Any Sony Acid Users?

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lahazard

Any Sony Acid Users?

Postby lahazard » Thu Feb 25, 2010 2:23 am

Are there any folks here who use any version of Sony Acid for creating music for their shows?

I started out using the free Acid Xpress

http://www.acidplanet.com/downloads/xpress

And quickly realized I was in for the pound and bought Acid Pro on a special offer that was expiring.

I have rudimentary playing skills with guitars, but have never really considered myself an accomplished musician in terms of performance, but rather felt my skills were more in the composing side of things. I find I can spend hours just playing around with combining various loops and samples to see what I can come up with.

Acidplanet gives away a free "8 pack" of loops every Friday

http://www.acidplanet.com/downloads/8packs

and has various offers for collections of loops used in that weeks offering.

I would greatly appreciate finding any others here who use these in creating music for either Producer or Gold shows and hearing what collections of loops and samples you have found most helpful.

Louis

P.S. There is a "best of" collection of previous "8packs" also available for download along with the free version of Acid Xpress, to get folks started..... (it's available on the same page as Acid Xpress.) What you create with these loops and samples is yours to use royalty free. The full EULA for Sony can be found at.....

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/loo ... s/eula.asp

**Sony Creative Software, as Licensor, grants to you, the Licensee, a limited, nonexclusive right to use the Content Offering on a single computer for your individual use. You are free to use the Content Offering in your own original compositions without restriction. Neither the Content Offering nor any portion thereof may be resold or redistributed as loops, music beds, clips, visuals and/or graphic images except as otherwise integrated into your own works.**

WARNING: If you are like me, you may just get hooked quite easily with the "freebies" and find you need to move up to the "harder" stuff!

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Re: Any Sony Acid Users?

Postby gpsmikey » Sat Mar 13, 2010 9:46 pm

Well, the good news is I just purchased AcidPro7 and some additional loops (as well as having Audition 3). The bad news is I really have not figured out how to make it all work together yet with things I like -- more experimenting is required !! If you have not found the AcidPro6 tutorials on the Sony site yet, you might want to check them out - they are not too bad.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/sup ... dlooptrain

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

lahazard

Re: Any Sony Acid Users?

Postby lahazard » Sun Mar 14, 2010 6:22 am

Hope you end up as happy as I am with this purchase, Mikey!

I'm afraid I went a little too crazy with some of my tax refund with buying additional loops, but hey, I can think of much worse things I could have done with the money! (And yeah, perhaps some more prudent things.) :wink:

In case you are not aware of it, Sony has a "Deal of the Day" site....

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/dealoftheday

...where they often times offer pretty good deals on the various loops packages available. Some of the "deals" are no deals at all in my opinion, but if they happen to offer loops you are interested in the deal can be very good. (they often have a buy one get one (or two - if you are buying one of the premium collections) free.)

It seems a LOT of the loops they offer are more geared towards Techno, Dance, House, Trance, and Rap oriented music production, but there are some really nice collections for those looking more towards the Jazz, Classical, Acoustic, and Blues genres. And there are a number of loops in the various collections that make for great sound effects.

If you let me know what kind of music you are looking for loops for, I'd be more than happy to discuss the various loop packages I own in terms of what is available for creating the type of music you like.

My own personal tastes run the gamut, but focus on a split between acoustic and funky and/or world percussion oriented tunes.

I easily get lost for hours playing around with this software.

Louis

P.S. I have learned that the samples Sony offers (for each loop collection) are not always clearly indicative of what the rest of the collection will sound like.

P.P.S. I have been writing songs since I was a teenager, but my own personal musical skills (vocals - above average : guitar, percussion, and harmonica - adequate : Keyboards - non-existent) have been overall rudimentary at best. Good enough for local open mics and the street corner (back in the day!), but not good enough to have been able to make a life-long living from them. I've always been able to "hear" what I wanted in a song I was writing, but never quite able to convey it to others the few times I went into a studio to cut some demos. Acid Pro gives me the ability to let loose my "inner" producer and I find myself going back to many of my old songs and remixing them the way i always wanted them to sound. Eventually I will put them up for others to listen to and will also be offering my initial attempts for others to use if they so choose, under a creative commons license. But for now I am having fun like a child turned loose in a candy store! :D

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Re: Any Sony Acid Users?

Postby gpsmikey » Sun Mar 14, 2010 6:56 am

Thanks Louis ! I do have the "deal of the day" as one of the quick links I check often. I did notice that most of their loops were geared more in the techno-rap direction, but there was still some good stuff there (I did get the junkyard one recently :D ) I have noticed that their "demo selections" are like the tv shows that are "based on a true story" (one or two names/loops may actually be from the original :lol: ) While somewhat less than musically inclined, I like to be able to put together typically shorter segments (usually with a good beat) that I can use with various slide shows that I put together (my daughter's soccer team for example). I also bought a bunch of SmartSound stuff for creating the tracks for the shows - the trick is to come up with music that keeps the teenage girls happy without driving their parents nuts when we are watching the show at the year end party for example (us parents are all getting older and the girls are now 18 - kind of tough to keep both sides entertained ! )

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

lahazard

Re: Any Sony Acid Users?

Postby lahazard » Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:00 am

I love the Junkyard Rhythms collection!

