Subject:Using One Shots to Create ACID Loop

Posted by: rstaudt

Date:12/12/2003 12:54:28 PM

I have read that SoundForge can be used to create an acid loop from one-shots. I haven't purchased it yet, so I am inquiring about capabilities. I have an Acoustic Guitar disk (Leo Cavallo Songwriter's Acoustic Guitar Companion). One of its folders contains one shots of various guitar chords played on downstroke and upstroke. The strokes are relatively slow (not quite arpeggiated, but the BPM would be slow if you were to assign a speed to them). Could these parts be used to construct a rhythmic loop using SoundForge? When I try to speed up the one-shots in a sequencer like ACID or Sonar, I get nasty artifacts, so I am thinking that I have no use for these one-shots. But I was wondering if the sound editing in Sound Forge could "speed" the strokes without the artifacts.

Subject:RE: Using One Shots to Create ACID Loop

Reply by: ATP

Date:12/13/2003 7:32:02 AM

personally i think you will have more luck using ACID for this project than Sound Forge. the problem with SF is that if you want to combine pieces of sound the only way to do that is to paste all the sounds at the right place in one big file. but once pasted the pieces can't be moved anymore. this, combined with having to paste at the right spot by ear, doesn't make it very practical.

you said ACID created artifacts. to prevent this, simply load up all the guitar pieces as One Shots. ACID will not use any time stretching algorhythm on the files, so they'll sound the same as in SF. and in ACID it's a lot easier to move individual pieces, and you can move them as often as you wish. also, you can add a kick or a hihat and use it as a metronome, so you have an idea of the tempo you're working with. when you have made your own loop this way you can export it as a wave file, and there you are. :)

Subject:RE: Using One Shots to Create ACID Loop

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:12/13/2003 11:18:05 AM

Adding to what ATP said, you can, indeed, make Loops from One-shots.

However, creating an original Loop is a bit more involved than just pasting One-shots together. For instance, time correlates to what a tempo for a given sample will be.

As an example: A 2 second sample that's divided into 4 beats will give you a total tempo of 120 BPM. As a result, every beat equals half a second (or .500 second).

Let's say you wanted to take a desired kick drum One-shot and place it within this 2 second sample on each beat. A problem may arise where the kick drum is longer than half a second; the kick may be, say, 3/4 a second (.750). So you'd need to stretch the sample to fit within half a second.

Thankfully, Sound Forge has tools that help you timestretch a given sample to fit within a certain amount of time (and actually make it sound good at the same time). Once you timestretch the sample, you can then continue on with constructing your Loop.

Using this technique, you can take parts of those guitar One-shots and construct your own guitar Loop.

I should, note, however, that extreme changes in tempo or even key can produce unnaturally-sounding samples, especially with acoustic instruments such as piano, which could be why those samples were produced as One-shots rather than Loops. But also remember you don't have to assign a root note for a Loop either so that the sample doesn't key stretch.

HTH,
Iacobus
-------
RodelWorks - Original Music for the Unafraid
mD's ACIDplanet Page

Subject:RE: Using One Shots to Create ACID Loop

Reply by: EdMLL

Date:2/19/2004 5:40:02 AM

You can easily solve the strange sound in Acid importing your files as loops and with the selected track double-click to open the "properties" Menu, inside it , go to Stretch, and in "Force divisions at" put a 'Quarter Notes, Eight Notes" change and preview between some divisions to get a better result.

Subject:RE: Using One Shots to Create ACID Loop

Reply by: Jessariah

Date:2/19/2004 7:48:58 PM

"Better" result, yes, but not always "Great" results. Synthetic sounds are much more forgiving than natural acoustic sounds (guitar, voice, etc.). I know that when we did our Piano libraries, we intentionally did two sets at both 90bpm and 120bpm to offer more flexibility and cut down on the need to "speed up" the loops.

Acid defaults to 16 beat forced divisions in the stretching properties (unless otherwise altered by the loop creator). 95% of the time, simply changing this to eighth notes will solve most "funny sounding" problems.

HTH