11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent book, but a bit too vague for the absolute beginner, November 25, 2005
This review is from: Instant ACID (Paperback)
I was excited to get this book because of the great reviews it got. I picked up two books on Acid, Instant Acid and Acid Pro 5 Power. The Instant book got such great reviews that I chose to start with that one first! I sat down and started reading with my laptop ready to go. I'm brand new to Acid and have never made digital music ever before, but I am an amatuer musician and know music very well. That being said, this is what I thought:
The book was too vague. I liked how the author writes like he's talking directly to you, but it seemed to me that he assumed the reader knew too much. When I write an instructional document, I sometimes am faulty because I assume that everyone knows at least something (at least the basics even!), but I always get calls asking, "but how do you even get to that point!?!" So, that's what I am experiencing now. Instructions are mentioned in the book to do something, but it doesn't tell you how to do it! This isn't the case on all of the instructions, but on quite a few.
I lost my motivation and closed the book. I will keep the book and probably go through it once I've gone through the Acid Pro 5 Power book.
The instructions are good, which warrants the 3 stars, but the authors assumed that the reader knew more than we do (at least if you new to this program).
Overall, not a bad book, especially for the price!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Instant Acid: Composing with Loops, October 30, 2005
This review is from: Instant ACID (Paperback)
Instant Acid by John Rofrano and Iacobus is a how to book for Acid Pro version 5 which is a PC only loop-based music composition application.
It is easy to read and can get you up and running quickly. This is great for media editors, since you will probably want to know how to compose music to go with your video. This book shows you how you can do this. You can load in your video, which displays both as track one so you can match it to your audio tracks, and in a preview window in the lower right where you can watch the action as the audio plays allowing you to match music precisely to events in your video.
Loops, as you probably already know, are bits of music or even voice sounds. Loops of less than half a second are known as one shots. Up to 30 seconds are known as loops and longer than 30 seconds becomes a beatmapped track.
Don't let any of these terms throw you. I am not a musician and I have been able to compose using loops and its fun. To compose music you paint the loops into the tracks at points you want them to play for as long as you want them to play (like Soundtrack). You can use the loops provided with the program, add new ones, modify existing ones to create new ones or create new ones from scratch-something you can't do in Soundtrack. The book teaches you how to do this and this is one of its strongest points. You use a window called the Chopper window and you can export(render) out as AIFF or MOV or numerous other formats.
By the way you can take a Soundtrack loop, modify it, and bring it back into Soundtrack if you like. Very cool.
Other features the book covers are adding effects, interfacing to a MIDI device, doing a bit of mixing, and burning to a CD. I did not do a lot of experimenting here, but the book seems to cover these topics well.
I did encounter a few things I thought the book was a bit weak on. First there is no index. However, I was able to get around; maybe that's just a pet peeve of mine. Even though the book is labeled as "novice to advanced" don't expect many definitions. A certain amount of prior knowledge is recommended. The instructions on how to use the Groove Pool and how to use the Loops and Samples Reference Library seemed a bit sketchy. When I applied a selection from the Groove Pool (New Orleans Jazz) to one of my tracks, I did not get the results I was expecting. I tried other selections, but never got the hang of the Groove Pool. I do plan to keep trying. Maybe your results will be better.
Regarding the Loops and Samples Reference Library, this is a free piece of software the book directs you to download and use to tag loop CD's with loop characteristics such as beats, temp, key. I was unable to get it to tag anything, but when I loaded one of my loop CD's into Soundtrack and clicked on the Index button, it "tagged" it within seconds!
All things considered, once I started composing with loops a couple of years ago, I couldn't wait until I could create my own and export them. And with this software I can, and this book tells you how. The book definitely got me going with the app and was worth it for the Chopper feature alone.
Allan Phillips
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great read for musicians, June 30, 2005
This review is from: Instant ACID (Paperback)
I'm a guitar player, so when I got Sound Forge I wanted to plug in my guitar and rock. Problem was that the manual talked totally about DJ crap and dance beats. This book will help you out 100%. A must read with a tons of recording techniques to get the most out of your mix.
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