| Page (1) of 1 - 05/13/04 |
 email article |
 print
page |
Rudy Sarzo really Rocks the House with his new training video on ACID for Non-Linear Editors. With over three hours of instructional material, Rudy Sarzo, bassist with Ozzy Osbourne, Quiet Riot, and Whitesnake, takes you from zero to hero sharing his personal experience, knowledge, and insights that has taken him years to obtain and allowing you an inside look at how he approaches his craft. This training DVD is a ?must have? for any non-linear editor who needs to score professional soundtracks with no musicians and no copyrights.
After watching this DVD several times, I?ll honestly say that this is an excellent tutorial for both its intended audience (non-linear editors) and also for those just wanting to learn ACID. Rudy Sarzo provides a solid foundation for using ACID with audio loops, appropriate even for the beginner as he assumes the viewer is a non-linear editor and has never used ACID or made music before. As a musician, I easily understood the musical concepts Rudy was trying to convey but I believe he did so in a very clear and concise manner that non-musicians will easily understand.
Laying the Foundation
The first five chapters (Introduction to ACID, ACID and Hardware, The ACID Workspace, ACID Preferences, and The ACID Toolbar) give the viewer a broad overview of how ACID works. Rudy starts by discussing hardware options one might want to consider using, and shares some good tips about the hardware that he keeps in his gig bag while traveling on the road as well as the hardware in his home studio. He then takes the viewer for a tour around the ACID workspace and toolbars familiarizing them with every menu item and icon. Sony ACID Pro 4.0 has a fair amount of customizable preferences that allow users to tailor the program to their liking and Rudy explains all of these preferences and why he has chosen each option for himself. He also explains what the viewer should consider when making changes to them for their own personal needs. A nice added visual feature, which assists you throughout this training video, is a dynamic overlay that shows you the short-cut keys that Rudy is using or discussing. I find that having these visual cues is a real aid to remembering some of the more subtle points in the training material.
Where the Fun Begins
After explaining what all the knobs and dials do, Rudy gets to have some fun and start making music in the next two chapters Loops to Timeline, and Understanding Loops. He starts out in the Explorer and demonstrates several ways to preview loops and place them on the timeline. Then he continues with the various ways of painting loops across the timeline to add the music to the composition. Rudy also discusses beats, measures, and tempos and spends a fair amount of time going over loop snapping and why it is important for getting the loops on the proper tempo. He always remembers who his audience is in his presentation style. For example, when discussing how ACID adjusts the original tempo and key of a loop to fit the project tempo and key, he relates that back to how powerful a non-linear editor would be if it could automatically adjust frame rates and color correct on the fly as you add media. This is a perfect analogy for a non-linear editor audience to grasp the power of ACID.
In addition, this chapter introduces how to cut loops to extract the parts that you want out of them and discusses how to add pan and volume envelopes and even duplicate tracks to make harmonies which Rudy also does later in the tutorial. He ends these two chapters by talking about the different properties and types of loops (i.e., Loop, One Shot, or Beatmapped) and when you would want to use each.
Emotional Components of a Score
In Scoring with Emotions, Rudy shares some valuable insight on how to achieve the proper mood for a musical piece. He uses a few examples to discuss the types of orchestral instruments he would use to match the mood of various scenes. He also discusses the importance of using the proper FX to sweeten the mood and match the acoustics of the images in the film or video you are scoring. These moments make this tutorial a cut above the rest because the viewer is learning information that can?t be picked up from reading the manual. It is the advantage of Rudy?s experience with scoring in this short chapter of just Rudy talking that is one of the gems on this DVD. My only critique would be that there weren?t any visual examples displayed while Rudy was talking, although the DVD does offer several versions of the final score on the Media menu. Visuals aside, this chapter holds lots of valuable information for the non-linear editor faced with scoring a video to achieve a particular emotion.
Getting Down to Business
The next two chapters (Manipulating Loops, and Global Tempo Changes) really start the instructions on scoring and composition. Rudy teaches the remainder of DVD in the context of a score he is working on with a video clip in ACID so you really get a feel for his workflow and approach to scoring. Actually, it really doesn?t matter if you?re scoring for video or just composing a song, all of the information on this DVD will be relevant to you.
Rudy starts off by showing a flute loop that he uses multiple times in succession but transposes it using key markers so that it never gets boring or repetitious. This leads into a discussion on global key changes and why you wouldn?t want instruments like percussion affected by this. Rudy goes on to talk about transposing a bass part and gives a bit of music theory on the 1-4-5 chord progression. I?m not sure how many non-linear editors would be able to grasp this particular concept without knowing some music theory about scales, but it was nice to see Rudy explain that there is a set of musical progressions that you can draw from to make your music sound more interesting. I would encourage non-musicians who watch this DVD to review at least some music theory as an aid to making better music compositions. This section concludes with a whole chapter on tempo changes that explains how to make them and why you might want to use them.
Beat Me Daddy (Eight to the Bar)
The next three chapters (BeatMapping, Creating a Click Track, and Creating Your Own Loops) are the heart of loop manipulation for ACID. Rudy takes a song from a CD and Beatmaps it into ACID showing you how to start a composition from something that may already be close to the desired feel. This allows him to add additional percussion or other tracks, which modify the emotional elements, yet still keep perfectly in sync with the tempo of the original CD track. For new ACID users or ACID users who never quite got the hang of using the Beatmapper, this is an excellent chapter because Rudy uses a song that doesn?t beatmap properly from the beginning. You really learn to use the Beatmapping tool to its fullest. Next Rudy demonstrates how to use the Chopper to modify the original CD track and create your own loops to use in your composition. This is important to understand for extracting selections of songs to create a totally new composition and thus giving your music a unique feel. He also shows you how to build your own library of loops by rendering these new loops to a new track and saving them.
