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March 29, 2024, 02:33:02 AM

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(muso) Acid Pro

Started by Elliot, April 22, 2004, 02:21:31 AM

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Elliot

I just got this a couple of days ago.
I dont have any music making background and Im hoping to get some pointers to places that would help a total newb use this programme.
The only experience I have is playing around with fruity loops for a bit, but I just couldnt figure that one out at all. I have found  Acid to be much easier and simpler to make a quick tune.


My particular interest would be to make some dub type music or trip hop. Something chilled to begin with.
I have downloaded loads of loops fx etc and am all set.

How difficult is it if you know nothing about the science of music?
Whats the learning curve?

I know its all about playing around with it and learning but if anyone has any shortcuts tips links etc I'd be very thankful and happy and hopefully creative.

cheers

perhaps this could be a thread for tips and questions regarding this software?

El Unicornio, mang

Acid Pro makes it very simple. Basically, once you've done your .wav/midi/whatever files in Fruityloops, just open them up in Acid Pro and use the pencil tool to 'draw' the music into the individual tracks. It automatically loops the parts you have too, and you can keep adding to your hearts content.

For doing your type of music, I hear Reason is quite a good one, but from what I've seen it looks pretty complex.

I make all my music with:
Groove Agent (drums)
Slayer (bass)
Edirol Orchestral (strings and other classical type instruments)
Fruityloops (synthy gubbins)
Acid Pro (to multi-track and add guitars)

Once you get used to it, which should only be a few days, less if you follow the tutorials and stick at it, and after that it's like riding a bike (except you don't end up with a grazed elbow when you try to show off).

I love that Edirol Orchestra, it sounds fantastic.

Agreed about Acid, pretty easy to use really, although I tend to go for Cool Edit Pro these days, fuck knows why, it's a pain for arranging tracks.

I actually still can't work out how to use Fruity to make a full-length track, but I really don't see why anybody would want to.

Jet Set Willy

It's no good on it's own for making original music. Working with loops that you haven't made yourself is pretty rubbish, working with loops that you haven't even found personally is even worse.

Not that I don't use it, it's just that I wouldn't use it to make original music.

Elliot

Cheers for the input.

I would much rather make my own sounds but I dont think Ihave the ability to make drum loops, perhaps acidy sounds I can but to compose a drum loop would be out of my league.

I know what Jet set willy is on about, it all sounds great with these loops but there is something missing when they arent your own.

So I need to get hold of Fruity Loops now and thos eother ones.

lovely jubbly

Bonely Child

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I'd really like to have a proper go at using my pc to make music, rather than just pissing about on my 8-track... but looking at all this, I'm a bit confused as to where to start, even after much googling.

Say I wanted to make orchestral music... I'd want Edirol Orchestral, I assume. But from what I can gather, that wouldn't be enough in itself, right? That's just a plug-in? So presumably I want another program (Cubase?) to tell it what to play... but that and its kin seem very MIDI-orientated, and I don't have easy access to a MIDI keyboard at the moment. Is there a program I could actually write a score on, and then play it back through Edirol Orchestral? That'd be ideal really.

Again, sorry for the hijack, and all the questions... I feel like I should be able to work all this out for myself, but everything I've found seems to assume a basic level of knowledge I simply don't have.

Well, yeah, you can 'program' a melody in fruity, it's just a pain working out the notes/lengths etc.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: "Bonely Child"

Say I wanted to make orchestral music... I'd want Edirol Orchestral, I assume. But from what I can gather, that wouldn't be enough in itself, right? That's just a plug-in? So presumably I want another program (Cubase?) to tell it what to play... but that and its kin seem very MIDI-orientated, and I don't have easy access to a MIDI keyboard at the moment. Is there a program I could actually write a score on, and then play it back through Edirol Orchestral? That'd be ideal really.

.

Basically, you need Edirol Orchestral, and Cubase. You put the Edirol Orchestral .dll file in the Cubase vst plugins folder, then open it up in Cubase, and use the piano editor thing to put down all the notes. Then you just save it as a wav file, and you can play this in any music player. You'll probably want to loop certain bits to save you time though, and that's where a program like Acid Pro comes in (although you can also use Cubase for this), to multi-track the individual wav files.

Bonely Child

Cheers for that, I think I'll give it a go. I'll just head on over to superno- ahem, I mean, I better start saving so I can legitimately purchase the software. Yes.

Bonely Child

Another question I'm afraid (which again I've tried to google with no luck)...

Everything's working dandy; except when I save a project it doesn't save the Edirol Orchestral settings. So say I've set the piano as channel 1, Bassoon as channel 2 etc.... when I re-load the project, it resets the Orchestral settings to their defaults, so I get flutes instead of piano and so on.  I've tried saving instrument/effect banks on Edirol separately, but with no avail: when I load them it makes no difference. I assume their must be some way of saving everything in one go, but I'm buggered if I can work out how. What should I be doing?

didgeripoo

Quote from: "Bonely Child"
Say I wanted to make orchestral music... I'd want Edirol Orchestral, I assume. But from what I can gather, that wouldn't be enough in itself, right? That's just a plug-in? So presumably I want another program (Cubase?) to tell it what to play... but that and its kin seem very MIDI-orientated, and I don't have easy access to a MIDI keyboard at the moment. Is there a program I could actually write a score on, and then play it back through Edirol Orchestral? That'd be ideal really.

I believe the latest version of Sibelius Music Notation Software comes bundled with a player version of Kontakt software sampler with a load of orchestral samples. Which will sound better than Edirol, from what I've heard. I'm assuming here that you have some music theory knowledge, crotchets and quavers and so forth, since Sibelius really is a score-writing program with sequencing ability as opposed to the other way round.

//www.sibelius.com

Bonely Child

Yeah, I was thinking of giving Sibelius a try too - I remember using it while I was doing my A-levels, but it's probably come on a fair bit since then...

I've managed to sort out the not-saving-settings problem now, and I have to say I'm wondering why the hell I didn't start using my pc for music earlier. It sounds so much better than everything I've done on my 8-track, and the editing's incredibly easy too. I've been well and truly converted, I think.

Actually, I've had the same not-saving problem too. How did you get round it? I tended to save each instrument separately and then have to load them back in separately each time. Is there a better way of doing it?

Bonely Child

I'm doing the same as you - saving the individual instrument settings and then having to reload them separately to the project itself. From the little I have worked out about Edirol, it seems that if you use it as a Direct X plug-in it can save all the settings in one file, but if you use it as a VST plug-in (as I am) you have to save separately. It does seem a long-handed way of going about things though...

El Unicornio, mang

It does reset them every time you load it up, although if you're only using the default ones you don't need to change them. It doesn't take that long to put them back to how you had them though, just remember to make a note of which channels have which instruments.