Smoothing Out a Straight Tone

[Jiggsawcreep]

I want to capture part of a short recorded tone and extend it for as far as a few minutes. I've been using the Repeat effect, but I can't manage to create a long tone that doesn't give me a chop-chop-chop sound.

For instance, first I'll record a single harmonic note from my guitar, maybe 10 seconds long. Then I'll zoom in on the tone's profile until I'm able to find part of it that looks completely even and I'll trim around that section. Now I've got a straight tone that lasts one second, say. Then I'll use the Repeat effect to make the note stretch for a full minute or so, but of course the piece I chopped off wasn't perfectlty symmetrical or uniform so now what I have is a one-minute straight tone that has a little chop in it at every one-second interval.

Is there any editing function I can use to smooth the tone out? Or is there an easier way I could be going about doing this? I've tried recording this as a line out from my acoustic guitar amp and as a line out from my electric guitar's Line 6 Floor Pod, each time running into my Presonus Firebox.

Thanks in advance!

[kozikowski]

No, it's the editing.

First make sure you don't have any DC or battery voltage on your show. Effect > Normalize > Remove DC level.

If you zoom waaaaaaaaay into the end of the clip on the timeline, you'll see that the tone consists of blue up and down waves. You get the click or pop when the wave motion is disturbed. Say the end of the clip is on its way down when you cut it, the beginning of the next clip had to exactly match the downward motion so there is no, or very little break.

Once you get a clip where the beginning and end match like that, you can repeatedly paste your brains out with no disturbance.

I think one of the versions of Audacity has a Zero Crossing Detector. This can go a long way to making the joining point inaudible.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

I think one of the versions of Audacity has a Zero Crossing Detector.

Yes but it's notorious for not working accurately (or even roughly well) - so Koz' manual method is probably the best way to go.

WC

[Jiggsawcreep]

Thanks for the replies.

So what I could do then (just to be clear) is:

1) Trim the section I want to repeat like I normally would.
2) Copy/Paste that section right next (but not connected) to the original.
3) Zoom in until I can see the individual waves.
4) Do some fine trimming to make the end of the original selection mesh with its beginning.
5) Delete the copied track and then repeat the original.

That should give me the uninterrupted tone I want? (I'd test it myself before posting this follow-up but I'm at work atm.)