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Subject:support for odd loop lengths?
Posted by: peahicks
Date:5/13/2009 3:31:42 PM

hi-

this is a feature i've been wanting in acid literally for years, and i'm actually quite amazed that it's never been implemented.

very often, when editing percussion loops, i like to cut them into odd lengths (ie, a high hat pattern that's 11 16th notes long) so that when i collage many loops together in acid, say over a regular 4/4 main groove, they recombine in subtle variations until they all meet up again at a common starting point, which can take quite a long time depending on how many loops i've got going and how different they are length-wise. apart from being a pure creative method, it's a way to avoid having the whole mix loop after just one or two bars, which often sounds sterile to me.

i've always wondered why acid doesn't allow for a more specific way of defining your loop lengths, as opposed to just telling it how many "beats" (ie, quarter notes) your loop is. it could be something as simple as adding a "+ 16ths" box below the "beats" box on the loop definition page. So, in the above example, i could define the loop as 2 beats plus 3 16ths.

my workaround has been to hard edit such loops in sound forge by repeating them as many times as need be to get them divisible into a number of beats (ie, in the example above, i'd repeat the loop 4 times in sound forge, then load THAT loop in acid and define it as 11 beats) but that, to me, seems like a hassle that could be easily avoided by just adding a "fine tuning" feature to the loop length definition.

does anyone else out there use similar odd-length loops?

Subject:RE: support for odd loop lengths?
Reply by: jumbuk
Date:5/19/2009 8:59:49 PM

Acid does allow you to change the denominator of the time signature.

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