Inside BATTERY, the Virtual Drum Instrument (continued) - Fun With Loops

Inside BATTERY, the Virtual Drum Instrument (continued)

Fun With Loops

There are several ways to use loops in Battery, from looping a single cycle of a drum sound to increase the sustain, to repeating a portion of a looped piece of music, to loading the cells with loops and playing them from a keyboard or sequencer.

Fig. 1 shows the FX-Loop module, which is where you set up these various tricks. Anything with looping begins by enabling the On/Off button.

Here some details on ways to apply this function. Note that if you have difficulty getting clickless loops, try enabling Snap. That aligns loop points to fall on places with zero amplitude, so there's no big amplitude change when the loop repeats.

REPEATING COMPLETE LOOPS

The settings in Fig. 1 repeat a complete loop for as long as the note triggering the cell is on. Loopstart goes to the beginning of the loop, while Looplength is set for maximum, and a Loopcount of infinity will keep the loop going.

You can also limit the number of repeats by adjusting the Loopcount parameter. Even if the note continues, the number of repeats will not exceed the specified amount. Re-triggering the note restarts the loop.

REPEATING A PORTION OF A LOOPED PIECE OF MUSIC

Fig. 2 shows how to use the FX Loop and Volume Envelope settings to repeat only the last two beats of a two-measure loop. Probably the easiest way to do this is to leave Loopstart at the beginning, then shorten Looplength until the loop is two beats long (or however long you want). You can then slide Loopstart forward, and the length will stay constant. In this example, the loop ends at the end of the sample, and starts 3/4 of the way into it. Audio example 1 shows what this sounds like with Loopcount set to 3 repeats.

If you place the loop toward the beginning of the sample and hold the note, the loop will repeat as specified. Upon reaching the specified number of repeats, or the note turning off, the rest of the sample past the loop will play through until the end

EXTENDING DECAY WITH A SINGLE-CYCLE LOOP

Listen to the two kick drum hits in audio example 2, and note the rapid decay. We can extend that decay artificially by looping the drum's tail, then controlling its amplitude with a volume envelope that has a long decay.

Here's a situation where Snap will definitely help find a cleaner loop. Adjust the Loopstart and Looplength to one cycle of the waveform (Fig. 3). Try moving the Loopstart point (with Snap enabled) to different cycles to determine if any loops sound better than others.

Set the volume envelope for a long decay and you get a really boomy, low bass drum, as you'll hear in audio example 3