Music Looping so easy it should be a crime.

[AntiRellik1]

Hello everyone. Mew3 Inc. is back. Well... kinda.
Okay, let's begin with the tutorial. I'm not sure if anyone has posted a tutorial like this before, I didn't find anything so here goes.

Things you will need:

-Your MIDI
-Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 (Old program, works like a charm in Windows 7 64 Bit too)

I'll explain in details later, but what we're basically going to do is open the MIDI you want to loop in Cakewalk. You will have to make 2 right clicks and you've looped the whole thing in 5 seconds. How?
We will insert 2 markers on the MIDI, One where you want the loop to begin and one where you want it to end. We're going to insert a marker where we want the loop to begin and name it with a left [ square bracket and insert a second marker at the end of the loop. We'll name the second marker with a right ] square bracket.
That's it. You put between square brackets [ ] what you want to loop.

Here's the whole process:

Spoiler:

1. May I present you with Cakewalk Pro Audio 9. Handy midi sequencer. Anyway, where we'll be working is on the top bar which I enclosed in a red box. In my case, I want the loop to begin at bar 19.

2. Since I'll be looping from Bar 19 til the end of the MIDI, I'll right click on top of bar 19 and I'll click on "Insert Marker", Like so:

3. Where it says "name" we will type in a left square bracket. So we type in " [ " and click "ok.
NOTE: It's possible Cakewalk won't let you type in the square brackets in the "name" textbox so what you'll have to do is type them in Notepad and then simply copy and paste in Cakewalk

We've now successfully set the beginning of our loop.
You will have a flag icon with a square bracket. The marker is completely moveable. You can drag it around anywhere you want within the MIDI.

4. Now we must mark the end of the loop. In my case, it's at the end. So, I went to the end of the MIDI which is at bar 53 and I'll do the same process again. Right click and Insert Marker.

Same process like I said, except this time we'll type in a right square bracket. We type in " ] " and we hit "ok".

5. Once you've inserted both markers, all you have to do is save your MIDI and insert it. Works PERFECTLY when the MIDI is inserted with Sappy.
You don't have to do anything else. You assemble the song in Sappy, play it and BANG. It just loops perfectly.
Now grab a tissue and wipe the sweat off your forehead. That was one hell of a job. So hard. lol.

Side note: If you're looking for a Sappy that actually works in Win7 64 Bit, get Sappy 2006 mod 17.1 - works like a charm. It's in french though, but who cares... you can open an english version of Sappy that crashes just to take a peak at what the menus say. ;)

Side note: If you're looking for a Sappy that actually works in Win7 64 Bit, get Sappy 2006 mod 17.1 - works like a charm. It's in french though, but who cares... you can open an english version of Sappy that crashes just to take a peak at what the menus say. ;)

I recommend Magnius Guide to Pokemon Music Hacking. Another thing I recommend is that each time you're going to export tracks within Sappy, use $T. Another important thing I'll also recommend is always insert your new song somewhere with a lot of free space. You lower your chances of screwing up your ROM that way. If you're new song is light you can probably insert it over the original... but you can unknowingly override one or two extra bytes and I can guarantee you in a 90% that you'll have problems with your ROM at some point. (You wouldnt want to realize you had screwed up your ROM when you inserted a track MONTHS ago, just when you're nearly completing the hack, DO YOU? xD xD). I'm exaggerating a bit, but it is true that you can screw up things badly, making the ROM crash the second music starts playing. And Sappy? Forget it, it'll crash upon playing any random track.

 

[Sniper]

Oh. But as Team Fail says, His thread were easier.
But still, It might help others. Good job.

 

[ipatix]

I somehow always had trouble with Anvilstudio because (for me) it always inserted the markers at the second track rather than the first (metadata) track, which Anvilstudio automatically adds for some reason.

Also can recommend SynthFont for doing that, although only version 2.0 supports inserting those events (2.0 costs money).

 

[AntiRellik1]

I posted the original of this here: https://www.pokecommunity.com/threads/292547

I used Anvil Studio for this, but I can add links to other programs that can insert markers for the loop points.

Sorry about that, didn't realize there was a thread for this (I even used advanced search).
I thought people were still using text editors to loop. lol

 

[Sniper]

Sorry about that, didn't realize there was a thread for this (I even used advanced search).
I thought people were still using text editors to loop. lol

I've been there, a very old method of looping.
But good thing tutorials like this came popping out and making it easier. ^^

 

[Varion Bluefire]

Yeah, the editing of s files was awful. I don't ever want to go there again.

I agree.
If it wasn't for this bookmarking method, I'd be a terrible Music Inserter, since I couldn't make heads nor tails out os s editing.

 

[ipatix]

Does anybody know if there is some place where to download or buy those old versions of Cakewalk? I had endless trouble doing the looping in Anvilstudio so I'm looking for (possibly free) software to do this for people who don't have SynthFont

The other solution would be if someone could teach me how to do this with Anvilstudio. I personally wasn't even able to insert the [] markers on the "real" first track (Anvilstudio hides that) and even on the others I couldn't insert these precisely (they always were off by a few ticks -.-).

 

[Wobbu]

The other solution would be if someone could teach me how to do this with Anvilstudio. I personally wasn't even able to insert the [] markers on the "real" first track (Anvilstudio hides that) and even on the others I couldn't insert these precisely (they always were off by a few ticks -.-).

On Anvil Studio's toolbar, click View -> Event List. To the right of the rewind, play, stop, and record buttons you'll see a drop down box that will display what track you're currently viewing. Select that box and choose <none>. This will take you to the "real" first track that I think you're referring to. Insert the [] cues and if they don't show up, click somewhere on the white screen and scroll with your mouse wheel.

 

[ipatix]

But how can I place these exactly to the end/start of the bars?
They are won't place accurate and are always off by a few ticks.

 

[Wobbu]

But how can I place these exactly to the end/start of the bars?
They are won't place accurate and are always off by a few ticks.

While viewing the cues from the event list, double click them and change the 'Time of event' parameter to the proper number.

 

[Varion Bluefire]

Does anybody know if there is some place where to download or buy those old versions of Cakewalk? I had endless trouble doing the looping in Anvilstudio so I'm looking for (possibly free) software to do this for people who don't have SynthFont

The other solution would be if someone could teach me how to do this with Anvilstudio. I personally wasn't even able to insert the [] markers on the "real" first track (Anvilstudio hides that) and even on the others I couldn't insert these precisely (they always were off by a few ticks -.-).

All you do is click "New Cue" at the end of the song, or where you want the song to end, and just types ']'
and then where you want the song to re-loop make a "New Cue" and type "[" and the loops is complete.
Insert to Sappy, and see if the loop is good enough, if not, rinse and repeat.

Easy a Pie.

 

[Chaos_Darkrai]

I was wondering if it could also play the loop over and over again to test it? Great tutorial, BTW!

 

[ipatix]

All you do is click "New Cue" at the end of the song, or where you want the song to end, and just types ']'
and then where you want the song to re-loop make a "New Cue" and type "[" and the loops is complete.
Insert to Sappy, and see if the loop is good enough, if not, rinse and repeat.

Easy a Pie.

Well, I personally don't use Anvil Studio. I was just asking for a friend how to do this with AS.