Insider Tips: Stretch Out Your Music Tracks in Premiere Pro

Every week, Frame.io Insider asks one of our expert contributors to share a tip, tool, or technique that they use all the time and couldn’t live without. This week, Chris Salters shows how easy it is to stretch music tracks in Premiere Pro using reverb or the Essential Sound panel.

How to stretch your music tracks in Premiere Pro

Often in the trenches of an edit, the need arises to finish a music cue at a moment in the song that isn’t a naturally good stopping point. Here are two techniques for creatively stopping a song that may sound better than simply adding a dissolve and fading out the audio.

Create a ringout with reverb

This editing technique is advantageous because it’s not unique to Premiere and can be used in other NLEs as well.

Stretching music in Premiere Pro by adding reverb. — You can stretch music in Premiere Pro by adding reverb.

Here’s the process:

First, find a good beat or note in your song to end on and cut that portion of the song.
Nest that clip in its own sequence (right click > Nest).
In the nested sequence, Alt+drag the clip a few seconds down the timeline and disable the duplicated clip.
In the original timeline, add the Reverb effect to the nested clip and adjust settings to your taste.

Stretch audio duration

In many cases a music cue will have a good beat to end on, but maybe it just needs to have a longer duration. Use the Essential Sound panel in Premiere Pro to magically extend the length of almost any audio.

Using the Duration Stretch tool in Premiere Pro’s Essential Sound panel to extend the runtime of your music bed. — You can use the Duration Stretch tool in Premiere Pro’s Essential Sound panel to extend your music’s runtime.

Here’s the process:

First, find a good ending beat and cut that portion of the song.
Open the Essential Sound panel (Window->Essential Sound).
Select the newly cut clip and in Essential Sound, click Music and check Duration.
Change the mode to Stretch and enter the desired duration.

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Insider Tips: Stretch Out Your Music Tracks in Premiere Pro

How to stretch your music tracks in Premiere Pro

Create a ringout with reverb

Stretch audio duration

Thank you to Chris Salters for contributing this article.

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