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| Loop has been dragged to timeline from Explorer at bottom and painted in track with brush tool. |
In this tutorial, we're going to use this feature to add some rhythmic variation in a lush four-part background harmony vocal, creating staccato eighth notes in the middle part of a phrase. One of the many loops included with ACID Pro 5, the loop is called HIP-HOP R&B VOCALS PROMO 02 It is an R&B-style line melody sung without a pause or a breath. But I wanted to add this loop to an instrumental tune with a herky-jerky rhythm, and the soulful phrasing didn't quite mesh with the rest of the song.
To start with, I rendered the rest of the song's 22 looped tracks to a stereo track so I could see everything in one place. I could also have moved all of the tracks into one collapsable folder track, which is a good idea when an ACID project grows to more than one screen length of tracks. But I liked the global view the stereo track gave me for this purpose.
With the stereo mix on channel one, I selected the vocal loop in ACID's Explorer and dragged it to channel two. Using the brush tool, I painted the loop in the section of the track where I wanted it to play.
There are no problems painting the loop exactly where you want it. The final start and end times can be automatically aligned to whatever snap resolution is chosen, from measures, regions and markers, to note values up to 64th notes. I selected 16th notes, so the brush tool would paint precisely from one 16th note grid line to the next. The Erase tool can be used clean up any overspill (right-clicking when using the brush tool will delete overspill, too).
After moving the loop around, I found a five-bar section where it worked well. I wanted the singing to remain as it was recorded for the first part of the loop, and then go into staccato mode. Then I zoomed in on the loop, with the snap resolution still set to 16th notes. I placed markers at the in and out points where I wanted the staccato harmonies within the loop. Then using the Split tool, I split the audio at every grid line in that section. The split tool divides a loop into two slices wherever you select the split to be. When individual split sections are selected by highlighting them with the Select tool, they can be modified independently, or in this case, deleted.
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| Split sections have been alternately deleted. Markers at top show boundaries of vocal loop and section where staccato effect was applied. |
To create the staccato effect, I deleted every other split section starting with the first one. On playback, this caused the singers to hit four punctuated notes at the end of their line, compared to the smooth line they had sung before.
This same technique can be used for many purposes, as mentioned at the beginning of this article. Alternating slices could be reversed, processed with effects, or have tempo and pitch variations applied selectively. It's an effect that can be heard frequently in Hip Hop and Electronica musical genres. The only limit to its application is your imagination -- and taste, of course. It's important not to overuse this, because the unique sound is what makes it stand out from the rest of a tune. But applied judiciously, this technique can add surprise and interest to a musical creation.
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