Subject:Acid tricks..

Posted by: musicdog

Date:4/18/2002 12:40:18 PM

I've been using Acid Pro 3 for several months and discovered lots of tricks on my own.
How about the rest of you Acidheads posting some of the tricks you use.
Could be educational for all of us.
Thanks,
musidog

Subject:RE: Acid tricks..

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:4/18/2002 2:28:25 PM

-When bouncing down or rendering to a new track (CTRL+M), set the desired volume of the tracks you intend to bounce together. When you have the new track, set the new track's volume to 0.0 dB. This should set the new track to be equal in volume to the original tracks.

-Use the Chopper to rearrange a loop to sound rhythmically different. (I know that sounds like a "duh!" but people tend to take things at face value too much. Mangle it!)

-Use ACID like a drum machine/sequencer. Create your own percussive beats/rhythms by using One-shots. Use the CTRL key coupled with the Paint Tool and paint in whole events of percussive hits. Lots of Sonic Foundry's loop libraries have such track types. (Methods of Mayhem and Junkyard Rhythms come to mind.) Be sure to use Options>Grid Spacing to set the desired note length.

-A related tip to the above is to know your basic music theory, especially note durations (quarter note, 8th note, 16th note, etc.). If you've got a rhythm in your head and know standard notation, it's easy to take that knowledge and apply it to ACID.

-ACID has basic recording functions, but you can use an audio editor like Sound Forge to tweak/enhance/mangle anything you've recorded into ACID. With Sound Forge installed, right-click the track in the track list and choose "Edit in Sound Forge n" (where "n" is the version of Sound Forge). As soon as you save any edits in Sound Forge and switch back to ACID, the file should reflect any changes that were done in Sound Forge. However, any edits done in Sound Forge after saving are not reversible. Also, be sure to open the track's properties (double-click the track's track icon) and under the Stretch tab, click the Reload button. This will update the ACID properties for the newly edited track.

-If you use regions (not markers), and want to get to the end of a region, use 5 on the keypad. (This option actually toggles between the beginning and end of the region as well.) You can also use SHIFT+<n> to toggle (where "n" represents the region number).

-Change the tempo of a loop without affecting the rest of the project by double-clicking the track's track icon and under the Stretch tab, change the Number of beats option. Halve the number of beats to double the tempo; double the number of beats to halve the tempo.

Iacobus

Subject:RE: Acid tricks..

Reply by: groovewerx

Date:4/18/2002 4:13:01 PM

mouse over and double click the bar/separator that divides the track view and explorer/properties/fx/mixer/master. this only works when the mouse arrow turns into a bar with up and down arrows...

this will toggle min/max for either view...

Subject:RE: Acid tricks..

Reply by: musicdog

Date:4/18/2002 10:20:30 PM

I save just about everything I do in Acid, even the crazy, crappy stuff.
When I get stuck for ideas, I go back and check out some of this stuff.
Many times I will pull out some good ideas and expand them into new projects.
If you find yourself "stuck" creatively, revive some of the crazy ideas and above all, have fun.
Great tricks mD and groovewerx, that's the type of tips and shortcuts the newbies can really use.
Thanks.....

Subject:RE: Acid tricks..

Reply by: SPP

Date:4/18/2002 10:57:06 PM

Hey everyone,

I’d love to get a tips & tricks thread going. I’ve got a great one for you all which I just discovered today. This involves a lot of work, but if it’s what you need, then it will work. I’ve been struggling with this problem for months, and have put off working on a song that I think has potential to be a really cool ambient/soundtrack piece. Maybe this is glaringly obvious to some of you, but I sure wish someone had told me. Here’s the problem with which I was faced and my solution:

I found the PERFECT drone sound for my project. The problem is that the loop is only 16 counts. I needed it to go much much longer, but without the initial attack repeating every 16 counts, and then fading out. I tried Sound Forge, Chopper, searching the web for another drone, my Roland keyboard, and Sonic Foundry technical support, all to no avail. Then today, BAM! It came.

First, set the track volume. Draw or paint a section of the loop, trying to make it as long as you can, but using your favorite part of it. Now make a copy of the track. Here's the tricky part. Offset the copies so that one starts at the mid point of the other. Insert a volume envelope into each track and choose “slow fade”. At the beginning of the drawn/painted section, add a volume point and fade it up on the time line to the middle of the track below it. Then fade it out to the the end. On the other track, do the same thing, but fade exactly in the opposite direction. Make sure the values of the fades are the same at the beginning and ending of each fade, and 0 db in the middle. Next, copy and paste each part as many times as you need to get the desired length, having each pasted part next to the one before it. The volume envelope points should copy and paste along with the loop section. Tada! You now have a drone that sustains with a seamless overlap. I think this technique will work for creating a sustain with a guitar-chord loop that you want to lengthen, although I haven’t tried myself. I’d love to hear if this works for anyone as well as it did for me.

Steve