I have a neat little sound clip that i have cut but i cant seem to get the right tempo to loop it and carry it for about 5 minutes. Any takers on a little task? I love uploading videos of my snakes i breed and wanted to have a little catchy tune to go with it. Im a noob to audacity and im sure these types of questions get asked alot so if it annoys you im sorry but if u can help id appreciate it
How are you looping it? You know you can’t loop MP3’s right? MP3 files follow television frame boundaries whether or not the rhythm works out.
There isn’t enough. We need one more phrase at the end. The track ends before the rhythm pattern resolves.
Koz
Yes, I was typing while Koz was, and agree the transition at the end is too short compared to the one in the middle (between the two phrases).
If I was doing it I would zoom in, Edit > Find Zero Crossings, delete the first 7 milliseconds of silence then File > Export as WAV.
File > Import > Audio… the WAV, then work on the WAV (for the reasons Koz gave).
Unless you really want the first half second for putting at the end, I would Edit > Find Zero Crossings, then delete that first half second. it will be more steps to keep it.
Use Selection Toolbar and enter 10.768 s for “Start” and 11.836 s for “End”, and Find Zero Crossings again. Edit > Copy, then press K on your keyboard to move to the end of the track. Edit > Paste. Then try SHIFT + Space to loop play that. I don’t get any clicks.
To be more professional you could select a bit before 10.768, Edit > Duplicate it to a track underneath, drag the duplicated bit to almost the end of the track then cross fade the start of that into the current end - see http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/User:Stevethefiddle/Fade_and_Cross_Fade#Creating_a_Crossfade .
Others may suggest you split the track in two and drag the parts back on each other but I will leave others to describe that.
Gale
Cheating 
The two halves of the original are not quite the same. Yours is a little smoother at the turnover point though.
Gale
…for “Start” and 11.836 s for “End”, and Find Zero Crossings…
I’m going to have to lie down for a minute.
I just duplicated the track. Edit > Duplicate.
Slide the new track to the right with the Time Shift Tool (two sideways black arrows) and play it. No matter where you slide the second track, it never matches the rhythm. The top track ends too early. I find myself filling in one or two beats in my head.
By the way, I’m not of the school that you have to match zero crossings. As an experiment, I cut a 63 minute dance sequence by simply matching beats. In a dense, loud presentation like that, cross matches are a complete waste of time.
Koz
Agreed, that’s why I deleted a bit from the front and added a bit at the end. Then the two halves pretty much matched.
I don’t think the subject track of this is dense and loud? I am of the old school, just to promote good practice, even though you don’t have that good a chance that find zero crossings will work on both channels of the stereo track.
Gale
Yes 
There’s nothing wrong with cheating in art or music.
I didn’t have time to write up details last night - the typing would have taken considerably longer than making the loop.
As everyone has said, the sample is a bit too short to easily make a 2 phrase loop so I looped just one phrase.
To make a smooth 2 phrase loop from that sample it would be necessary to take a bit from the middle, cross-fade that with the end, and a bit from the middle and cross-fade that with the start. Because you then have the same bit from the middle at each end, the entire 2 phrase section can be smoothly looped. This is probably a bit tricky for someone new to looping, but it can be done quite effectively:
Method used for the shorter loop posted earlier:
The easier way is to just loop with what is available. If the original sample had been a bit longer I’d have used this method across the full 2 phrases.
There is a split line visible at the right end of the first track. That is will be the end of the loop.
I’ve taken a short section from immediately after that split point and moved it to the beginning of the loop, then cross-faded with the beginning of the loop (highlighted selection)
thanks everyone, steve whats a flac file?
FLAC is an audio format. It is a “lossless” format (no loss of sound quality, just as good as WAV) but is about half the size of a WAV file.
Audacity can open FLAC files, either by dragging and dropping the file onto an Audacity project, or “File menu > Import > Audio”.
Windows Media Player does not support FLAC by default, but there is a plug-in available for Windows Media Player to give it support for FLAC: Directshow Filters for Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Theora and FLAC: Home