Acid Pro Power Tips, Yo!
Feb 1, 2001 12:00 PM, Dave Hill
To become a power user with any software application, use both hands! Sonic Foundry's Acid Pro 2.0 is more fun — and a great deal more efficient — when you keep two hands on the PC's keyboard. Acid Pro uses the same copy-and-paste commands that you'll find in programs such as Microsoft Word.
To get started:
- Control+C is copy
- Control+V is paste
- Control+Z is undo
To add envelopes to samples:
- V is volume
- P is panning
- F is effects
- S splits a loop
- J rejoins two loops
- M creates a marker
Just look in Acid's Help index under Shortcuts, and print the list. Keep it in sight while you try out a couple of these shortcuts. In a day or two, I found myself using them without thinking.
Also, use markers and make notes as you listen to a track from beginning to end without stopping (see Fig. A). The stop-and-go process that you'll frequently encounter with software-based music making often results in jumpy transitions and hampers a tune's fluidity. Try listening to your song without pausing and simply press the M key to drop in a marker. Write on a notepad what you want to change, then go back and work on that section.
Keep your eye on the Master Level meter to see if the track is peaking. Distortion will occur if you print a peaking track to CD or to a WAV file. I usually set the Master Level to null or zero, grab all of the individual tracks at once, then lower them until the meter stops peaking. This preserves your mix and rids the track of any overage, including distortion.
It is also important to set the preferences in Acid Pro with the tempo parameters at their maximum (60 to 240 bpm). Based on your preferences settings, Acid determines whether the loop will play from RAM or from the hard disk. Although you can loop RAM-based samples or make them one-shots, hard disk samples always play at the original tempo. For example, you're better off playing vocal tracks or keyboard and guitar solos from the hard disk as long as you don't alter the tempo again. Conversely, you should probably loop the drum, percussion, and bass parts to create a consistent feel and save your hard drive space for vocals, leads, and effects.
One other thing: If you have a large batch of one-shot samples that preview as loops, you may want to try a slick little piece of shareware called Acidizer ($24.95 at www.davecentral.com). Acidizer will batch-convert all WAV files in a specified folder from loops to one-shots.
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