The Song Never Ends

Hi all, I have created this little ditty in STP and need a way to end the song besides just fading out. Are the any "resolves" hidden in STP that I can't find? Any ideas on how to bring the music to a logical conclusion? Thanx Barry

Unfortunately, the question is too broad -- there are too many different ways to end different songs. However, a few of the tricks I use are:

a) Take out one or two instruments at a time. For example, if you have a standard two-guitar, one-bass, drums arrangement, and you have a main riff, then try taking out the snare first, then the kick and high hat, then finally take out the guitars.

b) Execute a very short fade at the "one" count of the last bar so that a phrase becomes just one note, a "stab" to end the piece.

c) Find a single snare or tom hit, multiply it to become a drum fill.

d) Some songs, especially in dance music, actually end abruptly at the end of a bar on purpose. Michael Jackson's "Bad", for example.

Because Soundtrack is loop-based, you won't find many graceful endings. I usually build in a gradual "thinning" of the arrangement and then do a fade at the end.


www.derekmok.com

in STP there are some sound bits that have a natural ending

look for them, you'll find them

but Derek is right, ending a piece of music requires that you know music composition

Some expert song composers don't like just fading out a song; they prefer an actual ending that's appropriate to each song.

Music, like a story, has to be composed with a beginning, middle and end.

It's not quite the same but there has to be structure ...

What I love about SonicFire Pro is that it puts the end on for you after you specify where the music should end.

Michael Horton
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Oh, hey, Mike, I have sonicfire also (the older version, but that feature works well, you're right);

but I forgot to mention that in STP there is a way to end a sound bite even if it has a hard edge at the end or a note that just goes on and needs to be connected to another note ...

You CONTROL click on the sound bite in the multi-track timeline, then select OPEN IN EDITOR.

In EDIT VIEWER you drag the cursor over the area you want a sound bite to fade out, for exmple if you want to have a fade out from the middle of the sound bite, you drag and HIGHLIGHT half of the timeline.

Then you go up to PROCESS and select FADE OUT. This action will fade out the sound bite.

Then you go to ACTIONS MENU and select FLATTEN ALL ACTIONS, and the effect will be processed.

Then you click on the TAB for the Multi-track timeline to appear and there you can play the sound bite and you'll discover that the sound will fade out at the half way point.

This way you can end the piece at any point in the composition. It usually works with any piece.