# YT tutorial ... how to properly loop drones and pads in Kontakt?



## Waywyn (Sep 21, 2018)

Hey guys,

I did a little tutorial but also with a little question mark in the middle!
Is this the best way you can loop without using any of the not really helpful looping tools inside Kontakt? For me yes, ... but I am always open for suggestions and comments! Thanks guys!


----------



## GeneraStudios (Sep 21, 2018)

I didn't watch the whole video, but that is basically what I do. There are two distinctions of what I do for loop type parts vs notes that I want infinite sustain on, I think you're asking for the loop type parts. 

Loops:
In my DAW I record or program the part to record 4X longer than 1 cycle, then I grab the middle two bars, that way the beginning has the ring out content from the end of 1 cycle and the end has the fade into the beginning of 1 cycle. Then I grab the new loop and add a teeny tiny fade in and fade out, and then test it by copying it after itself (there shouldn't be any pops or weird sounds). Then in Kontakt I set the loop from start to finish with no fade.

Infinite Sustain:
I record the samples as is, and bring them into Kontakt. Then in the loop editor I offset the beginning and end of the loop, and add a lot of crossfade (use your ears for this). Often there is a volume dip at the crossfade by doing this, but for polyphonic instruments it isn't noticeable as long as you add some variation to the loop length. If you do this to 1 sample you can click the gear icon and apply that loop to all samples. Then manually i'll go in and tweak the loop length a little bit randomly across the keyboard so if someone hits a chord the loop points aren't at the same spot, so the volume drop isn't noticeable. 

The loop method works pretty great for loop or riff based instruments (drum patterns too). The infinite sustain one can be improved if you manually edit the crosspoints to be at zero values for each sample with minimal fades, but this is very hard and very time consuming. So I just use crossfades and very long loops (sometimes up to 15 seconds, but the file size of your instrument goes up very fast when doing this, the better your crossfading the shorter you can make your samples, so its a tradeoff between your time and the instrument size).


----------



## Waywyn (Sep 21, 2018)

GeneraStudios said:


> I didn't watch the whole video, but that is basically what I do. There are two distinctions of what I do for loop type parts vs notes that I want infinite sustain on, I think you're asking for the loop type parts.
> 
> Loops:
> In my DAW I record or program the part to record 4X longer than 1 cycle, then I grab the middle two bars, that way the beginning has the ring out content from the end of 1 cycle and the end has the fade into the beginning of 1 cycle. Then I grab the new loop and add a teeny tiny fade in and fade out, and then test it by copying it after itself (there shouldn't be any pops or weird sounds). Then in Kontakt I set the loop from start to finish with no fade.
> ...



Great! Thanks so much for that explanation! ... but wait a second. So you are saying that if you applied all settings to one loop and click the wrench tool it automatically applies to the rest?


----------



## GeneraStudios (Sep 21, 2018)

Waywyn said:


> Great! Thanks so much for that explanation! ... but wait a second. So you are saying that if you applied all settings to one loop and click the wrench tool it automatically applies to the rest?



Yeah if you set the loop settings in the wave editor to a single sample, then click the wrench in the wave editor, select 'to all selected zones', then select 'copy current zone's loop settings', it will apply the exact same loop setting to all the highlighted samples. 

This was a HUGE time saver for me because I was about to go through 250 samples and apply loops, then I dug around for a bit and found that. Not sure what happens if all your samples are of drastically different lengths, but at least in the cases where all the samples are roughly the same length it works great!


----------



## Waywyn (Sep 22, 2018)

GeneraStudios said:


> Yeah if you set the loop settings in the wave editor to a single sample, then click the wrench in the wave editor, select 'to all selected zones', then select 'copy current zone's loop settings', it will apply the exact same loop setting to all the highlighted samples.
> 
> This was a HUGE time saver for me because I was about to go through 250 samples and apply loops, then I dug around for a bit and found that. Not sure what happens if all your samples are of drastically different lengths, but at least in the cases where all the samples are roughly the same length it works great!



to be honest you saved me a lot of hours of work! I was always looking for solutions and checking out tutorial after tutorial but there is noone really explaining some serious stuff inside Kontakt! Most of the time it is some guy importing a sine wav and creating some crappy 500 ms loop from it without saying anything


----------



## GeneraStudios (Sep 22, 2018)

Waywyn said:


> to be honest you saved me a lot of hours of work! I was always looking for solutions and checking out tutorial after tutorial but there is noone really explaining some serious stuff inside Kontakt! Most of the time it is some guy importing a sine wav and creating some crappy 500 ms loop from it without saying anything



haha yeah I think a lot of the tutorials for Kontakt i've seen on YouTube have been people with a different goal than what I think most people are aiming for on this forum. Kept finding tutorials for sample chopping melody or chord sections, but very few for how to create a fully fleshed out instrument - especially something high enough quality to sell.


----------



## downcrowd (Nov 2, 2022)

Waywyn said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> I did a little tutorial but also with a little question mark in the middle!
> Is this the best way you can loop without using any of the not really helpful looping tools inside Kontakt? For me yes, ... but I am always open for suggestions and comments! Thanks guys!



This was extremely helpful! Thanks for posting this!!!


----------

