is and use the Timing Tool to make it fit in time where you want.
 
You will need to render any time stretched audio though to avoid artifacts (what you will hear is Online rendering... what you want is to Bounce to Clips so you are using Offline rendering which produces much better results). Also advance Audiosnap features can let you do some really crazy stuff as does Loop Construction but simple looping is... well pretty simple.
 
Cheers.

Oh and as far as raising and lowering tones there... in that Groove Clip section of the Inspector you can set the base tone of the loop (in your case if you were playing a G Major just set it at G). That way, TECHNICALLY if you changed that it would increase/decrease in pitch appropriately. I can't speak to the accuracy of that as I have never tried it. You could also try Melodyne for such mayhem which Craig Anderton wrote a post about in the Tips thread in the Sonar forum. It is worth a read. I can dig it up if you want but I should go do some of my own mayhem.
 
Cheers.