This question sometimes come to us
as: "Why is the music split up into 6 short pieces, rather than one whole
song?"
The reason we deliver our "set of music loops"
as a bunch of short loops rather than one whole track is that these loops are
especially made for web designers and Flash designers who wish to deliver music
over the internet as effectively as possible.
Of course, it would be great to have a 10-minute piece
of music that keeps changing and evolving, but the problem is, 10 minutes of
music takes a lot of disk space, web space, and most importantly - a lot of
data that has to transfer to the visitor's browser before he/she can hear the
music.
To solve this problem, most web/Flash designers prefer
to use short music loops that just loop around and around, sounding like a continuous
stream. The music may sound a little repetitive, but the short music loop can
be transfered over the net very quickly, and the visitor can hear the music
almost immediately with hardly any extra loading time. And on the internet,
speed of delivery is vital. Nobody is interested in sitting around for 2 minutes,
waiting for your site to load.
Another nice thing with the "set of music loops" is that you can
use a different loop for different parts of your site, so that the music changes
slightly when the visitor goes to a different area of your site, but it still
stays within the same song, so the change can be quite subtle -- giving a very
professional, slick impression.
If you find yourself in the situation of having purchased
the set of "loops only", but you now find that you need the full-length
tracks instead, there are 2 ways you can do this.
One way is to get an "upgrade" from us.
The full-length track typically costs $29.95. If you have already purchased
the $19.95 "set of music loops" set, we will be happy to arrange an
upgrade for you, in which you pay only the difference. Please contact
us for this.
The other way is to "do it yourself" and
construct a full-length song out of the loops. This has its advantages, because
you can actually "build" a version of the song that fits your purposes
specifically. You can have loop-1 playing 3 times, then loop-5 playing twice,
or whatever fits your purpose.
To build your own version of the song from the individual
loops, you need a decent sound editing program, such as SoundForge, CoolEdit,
WaveEdit, or similar. There are some good ones available, both commercial and
shareware. Try www.download.com and search for "sound editing" etc.
If you have a SoundBlaster sound card, you probably got a sound editing program
bundled with the soundcard. It's called WaveEdit or something similar and is
perfectly suited for the job.
To build up a full length song in the sound editing
program couldn't be easier:
- Open a wav file
- Select all the data (usually Ctrl-A)
- Copy (usually Ctrl-C)
- Open another wav file
- Make sure your marker is at the beginning or end
of the audio data
- Paste (usually Ctrl-V)
- ...and so on. Copy & paste just like if you
were working with text from various documents.
- Finally save your long audio file to a new WAV
file. (or AIFF file, if you're a Mac user)
This is how most of the "previews" here
on Shockwave-Sound were made - simply by copying and pasting different loops
onto the end of each other.
Back to the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
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