Painting with sound - Example from one of my Sonic Foundry / Sony Acid Pro projects
April 23, 2011 (Updated 4/24) – This weekend I went through some older material from the days when I used Acid… Acid Pro that is – a loop-based composition platform that was popular since the moment it hit the scene in 1998. More or less obsolete now – surpassed by programs like Ableton and Reason, Acid Music/Acid Pro was originally developed by Sonic Foundry. One of the things that made this Windows-only music platform attractive were the many loop libraries that came ready-made for music making in a number of styles. Now in version 7, it is not surprising that Acid (and several flavors for guitarists, DJs, etc) took off and developed a dedicated following. Honestly, you don’t even need to be a musician to use this stuff, which is part of the philosophical problem I had after a few years of exposure. With a rather simple interface compared to today’s apps, Acid was very good at beat-mapping and allowed the user to get up and running with a groove very quickly in a graphical manner. In fact, the songs that I made with Acid were not so much “composed” as they were “painted”. This gave my Acid pieces a quality that none of my other work had back then or since (note I do not say it was always a good quality).
Using loops has advantages – they are clean, clear and can be very inspiring. As a guitarist/singer, using loops became a go-to technique to establish music beds to improvise against. It’s easy to work on a verse/chorus structure, then copy them out to create a song quickly. “Acidized” loops contain tempo and key information, so that Acid can properly time stretch them when pitch shifted. This doesn’t always work, but in general it takes some of the guesswork out of the recording/production process and gets you creating quickly.
Stylistically, I particularly liked having access to East Asian sounds that I otherwise would not be able to access. Even after I found a real tabla player, having some of these elements helped tie stuff together. For me, writing/recording are intertwined, so having access to as many new sounds as possible has always been a great motivator for coming up with new, original melodies and concepts for songs. Acid did a great job of this for a while, and thankfully the loop libraries are generally compatible with most other platforms.
Of course, with all the loop libraries available in so many styles, the motivation to create your own can be reduced. This also leads to creation of pieces that lack context. Tablas, Dub bass and Erhu site alongside slide guitar, guiro and bamboo flute. Sure, these things can – and do – work together if done well, but it is all too easy to slap something together. The adage “if it sounds good, it is good” (famous JD Moore quote) is important here, and sometimes if it sounds good, it my not be culturally sensitive. For example, though I experimented with them briefly, I discontinued use of Native American Indian vocal loops.
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Signals with Shivasongster returned to the interwebs on 10/20/11 after a hiatus of a couple months due to our travels in Ireland, EM2011, and other priorities. Now back as a monthly program, Signals is offering me a place to once again experiment with new sounds and put myself out there as an improv/electro artist. Its some of the most fun I’ve had musically.
