ACID 6 Tips for live recording/looping -ACID Product Family

Subject:ACID 6 Tips for live recording/looping Posted by: nutrapuppy Date:8/2/2006 4:09:07 PM I typically play along with a random loop in Acid and noodle until some idea strikes me, then I start recording, and go until I feel I have several good takes of a loopable idea. Then I do this again, and again, until i have tons of ideas using different guitars, keys, and voices, each on their own take. Once I listen back and immediately erase all the obviously stupid ideas, I find the section of a track where I played the part properly a few times. Then I often copy the track, move it forward 1-4 loop cycles, then pan/effect the two tracks as desired. I SOLO both tracks. I carefully move the loop selection back in time to make sure I catch the natural attack of the first note. I note the exact offset, then I adjust the fades to match the loop selection. I render to a new track using the loop-only option and include the offset amount in the loop name. (I tried selecting several tracks and Chop To New Clip, but it seems to only chop the piece I clicked on, not the whole mess of files I had selected.) I paint in the new clip on the new track, move it back to the noted offset time, and play it back to check it. This last check is very important, because sometimes I am grooving and forget one of these steps like offset, or to SOLO the tracks, making a huge mess. I then have to go through all of this again. Yes it can be tedious, and yes it is worth the effort. Unlike delay-panned or copied-pasted tracks, this technique collapses nicely to mono without much phase cancellation. This is still important for broadcast purposes, and I find it also lends a nice natural movement to the stereo imaging. YMMV, but it works for me. Especially with live acoustic instruments, it allows me to focus on creativity while recording and worry about production later. A lot of artists who work with ACID already use this technique or something very similar, and those of you who do are likely thinking this is hardly newsworthy. I posted it because I began my most recent project using ACID 6, and soon I realized there is something distictly different about my recordings. I found that they were automatically "beatmapped" as I tracked. I don't like beatmapped acoustic tracks, so I changed the clip prefs to "one-shot" and hit the pref save button. My track sound changed, and I assumed that this meant that it was now a crystal clear, 24-bit 44.1 recording playing back as a straight .WAV from the hard drive. I changed my overall ACID prefs to record as "one-shot", and felt everything was back to how I worked in ACID 5. However, my tracks were still not playing back as I remembered recording them. The normal, desirable differences between my stereo clips were shifting, at times phasing in/out, then even becoming sloppy-sounding toward the end of a 2-3 minute take (note: my ideas are often more crisp and concise by the end of a take, possibly making the same issue more apparent). When I played just one mono track, on certain sections there was some weird flamming going on. This being the hallmark of poorly placed loop/map markers, I concluded that the track was somehow being affected by ACID beatmapping. So I checked my prefs to see if they had reverted due to a bug. They showed correct settings. So, I clicked "save" again just to be sure, then clicked RELOAD, which I am pretty sure I never, ever clicked before, and listened to my Event Clips again. And you know what? They played back quite nicely. What I learned: 1. ACID 6 is different and I still need to get used to it, but learning and rolling with the changes is worth it. 2. Make sure you go through all your Prefs and learn them. 3. Changing Prefs from Beatmapped to One Shot does not totally reload the track automatically with the new prefs as far as I can tell. (It should not automatically reload the track anytime prefs are changed and not saved, as this would erase your changes. Which you just made. Which could be frustrating. So ACID 6 works with you here.) 4. Clicking SAVE Clip Prefs does not reload the track as far as I can tell. (In my opinion, once clip prefs are adjusted and saved, the clip should playback the same way before and after it is reloaded. I am not sure if this is by design or just overlooked. I haven't devoted a whole lot of time listening to/looking at tons of different tracks to find out exactly what is happening. It is no longer much of an issue for me, because I changed my overall ACID prefs to record one-shots.) 5. Have fun.

I typically play along with a random loop in Acid and noodle until some idea strikes me, then I start recording, and go until I feel I have several good takes of a loopable idea. Then I do this again, and again, until i have tons of ideas using different guitars, keys, and voices, each on their own take.

Once I listen back and immediately erase all the obviously stupid ideas, I find the section of a track where I played the part properly a few times. Then I often copy the track, move it forward 1-4 loop cycles, then pan/effect the two tracks as desired. I SOLO both tracks. I carefully move the loop selection back in time to make sure I catch the natural attack of the first note. I note the exact offset, then I adjust the fades to match the loop selection. I render to a new track using the loop-only option and include the offset amount in the loop name. (I tried selecting several tracks and Chop To New Clip, but it seems to only chop the piece I clicked on, not the whole mess of files I had selected.) I paint in the new clip on the new track, move it back to the noted offset time, and play it back to check it. This last check is very important, because sometimes I am grooving and forget one of these steps like offset, or to SOLO the tracks, making a huge mess. I then have to go through all of this again.

Yes it can be tedious, and yes it is worth the effort. Unlike delay-panned or copied-pasted tracks, this technique collapses nicely to mono without much phase cancellation. This is still important for broadcast purposes, and I find it also lends a nice natural movement to the stereo imaging. YMMV, but it works for me. Especially with live acoustic instruments, it allows me to focus on creativity while recording and worry about production later.

A lot of artists who work with ACID already use this technique or something very similar, and those of you who do are likely thinking this is hardly newsworthy.

I posted it because I began my most recent project using ACID 6, and soon I realized there is something distictly different about my recordings. I found that they were automatically "beatmapped" as I tracked. I don't like beatmapped acoustic tracks, so I changed the clip prefs to "one-shot" and hit the pref save button. My track sound changed, and I assumed that this meant that it was now a crystal clear, 24-bit 44.1 recording playing back as a straight .WAV from the hard drive. I changed my overall ACID prefs to record as "one-shot", and felt everything was back to how I worked in ACID 5.

However, my tracks were still not playing back as I remembered recording them. The normal, desirable differences between my stereo clips were shifting, at times phasing in/out, then even becoming sloppy-sounding toward the end of a 2-3 minute take (note: my ideas are often more crisp and concise by the end of a take, possibly making the same issue more apparent). When I played just one mono track, on certain sections there was some weird flamming going on. This being the hallmark of poorly placed loop/map markers, I concluded that the track was somehow being affected by ACID beatmapping. So I checked my prefs to see if they had reverted due to a bug. They showed correct settings. So, I clicked "save" again just to be sure, then clicked RELOAD, which I am pretty sure I never, ever clicked before, and listened to my Event Clips again. And you know what? They played back quite nicely.

What I learned:
1. ACID 6 is different and I still need to get used to it, but learning and rolling with the changes is worth it.

2. Make sure you go through all your Prefs and learn them.

3. Changing Prefs from Beatmapped to One Shot does not totally reload the track automatically with the new prefs as far as I can tell. (It should not automatically reload the track anytime prefs are changed and not saved, as this would erase your changes. Which you just made. Which could be frustrating. So ACID 6 works with you here.)

4. Clicking SAVE Clip Prefs does not reload the track as far as I can tell. (In my opinion, once clip prefs are adjusted and saved, the clip should playback the same way before and
after it is reloaded. I am not sure if this is by design or just overlooked. I haven't devoted a whole lot of time listening to/looking at tons of different tracks to find out exactly what is happening. It is no longer much of an issue for me, because I changed my overall ACID prefs to record one-shots.)

5. Have fun.