Subject:a couple things i thought i'd see in acid by now

Posted by: peahix

Date:8/20/2002 3:08:07 PM

howdy all-

i've been checking out the acid 4.0 demo, and while there's lots of neat new bells/whistles, there a couple basic things that i requested long ago that i think should have been implemented by now...

1) i'd like to be able to set the default looping properties for new tracks myself, because i almost always use "pitch shift segments" mode instead of the default "looping segments" mode. everytime i make a new track, i have to go in and manually set this parameter. pretty annoying.

2) i think there should be more detail/flexibility in how you define the "length" of your loop... ie, you can only define it in terms of "number of beats," which means quarter notes. i make all my own loops, and very often i'll make, say, a percussion loop that lasts exactly 11 16th notes. now, i'd like to loop this over a 4/4 groove such that it cycles at odd intervals relative to the rest of the track, but of course it's still playing in time w/ the music (ie, i DON'T want to play an "11-tuplet" over the length of one 4/4 bar). in other words, i want to be able to tell acid that this loop is 11 16th notes, but as it is, i can't because i can only tell it how many quarter notes it is, and since this loop doesn't divide equally into quater notes, there's no way to tell it exactly how long it is...

does that make sense?

i realize that i can also achieve essentially the same effect by using the chopper (ie, i could make a loop lasting 12 16th notes, define it as being 3 beats long, use the chopper to chop out only the first 11 16th notes, and keep hitting the "A" key over and over to "loop" this segment), but this is more kludgy and time consuming than being able to simply draw in my loops the usual way.

i thought i might be able to get around this using the new time signature options, but as far as i can tell this doesn't work. ie, i tried setting the time signature to 16/16, thus defining one "beat" as a 16th note. but when you go into the track properties, the "beats" referred to there seem to still be quarter notes. am i missing something?


well anyway these are my top two desired features for acid... any explanation as to why they haven't been implemented? does anyone else agree that these would be useful additions?

peahix

Subject:RE: a couple things i thought i'd see in acid by now

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:8/20/2002 3:29:39 PM

For reason 2, have you tried soloing the percussive track, set the Loop Region over the area you'd like to bounce down (and eventually loop) on this track and use CTRL+M? That way, you wouldn't have to keep pasting over and over again.

(You could also clone a loop in the Chopper by selecting the area of the loop and also use CTRL+M, which will create a new loop based on your selection.)

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: a couple things i thought i'd see in acid by now

Reply by: SonicBC

Date:8/20/2002 3:52:21 PM

What about setting the properties of your 11/16th loop to be a one-shot, or changing the timeline's grid spacing to be 16th notes?

Subject:RE: a couple things i thought i'd see in acid by now

Reply by: mr_williams

Date:8/20/2002 4:28:03 PM

u can even set smaller than 1/16 notes... just hold shift while manipulate the length of the sample... it overrides the grid function... ;-)

Subject:RE: a couple things i thought i'd see in acid by now

Reply by: spesimen

Date:8/20/2002 4:37:47 PM

the workaround i use for #2 is to make the loop have multiple copies of itself internally that multiply into a quarter note. so for a 3/4 loop, i'll loop it twice together, and tell acid it has 6 beats. not perfect but easier than cutting and pasting a lot of one-shots. obviously for an 11/16 time sig that could make for a long loop though, in that case i would probably just cut and paste it :/

Subject:RE: a couple things i thought i'd see in acid by now

Reply by: peahix

Date:8/20/2002 4:41:37 PM

hi all-

THANKS for taking the time to write your suggestions, but unfortunately none of these workarounds achieve the kind of quickness/efficiency i'm looking for. for example, if i go with the "one-shot" idea, i'd have to first settle on the project tempo, then permanently adjust my odd-length loop to sync perfectly with that tempo, and then draw it in... but that doesn't give me much flexibility to change the tempo later, unless i want to make a new version of that one-shot loop. it also doesn't allow me to quickly load my weird loops in and out of a project and audition them, which is typically the way i work (i have a large library of loops that i draw on as raw source material for building new songs, and many of these loops have odd lengths).

well anyway, i'm not saying that i can't figure out any number of workarounds (including those mentioned), i just don't think i should HAVE to, because it seems like a fairly elemental idea to faciliate in the software. is there a technical reason why this can't be done? or is it just that there's no significant demand for it?

thanks again-
peahix

Subject:RE: a couple things i thought i'd see in acid by now

Reply by: aress

Date:8/20/2002 6:15:34 PM

split and insert a region....

group regions and or tracks