Creating Drama with Call and Response

The essence of music is interaction. You can add tension to your song and create the impression of musicians playing together by playing different melodic loops one after another. This is known as "call and response."

You can stretch your melodic loops to match the song length, and then divide them into separate regions. You can cut and paste these regions to create the effect that the loops are answering each other.

Tips

Try different loops that feature the same instrument

You can create the sense that your loops are building a larger piece of music by placing loops that use the same instrument in sequence.

Steps

Offset the melodic loops from each other to add tension

Hold down the Shift key and click the guitar loop, and then click the piano loop.
Position the pointer in the upper-right corner of one of the loops and drag the loops out 16 measures.
With the guitar and piano loops both selected, drag the playhead to the beginning of measure 5.
From the Edit menu, choose Split. Notice that both the loops are now labeled separately before and after the position of the playhead.
Drag the playhead to the beginning of measure 9, and then choose Split from the Edit menu.
Click outside the guitar and piano loops to deselect them.
Click the first segment of the guitar loop and then choose Cut from the Edit menu.
Click the second segment of the piano loop and then choose Cut from the Edit menu.
Play your song and notice how the piano and guitar loops respond to each other.