There really isn't much use for a (music) keyboard with Acid2 (Acid 3 ships now, I believe.)
What Acid allows you to do is take pre-sampled material from Acid disks (about $30-50 US each) and to create arrangements by auto-changing the tempo and key of the samples according to your specs. You can also do some editing of the loops as well. Your program should've come with a sample disc of some basic samples.
As for making your own samples, you have to get a sampler (Acid is not one.) You can get a hardware sampler, like the Kurzweil K2000, the Akai S-series, etc., but if you think you spend alot of money on Acid, you'll pass out at the price of most hardware samplers.
You can also get a software sampler for use in your computer, such as the Gigasampler. However, before you can use it, you'll need to have a proper audio card. These range from Soundblasters, which you can get from any consumer electronics store for about $50-90 US., all the way up to full on professional units from Digidesign, Lucent, and the like, that can cost between $3-5K US.
A good, decent soundcard can be had nowdays for around $150-300. Yamaha makes a good one, as do a number of other manufacturers. (Just pick up a copy of Electronic Musician and you'll see all the different ads in there.)
All in all, Acid is a fun program, but don't expect to be able to do serious original music production with it. It's really ideal doing music beds for industrials and what not, as you can come up with decent sounding, copyright-free loops in about 3 minutes.
A much better combo is a sequencer (Emagic Logic, Steinberg Cubase, or e:trinity Cakewalk), a software sampler, and a program like Recycle! to chop and customize loops.
----- Original Message -----
From: Lambert
To: acid-jazz@ucsd.edu
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 10:44 PM
Subject: anyone know how to use Acid PRO 2.0?
I recently got this program acid pro 2.0, I just wanted to start making some music using this program with my keyboard (Yamaha psr-540). Does anyone know how to use this thing and know what other programs and hardware I need to make music?
I played piano for 8 years and playing piano is alright, but I have no idea how to use the features in this program and don't know how to use my keyboard (I spent a lot of money and it is embarrassing not having a clue).
Also I got tons of CDs I could sample, but I don't know how to store them into my computer.
ANY IDEAS?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Jul 21 2001 - 02:14:45 CEST