Sonic Acid composing techniques for dummies?
 

Perhaps I'm asking for the unachievable, but does anyone know of a good resource (book or website) to help a music illiterate such as myself produce scores for videos using loops? I can use Acid to produce tracks that sound very monotonous and repetitious (not my goal). I would be satisfied with a set of tips and tricks to make the results sound more interesting.

I'm amazed at what is possible with loops by examples on acidplanet.com. Without specific music training, can a novice
realistically produce video scores or should I just plan to pay a starving college music major to create themed scores for my video.

Thanks,

Joseph

Try treating your loops as characters in a story.

You know how characters need to be introduced at the beginning of a movie? Then as the story progresses we alternate between different combinations of characters letting some characters exit, while others come back into the main story?

It's the same thing with songs. Here's some simple tips:

1. Introduce your loops - you can introduce them one at a time slowly building them up together, or you can introduce them all at once, then, let some of the loops exit and re-enter the song as it progresses.

2. Alternate your loops - let the audience hear, individual loops and interesting loop combinations - The mute button is good for experimenting. As the song progresses let certain loops drop out, don't be afraid to just mute everything and let one loop play all by it's lonesome.

Think of each loop/instrument as voices talking to each other, having a dialoque, sometimes talking, sometimes listening, sometimes arguing, making love etc and I think you'll be able to get a nice song that doesn't sound so mechanical.

http://www.vasst.com/dvdproducts/acidNLE.htm
Sams also has an ACID book available.

The above link didn't work for me, but this one did

<http://www.vasst.com/not4%20release/dvdproducts/acidNLE.htm>

Joe Kras

Ouch, thanks for letting me know the folder had somehow been moved. The correct link is the one I posted, somehow a folder had been moved without us knowing...Hmmm...

That looks like an interesting session, on Acid.

Down towards the $ part of the registration page, it asks if one has a discount code. Hummmm? :-))