I've already spent many hours doing nothing but experimenting with various combination's of these loops.

I have all 4 of the Vitale collections...

(Junkyard, Latin Percussion, Organ Donor, and Vital Drums - Junkyard is definitely my favorite of the bunch - as a child I was always beating on pots and pans and anything that would make a percussive type sound - and while I did learn to play the congas and bongos I never quite got the coordination down to play straight drums)

...currently offered by Sony and am very pleased with the quality and range of this father and son team.

I also really enjoy the Bradley Fish collections (love his acoustic guitar and dulcimer loops), Continental Drift : World Music loops, Songwriter's Acoustic Guitar Companion, Sonic Excursions for Acoustic Guitar, and Parthenon Huxley's Six-String Orchestra.

Another drummer I have really come to like is Siggi Baldursson. Pretty good selection for straight forward drum loops that fit a number of different genres.

I am probably going to pick up the SmartSound software and some of their collections since they have extended the special deal. (It was your suggestion that sparked my interest in them.)

I can imagine what it's like having to balance different tastes for the end of the year soccer party! Stressful at times, but very rewarding.

It was actually my doing the light show for a rock band I did the light shows for back in the late 60's (it was a 40 year reunion gig - October 2008 - and some of us hadn't seen each other for those 40 years) that introduced me to Proshow (i was looking for something that would produce a slide-show more out of the ordinary) and renewed within me my own musical journey. To be able to combine the two is the "hobby" I've been looking for as I move into this phase of my life. I sometimes feel that the past 60 years was the apprenticeship for what is now taking place. It all seems to be coming together!

I think I've finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up! :D

Louis

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Re: Any Sony Acid Users?

Postby gpsmikey » Sun Mar 14, 2010 10:51 am

I have always subscribed to the notion that "it is never too late to have a happy childhood" :lol:

For the smart sound stuff, you can get a fairly good idea of how it all works if you watch their tutorials (Larry Jordan's voice bugs me a bit, but he has good info).
http://www.smartsound.com/sonicfire/tutorials.html

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

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Re: Any Sony Acid Users?

Postby texbrandt » Sun Mar 14, 2010 3:38 pm

I have used the Sony acid software to build background tracks for my Native American flutes and have had intentions to put together some music for my slide shows.

I have made some loops for myself and if I ever get time to learn to use Reaper (a pretty good sequencer) adequately I will make more. With all the free vst plug ins for Reaper you can produce quite a variety of voices. Reaper is a free download (or was the last time I checked) and is fully functional and does not have a limited trial period. I intend to buy it when I can afford it.

Something I haven't tried, but intend to try is taking tracks from Digital Juices stack traxx layered music and using Sony acid to combine them with other sounds and music. If you watch for their sales you can get a lot of good stuff to work with for very reasonable prices from Digital Juice.

Robert
texbrandt
"Seeking questions for life's persistent answers."
http://texbrandt.com/blog

lahazard

Re: Any Sony Acid Users?

Postby lahazard » Wed Mar 17, 2010 12:54 pm

Hello Robert,

I worked a little with Reaper, but ended up going with Sony Acid Pro as it was the more intuitive and compatible of the two for me to work with. Not only can I actually create entire songs with Acid Pro, but once I have my own guitar and/or vocal down it's really easy (for me) to play producer and add all sorts of extra instruments and experiment with lots of variations in the mix. And yet, when I can, I will add it (Reaper) as well to my toolbox.

I've really not spent a lot of time with Digital Juices traxx, but i do see some real possibilities there.

Mikey,

I am still in the middle of my trial period with SonicFire Pro and will eventually make the purchase, but only for having a readily available source of premade tunes to add to a show when i don't have time to come up with something in Acid Pro. The one little thing I don't really like with SmartSound is that you are not allowed to add your own vocals (narration yes - singing no) to their songs. With Acid Pro there are no such restrictions. you are working with loops and samples and are free to use them in any way, shape, or form when writing your own tunes with them. (As long as you have legally purchased the loops you are working with.) For those who do not have the time or the ability to write their own music, however, SmartSound is, imo, one of the better options available and for that reason I will add it to my toolbox. (So thanks, as it was your posts that gave me the extra push to explore it as an option.)

Louis

P.S. Mikey - from your experience - what are some of your favorite and most often utilized SmartSound collections?

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Re: Any Sony Acid Users?

Postby gpsmikey » Wed Mar 17, 2010 4:56 pm

Don't know about "most used/favorite" since I just got them in the last week or two. I'm busy moving stuff around on my system and getting it organized (avoiding getting going on the big DVD I need to do) while I think about just how I want to do the opening for the show. I snooped through my Digital Juice collection for short (30 sec) segments that I liked, now to go through the SmartSound stuff I got and see what I like there and narrow it down. I do like the ability to re-arrange the blocks in the smartsound stuff (at least the multilayer stuff). As far as adding vocals, I think it depends on just how you are using it from the discussing that went around recently (with input from the SmartSound folks). I would assume that if you were putting vocals on it as part of the soundtrack for a slideshow that would be ok - they just don't want you taking their music, putting your vocals on it and saying it is your song (but not using it in a show or anything). You might want to research that thread - it was a couple of weeks ago if I remember correctly. Here was the thread - part way down the second page was the input from SmartSound:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=14817&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

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