Beating the Loop

The SWF File

Here is an example of the finished product. There are two tracks you can listen to that are a combination of the loops on the left. You can download this example at the end of the tutorial.

More often than not, you go to a website with a Flash animation and the whole music track is made of a single 2-second loop. This gets on anyone's nerve, no matter how good the loop is. We all know this is a necessary evil to prevent long download periods. One way to avoid this is to create different loops for different scenes. This is still going to give the feeling that the music becomes very repetitive very quickly. It also means that you have to create a lot of short loops that may or may not have a tying effect between the scenes of your movie. Another way of doing it might make your music flow a little better between your scenes. The idea is not new, composers have been doing it for ages.

What you need to do first is to get some music material (loops or original material you write). Arrange them in a sound editing software (such as ACID from Sonic Foundry) so that they are all playing at the same speed. Once your different files play at the same speed, you've got your foot in the door.