To show how to use loops and accent sounds in Flash, IΓÇÖll use one of our recent projects, www.omniskywireless.com. For this, we created the sounds in GrooveMaker, optimized them in SoundEdit 16, then imported material into Flash and used the movie timeline to score the piece. As my intent is not to teach you every sound application inside and out, IΓÇÖll walk you through the important steps of making the tight loops from the raw source and the Flash implementation.
The loops I get out of GrooveMaker are great, except that theyΓÇÖre each 12-16 seconds long, which is just too big. So, I open these loops in Sound Edit 16 and crop the sound down as small as I can get it. I usually try making one main loop that is around 2 - 6 seconds.
First, open the large loop in SoundEdit 16 and select a shorter section within that loop that will loop fluidly.
Now copy that section to the clipboard, create a new file and paste the loop into the new file.
Now Select All and go the Xtras menu in option Loop Tuner. This allows you to step the beginning of the loop and the end of the loop to a point that the sound wave connects perfectly. This will allow the sound to loop fluidly with no nasty cracks or pops.
Save the file in .aiff format, as a .a .wav file or as .mp3. Flash 5 imports them all.
Now that you have a main loop, use the same method to create a handful of accent loops that should be simple effects, as small as you can make them. They can be percussion, drum and bass FX, or whatever. The idea is to add these sounds on top of the main loop to add depth to the sound experience and accent certain events within the Flash motion graphics. I try to make several sounds that are about one second in length and import them all. In the end, IΓÇÖll experiment within Flash and narrow it down to just a few.
