Acid styles

[K. Forman]

When I got my DV Storm, it came with Acid 2.0 . Playing around with it, I discovered that it doesn't have any brass or woodwind instruments to create with. Is there a plug in (free) I can download? Will Acid 2 create instrumental music?

I also have a copy of Cubasis, and a demo of Fruity Loops 4. I liked Fruity Loops, as it has the instruments and keyboard design tools, but I feel Acid is more my speed. Any ideas?
Thanks

[Matt Gettemeier]

There's a MILLION discs that work with Acid... Man oh man are you ever about to get lost in a journey of sound!

Keith... I gotta' warn you. Once you start playing around with this stuff you'll feel like a composer hired to score movies... clear your schedule for about 2 weeks.

My personal favs are the M-Audio ProSessions discs. There's a new line called "Liquid Cinema" and ALL of 'em are great. The ProSessions discs are SUPER well-done. The sound is absolutely perfect in clarity and detail... plus the sounds are all very usable.

The ProSessions discs are pure ear-candy.

I sometimes just click and listen my way through them for an hour or two... you'll find inspiration for a whole movie in some of the sample sounds.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

My faves come from Hark Productions. www.harkproductions.com
and their Gorgeous Piano is simply that. It's one of those "gotta have" libes.
Keith, there are over 6 million loops available for Acid. If you get hooked on them, start cataloging early, so you can find the ones you want.
this is one place Apple has Sony kicked butt over. Soundtrack can search out loops faster than you can blink. takes longer in Acid. But as Matt mentioned, it's easy to get hooked, easy to have fun with, and relatively simple to make great music with.

[K. Forman]

Thanks for the tips guys! What I was looking for is horns and woodwinds, that I can play. Acid has drums, guitars, and pianos, but I want to create instrumentals like I can with Fruity Loops piano roll, note by note, but using trumpets and flutes. Neither one of these seems to have any wind instruments, unless they are plug ins?

[Matt Gettemeier]

Keith... you may want a newer edition of Acid... Many of the newer Acid loops discs come with a newer version of Acid. If you do a search for flutes and woodwinds in a sample collection you should find a dump-truck load.

Newer/better software can do anything you want with those samples too. It's easy to pitch shift and simply change key... just grab a sound and do whatever you want.

I'm not familiar with 2.0... but with anything newer all you do is pick a disc and start using the samples... it's not really a "plug-in" situation.

It's more like selecting the kind of music you want and popping in the disc... then in the bottom window, where the samples show up... the new disc contents show up. Then you select from there.

Trust me... Acid has everything... from farts to french horns. All these libraries we're talking about work in Acid.

[K. Forman]

Matt- I hear what you are saying about getting newer software. I'm using win 2k and win 98 (first edition), Premiere 6.1, Photoshop 6, Infini-D 3D 4.5 (Which died years ago), and several other oldies. Acid is the bottom of the update list. If it wasn't free, I wouldn't have it at all! I just decided to finally get to playing with it.

I'm not sure if you have tried Fruity Loops or not, but they have keyboard roll for creating your music. Along the side, you have your keys, hi to low. Then it scrolls along a timeline. You use this to write the strings and drum beats. I just want to do this using horns and woodwinds, but neither one seem to have any.

[Tor Salomonsen]

Keith,
You're talking about MIDI, which Acid only began approaching in version Pro 4. I say approaching because a lot of people thinks its MIDI functions are rather limited. The concensus however seem to be that Acid Pro 5 will fix all that (plus some).

I have tried to find information on how Acid will acommodate someone who's used to work like you (and me) but very little has come my way. I think they are too embarrassed by the Midi side of Acid at present, and bound by house rules to not let us know what's coming and when.

You might try to look for a free softsynth, some free sound samples and a free Midi sequencer with a piano roll window. Those three together might provide what you are looking for.

[Federico Dib]

I´m also a Fruity Loops user, I started using it to make drum loops to export for use in ACID, and in just a while I was doing almost everything in Fruity Loops.
I think it gives me much more flexibility to "compose", and it is somehow underrated tool (maybe because it´s name) but Acid is just much faster.

Anyway any advice as to where to get a few "good" free samples of wind (brass and wood) and Strings?
I haven´t been able to get good results with these.
Most of what I´ve got sounds too cheesy or fake.

I´m not about to buy a CD at this point. I just need a few free samples to get out of the electronic realm, and see what I´m capable of whith some "real" instruments.

[Matt Gettemeier]

I realize you guys are kind of past this now... but for any other readers I just want to say that you get what you pay for with the samples CDs.

I got some cheap samples and they aren't perfect... sometimes you have to trim or tweak the loop before it's suitable for repeated use.

The standard Acid samples are good... and fully trimmed and usable. Looping them leaves no perception of a sample other then repetition.

The premium samples discs such as ProSessions are properly trimmed, timed, and extremely perfect in clarity and detail. They are clearly head and shoulders above the discount discs... WELL worth the $40-$50 price.

I'm really into fidelity when it comes to sound. Just read some of my mic threads... I've got more in sound then picture... and as an audio perfectionist I can tell you that these discs are more fun to listen to then most music. The sounds are perfect, varied, and inspirational... That's exactly what a story teller needs.

[K. Forman]

Tor- thanks, you answered my question. It wasn't the answer I was looking for, but I'll accept it ;) I should have realized I had been working with midi.

So now, I'll rephrase my question... Is there a decent midi designer that does brass and wood? And free? Or, is there a midi plugin for acid that will work?

Matt- I'm not sure samples would work for what I want to do, but I understand what you are saying. I just don't feel advanced enough, or patient enough, to do too much with tweaking loops and samples. I'm what you might call "musically challenged".

Sure, I'm challenged in a lot of other areas too, but lets stick with this topic ;)

[Tor Salomonsen]

I googled for "free midi sequencer" and this was the first that came up (of 87.800):
http://www.jazzware.com/cgi-bin/Zope.cgi/jazzware/

Hit it.

[K. Forman]

Tor- Thanks for the link. I checked it out on BOTH of my PCs, and it just wouldn't work. PC 1 doesn't have a compatible sound card, and the program wouldn't run under win 2k on PC 2 .

I did find several Soundfonts. I have several different programs, some I just discovered I had installed from my Audigy bundle. I have Sound Forge 4. something, Cubasis 2.? , Fruity Loops 4 demo, Vienna Soundfonts 2, various EAX programs for Audigy, Wave lab lite... and a few others I'm forgetting. After playing around until the wee hours, I almost have a clue, but am still totally lost.

sfARK... None of my programs could do anything with several sfARK files I found, with horns and woodwinds. Sometime later, I discover it is an archival format, and download a sfARK extractor. Now, I have a sf2 file, and no idea what to do with it.

Several programs to use, no idea how to use them. New file formats, and no idea which works with what. New world of terms and peramaters to learn.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Soundfonts are just like typefonts, except they're sound. You need a sampler or player that will play them. There are several, including the Vienna that likely came with your Blaster card.

[K. Forman]

Douglas- Are you familiar with Vienna? I tried, but I couldn't even figure out how to play the sounds. I could bring in soundfonts, but that was as far as I could get... Duh!