Acid for Dummies

[geekformayor]

ok, i have some questions about acid..

1) Is there a way to change the key of a song while its playing, so it's not the same key all the way through?

2) is there a place to download other samples and whatnot?

3) is all the acid stuff public domain? i mean, you can use it to make your own songs without going to jail?

thanks guys!

[AlChuck]

You can change the root pitch of a loop or portion of a loop; this is how you can make chord changes and change melodic pitches. I don't think there is a way to globally change it for all the tracks.

First place to look for loop samples is ACIDPlanet.com -- they put up a new "8-pack" of loops every Friday afternoon. There are good ones to be had at http://www.pocketfuel.com too.

I think it's all public domain (except for loops you might have gotten illegally), but I'd read the legal disclaimers if I were you.

[SPINSTERWUN]

2) You could do a search on the net for some more samples. Do a search at Metacrawler. http://www.metacrawler.com

You could also sample some of your records etc.

BUT.... You must make sure you "chop the sample up" to make sure it is unrecognizeable! Because if you put the material out for release, you might and will probably get sued. Or you will need to "clear" the sample (but that is another thread, entirely).

peace ....

spin

[gec]

ahhhhhh spin spoken like a true sampler.........chop it baby


For real geek,

Yes you can use Acid loops to make your own songs and copyright it in your name without owing Sonic Foundry a piece of the royalty.

But, I can tell you this nothing turns my hip hop sensors off when I here a track that is completely mixed with acid loops esp. the common ones evryone uses. Acid is a great program, I use it mostly to arrange my compositions

[Brad]

You can change the key of all tracks at any given point in ACID Pro. I don't know about the junior ACID programs. You can make tempo changes this way as well. Put your cursor where you want to make the key or tempo change, select insert, select KEY/TEMPO MARKER, a dialog box will appear - select your key/tempo change. If you just want to change key, leave the tempo box alone. And vice versa - if you just want to change the tempo, leave the key change alone.

ACID loops are NOT public domain by definition - but you can use them any way you want and indeed copyright your compositions without paying any royalties. You pay your license fee to use the loops in perpetuity when you shell out $30 - $40 a CD. Just don't go trying to resell the loops as they are claiming them as your own or selling them under a different name. I bought a CD of supposedly original loops from a guy on eBay - turns out, he just copied a bunch of loops from already existing ACID CD's - illegal. Don't do that. Same rules for the pocketfuel stuff.

geekformayor, if you have $20 - $30 to spare, you might want to get your hands on a book called "Teach Yourself ACID 3.0 in 24 Hours" - it is published by the SAMS "teach yourself..." company - great book if you use ACID a lot.

Brad

[gec]

Hey geek,

acid is worth the investment, cheap and you will find a use for it

[SPINSTERWUN]

Originally posted by Brad
geekformayor, if you have $50 - $100 to spare, you might want to .....

.... give it to me. I could give you expert consultation.

p.s. Dem' jus' jokes

[Yadi]

Ahh...Brad..my favorite "go to" guy for this Acid stuff. I just wanted to thank you for your recent help.

I've been doodling with the Drum Tools CD looking for that completely realistic drum performance (acoustic mind you). I also find it great using it like a drum machine and utilizing the audio recording feature...just for my scratch ideas....I mean...I get an idea in the living room.. say a ripoff melody from the television...and I get it down in my studio, within a 1/2 hour. Freshness is best.

I'm starting to get curious about software samplers, triggered by midi (I have a Roland TD-5) drum tracks. Are people doing this succesfully? Is something like gigsampler good for this? I'm migrating to Sonar soon and don't really know if there is a good compatability with Giga.

How is that Jim Croce type song? When can we hear it?

[Brad]

Hey Yadi, your welcome - glad I could help.

I have had trouble getting the MIDI in ACID to work correctly - I think it is a hardware issue - probably something simple, but yeah, that should be fine to trigger a software sampler - I would be using it to trigger a hardware sampler or other modules. I am sure that Sonar does this as well - I don't have Sonar, but so many people praise it, it must have that capability. As far as Gigasampler, again, I don't know for I have no experience with it.
I would bet that a lot of people are using this or a similar method.

That Croce-type song is really a Croce song - it is a cover of one of his lesser known tunes. It came along quite nicely until I started using ACID to score video - that turned out to be so much fun, I kind of put everything else I was working with on the back burner. It will be done someday though, and I will be sure to post it somewhere when it is.

Brad

[Atterion]

Yadi

I can't speak for Sonar, but I have had great success with Giga-Sampler and SampleTank (my fav), with Acid Pro 3.0 and Logic Audio 4.7 triggered by the drum track. I usually demix my MIDI drum tracks into individual MIDI channels (i.e. Bass ch1, Snare ch2, etc. etc.), Then duplicate any sections of those tracks into a seperate composite track for the samplers.

P.S. You can download a complete freeware version of SampleTank, and some nice free drums, guitars etc.

http://www.sampletank.com/