Subject:Looking for more of an acoustic sound

Posted by: sammy63

Date:6/7/2004 6:56:05 PM

Hi, I just started using acid pro 4 and was wondering how I could make more acoustic sounding or more realistic sounding tracks. To me, all the demos and versions that come with the software sound like what I wopuld call techno-pop, which is a style that I absolutely hate. Like I said, I just started so maybe I'm missing something, but any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Sam

Subject:RE: Looking for more of an acoustic sound

Reply by: DKeenum

Date:6/7/2004 7:36:30 PM

Well, acid is looping software, so it's going to make it easy to create music that is based on loops. That said, you can make acoustic sounding tracks if you use acoustic sounding loops. I do. But acid may cause you to change the way you work. Don't worry, you'll like it.

Subject:RE: Looking for more of an acoustic sound

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:6/7/2004 7:37:49 PM

It depends on what you want to do with ACID. If you’re just using loops then buy acoustic sounding loops libraries. I have a set of drum loops from Beta Monkey that are a real drummer (Chris) playing real drums (his Perl kit) and it sound very natural because not every drum is the same timbre or on the beat. I would imagine that Mick Fleetwood’s library is also very natural sounding. If you buy loops that someone made from their drum machine they’re going to sound like techno pop regardless of what you do. Like wise with bass. I bought Rudy Sarzo’s Working Man’s Bass library and its Rudy playing his bass guitar so it sounds very natural. Just stay away from techno pop libraries.

If you want to record your own MIDI loops then you are limited by your own talents. Some people have requested things like quantized swing and such. I don’t care about that stuff because I play my own keyboard loops and would turn off quantization anyway so that I get my live performance captured as I play it.

So you can get very natural acoustic sounding music from ACID by sticking to loop libraries that are real musicians playing real instruments and by staying away from techno-pop libraries and MIDI quantization and playing with feeling yourself.

~jr

Subject:RE: Looking for more of an acoustic sound

Reply by: Jessariah

Date:6/10/2004 2:44:29 PM

There is repetition in any popular music. You repeat the chorus of the song. You hear the same chords played on a keyboard. Guitars and bass lines are almost always repetitive. You open a file of 4-beat drum loops -- yes, it's going to sound like a dance/techno track. You grab some 8-beat, 16-beat and/or 32-beat guitar/bass/key loops and start slicing & dicing, you can come up with soem very interesting (and "natural sounding") stuff.

The hardest thing to do in Acid is "end" a song without having to fade out. Not much in the way of loops for that kind of approach, but more and more libraries are offering sustains & finishes as part of their packages.

Subject:RE: Looking for more of an acoustic sound

Reply by: herrdue

Date:6/11/2004 10:41:01 AM

This may just be me, but I recently posted a message here about how I was getting a muddy mix. Turns out that one, of many, complicating factors to that muddiness was my use of some loops from the Mick Fleetwood library. I honestly believe that these loops don't sound nearly as good as those from the Acid Drum Tools library or the G. Pendergrass Alt Drums library. I kept mixing and mixing, wondering why I was not getting the same punch as on my other songs, and I think eventually I realized that the original EQ on the Fleetwood disc lacks a little punch to begin with. I tried messing with the EQ and rendering new tracks out of that, and that's part of what made it muddy. When I swapped in the original loops again, to remove my tampering with the EQ, they were no longer muddy but still did not have the same punch as other libraries. Keep in mind this one song was using about 6 loops from the Fleetwood set, so I don't think its just one of the loops that was flat sounding,,,they all were. This saddens me because I was contemplating buying the full Fleetood disc for my next project, he's a remarkable drummer with a unique style.

Again, maybe its just me.

PS - Drum Sugar is also highly recommended. Very punchy and modern.

Subject:RE: Looking for more of an acoustic sound

Reply by: DKeenum

Date:6/11/2004 10:59:23 AM

This is only opinion. I have the Fleetwood disk and would recomend it. But you have to remember that this is a Mick Fleetwood disk with mick playing his style. He is not an out front kind of guy, and this disk reflects that. It is stylistic. But I like it and use it. There is some unusual percussion on the disk as well. And there are a good number of great one shots on the disk as well - gongs and cym crashes.

BTW, did you try wave hammering the loop in SF? Sometimes a little compression will make a loop "pop."

Subject:RE: Looking for more of an acoustic sound

Reply by: coolout

Date:6/11/2004 1:20:51 PM

the steinberg vsti like groove agent and virtual guitarist sound like the real thing to me.

the beauty of these instruments that you have much more control than just using some loops. plus you can always render the audio to do the normal slice and dice.

they work great with acid pro.