How to use your own sample in a song at the right tempo

Your own sample can sit in a song at exactly the right tempo if you add it to Loop by Zaweba as an audio loop. Use File > Add an audio loop, pick the file, and Loop keeps it under My loops in the library. From then on it is time-stretched to whatever tempo the song is set to, with its pitch kept, so it lines up with the bars like any loop that came with the app.

That is the short answer. The rest of this page goes through the steps, what Loop does to the sound behind the scenes, and a couple of other ways to bring your own audio in when an audio loop isn't quite the right fit.

What you need before you start

You need a sound saved as an audio file on your computer. It might be a drum hit you recorded on your phone, a guitar phrase, a bit of your own voice, or a loop you made in another program. Trim it so it starts on the beat and ends cleanly, because Loop treats the whole file as one loop and repeats it as it is.

You also need a song open. If you are starting fresh, File > New song asks for a genre and a tempo and gives you an eight-bar starter, which makes a handy test bed. Remember that the tempo is constant for the whole song and the time signature is 4/4, so the sample will be fitted to that one tempo.

Step by step

Choose File > Add an audio loop and pick your file. Loop stores a copy as a .wav file with a small .json file beside it in the app's data folder, so the loop is still there next time you open the app, even if you move or delete the original.

Open the loop library and look under My loops. Your sample is listed there alongside any riffs you have saved from the riff editor. Click it to preview it. Loop plays it in time with the song, lined up with the bars, at the song's tempo, so you hear straight away whether it sits right.

Drag it onto the grid. It snaps to the bars like any other loop. Drag the clip's right edge to repeat it for as long as you want, drag the clip to move it, or hold Ctrl as you drag to make a copy somewhere else.

Change the song's tempo later and the sample follows. That is the point of adding it as a loop rather than just dropping a raw recording onto a track: you are free to try the song a little faster or slower without chopping the audio again by hand.

How the stretching works

Note loops, the ones built from notes, simply play faster or slower. An audio loop is different, because it is a recording. Loop time-stretches it, which means it changes the length of the sound without changing its pitch, so a bass note stays the same note even when the song is quicker than the original recording.

When an audio loop has a key, Loop also pitch-shifts it into the song's key, the same way the built-in loops are moved into key when you drop them. If that is not what you want, for example with a spoken phrase or a sound effect you would rather leave alone, right-click the clip and switch key lock off for that clip.

Getting a good result

Stretching works best when the sample is close to the song's tempo to begin with. A phrase recorded at a similar speed will sound natural; one stretched a long way will start to sound smeared or grainy, which can be a nice effect in a lo-fi track but is not always what you want.

Clean edges matter more than you might think. A breath or a click at the start of the file will repeat every time the loop comes round, and silence at the end pushes the next repeat late. Trim in another editor first, then add it.

Other ways to bring your own audio in

You can drop an audio file straight onto the grid too. It is the quickest route for a one-off sound that you don't need in the library.

If you want to play your sample at different pitches rather than loop it, add a sampler track with Track > Add sampler track and drop the file on it. The sampler has a root key, looping, and attack and release settings, and you can then play it from the piano roll, a MIDI keyboard or your computer keys.

And if the sound doesn't exist yet, add an audio track and record it in Loop from a microphone or line input, with a count-in and the metronome, then take it from there.