Rudy rounds out this chapter with a demonstration on how to edit loops in Sound Forge. He does this to get more accurate control of the processing of the loop. He shows you how he modifies the original sound of the new loop he has created to really personalize the style for the emotion he is looking for. This is a great way to add new life to existing loops as well.
Why walk when you can take the Bus?
Having instructed the viewer on how to compose with ACID in general, and how to compose for video scoring in particular, Rudy now explains how to organize yourself, sweeten the sounds with FX, and get ready for the mix-down in the next four chapters (Buses and Routing Audio, Adding Effects, Understanding Dynamics Processing, Automating FX). This is a critical set of chapters that will really help both new ACID users and experienced ACID users alike. Rudy discusses the importance of using Buses to provide greater control over the sound and to group your tracks logically. He demonstrates how to add FX at both the track level and the bus level, and discusses when you would want to use each method. For ACID users that don?t use buses and find themselves lost in the myriad of tracks that ACID compositions often grow into, this chapter will literally take you from what may feel like walking in circles, to riding the bus to your final destination (the mix) in no time.
Anyone who has worked in a recording studio will be familiar with how valuable buses are and pick this up quickly. Rudy builds on this and continues to enhance the ACID experience by sharing his workflow on how he organizes and approaches sweetening and fine-tuning the sound.
In these chapters, Rudy discusses how important it is to establishing a consistent environment for the composition because the loops may have been recorded in many different environments initially. He also discusses the use of limiters to control the dynamics of the music. This section of the DVD concludes with the automation of FX. This is a very powerful function in ACID and helps provide a great deal of dynamism to your final mix. Rudy shows how to keep repetitive loops from sounding boring by automating some very subtle effects on them keeping them alive and moving in the mix.
Don?t worry; we?ll fix it in the Mix.
It can?t be can?t stressed enough how important it is to get the mix right. All the greatest loops and subtle FX in the world won?t be worth a darn if the tracks are just thrown together in a big ?loop soup?. In these final chapters, (Setting Up the Mix, Crossfading Loops, Recording Audio, Final Mixing, Surround Sound, Rendering/Outputting) Rudy pulls it all together and provides a systematic method of approaching the mix. This is especially valuable for non-musicians like non-linear editors, and musicians who have never worked in a recording studio to know. Even though this was information I already knew from working in recording studios myself, it reminded me that everything I learned on a hardware console could be applied to ACID in software and to approach the problem the same way. It is a tried and true approach to balancing each instrument group as you bring them into the mix. I saw a difference in how I organized and approached my mixes in my very next project. It was evident to me that I was influenced by this DVD. That was worth the price alone.
The DVD ends with demontrating how to do a Surround Sound mix and how to render your output for inclusion in your favorite non-linear video editor in various formats.
So what?s missing?
This tutorial does not cover MIDI or VSTi or how to record your own audio (other than briefly explaining the options on the record dialog and, even at that it, only explains the audio options not the MIDI options). It does not teach how to punch in and out and record MIDI and live audio, or how to use VSTi plugins, etc. But that's to be expected. This is not a generic "Everything you want to know about ACID" tutorial because of its focus on scoring for video. Honestly, that would have only been a couple of extra chapters out of this 23-chapter DVD anyway and most non-linear editors won?t need this information.
There were one or two times during the tutorial when Rudy made a mistake and recovered from it without explaining why it happened or what he did to fix it. One of those involved the loop region and playback. I can?t tell you how many times this has happened to me as well, and at one time or another it?s going to happen to everyone that uses ACID. We all make mistakes and quite often, we all make the same mistakes so it would have been nice if Rudy explained why the playback got stuck in a loop when it was expected to play through and how adjusting the loop markers or turning off looping cleared it up. This is really a nit but every mistake holds a lesson to be learned.
Conclusion
This DVD will give you the basics and beyond of ACID. It covers what the preferences and toolbars do, how to add loops, add effects to loops with and without automation, create your own loops from songs on CD and from other loops, process a loop in Sound Forge, changing keys/tempos, transposing loops, and it will teach you how to approach a mix (using buses) the same way we do in a recording studio. It?s an incredible amount of material that is laid out in a very well thought out progression and is presented by a very capable and personable instructor in Rudy Sarzo.
The core learning experience in any tutorial is how to approach the problem at hand. The instructor can demonstrate every knob and dial in the interface but if they don?t explain when to use each of them in the workflow, the student will still be lost on how to get started or when to use each feature. That is where Rudy?s approach to scoring in this tutorial is really the value of this DVD. The experience that Rudy has to offer makes this DVD special and he did an excellent job of sharing that experience with us. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to either learn ACID or just get more out of their existing ACID sessions.
Thanks Rudy! You?ve change the way I approach an ACID project forever.
Page: 1
John Rofrano is the author of Instant ACID, a book on Sony ACID Pro software, from CMP Books. He is also the developer of Ultimate S and Celluloid, two software plug-ins for Sony Vegas NLE software. John has been a performing musician, singer, songwriter for over 30 years, and programmer and computer architect for the past 20 years. He is also a forum host on DMN Forums for the Sony ACID and Sony Scripting forums. He can be reached at: john_rofrano@hotmail.com
Related Sites: Digital Producer , Digital Video Editing , Audio Video Producer , BN - Broadcast Newsroom , Corporate Media News , Digital Post Production , Digital Pro Sound , Oceania
Related Newsletter: DMN Newsletter , Timeline Newsletter , Loud Newsletter , Digital Media Net , DMNForums , Review Seeker
To Comment on This Article, Click HERE
Most Recent Reader Comments:
Click Here To Read All Posts
Must be Registered to Respond (Free Registration!!!, CLICK HERE)
Vegas Pro 8 + Free Vegas Seminar Series
