10 Dec
2002
10 Dec
'02
4:15 p.m.
On Tuesday 10 December 2002 20:12, Mark Knecht wrote:
Acid has the ability to shift samples by known
amounts, so that if I have a
bass line in C, I can shift it up a major 4th to F and it will fit into the
sound quite easily. This function in Acid works pretty well over a limited
range, say +/- a major 6th, but starts to fall apart pretty badly at an
octave, in my experience. (It depends a lot on the library.)
I think that what actually happens is that the said effect is not aware of the
sound's "color." So while you can change the "root note" you
can't port that
exact "feeling" to an octave above (lowering pitch is also affected though
more resistant to this side-effect). More often than not you end up with
squeeking sounds and awful distortions... However sometimes it still makes
sense to pitch-shift an entire octave and this is usually the case with
artificial, "geometric" sounds (like some - but not all - 303s).
Unfortunately I lack the theoretical notions to explain why this happens or
how to avoid/amegliorate the problem as well as lacking any programming
skills (perl is nice for administering a box but nowhere near the efficiency
required for "real work" :-P).
I agree that the most powerful and flexible solution for both a
"beatmapper/tempo editor" and a pitch-shifter would be the LADSPA plugin
idea. Sure, the "paintbrush" would be gone but that's not ACID's
paradigm,
just the implementation they chose. You could equally do the same convenient
job by simply being able to define in the host app from where-to-where the
sample is audiable plus a beat-offset to set it right (the extreme
convenience of Acid being that you can start the specific track from any
point and not just the start of the loop as well as only playing a loop
partially like say just a kick of the entire drumbeat).