RadioEdu Week 08

Friday, November 15th, 2013 by WLOY Staff

Concepts: Introduction to Loop Editing (Cutting and Layering), EQ/Hi/Lo-Pass Filters, and Composition

This week we took our audio editing in entirely different direction – cutting and layering loops to create soundbeds! The students had been asking about working with more music files as source material for their editing, and John was able to provide us with ample audio loops for the class. We began the introduction by playing through the audio libraries and the students picked a drum break that they really liked. The next step was to choose some melody, and they picked a great ethereal sample of a Rhodes keyboard. This served as our basic introduction, but later in the afternoon we expanded on the concepts, including advanced editing as the students delved into cutting and manipulating segments of the loops.

Having effortlessly mastered the concept of looping within 15 minutes, the students created an audio track with a basic drum break on loop. I used this as an opportunity to demonstrate how EQ and Hi/Lo-Pass filters work. The class was able to really hear the impact that these effects have on a track with repeated source material such as a drum loop.

The project for the week was for the students to begin thinking about creating their own introductions and soundbeds, and the proof of concept was for each student in the afternoon session to create their own 30 second composition through layering and manipulating the loops. I allowed each student to pick their source material and gave them completely free reign to cut and arrange the loops as they saw fit. The results were incredible and vastly different! What is truly impressive about these selections is that the students didn’t merely layer the pre-existing audio loops. They selected their source material and then proceeded to load the source files into an audio editor and select segments that they particularly liked and cut the audio and paste it onto a new track, creating their own unique rhythms and sounds from the source file, creating a new groove and feel from the pre-existing audio source! This required a high degree of precision, as the process of cutting audio in an editor is inherently difficult, as is segmenting it to create a solid groove over a drum beat.

M’s Loop
[audio:WLOY_RadioEdu_Miracle_Loop.mp3]
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J’s Loop
[audio:WLOY_RadioEdu_Justice_Loop.mp3]
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