As a follow up to that review, here are two one-take looks at how Acid V sounds in use – four etudes, plus one workflow video.
See my review first, as these are effectively intended as illustrations for that article:
So I did have some fun testing it. Here are four etudes – three acid bassline grooves, plus one ambient sketch – produced in fairly short order. They all started from the init preset at least for the Acid V, but I have to say – programming these was fast.
This wound up being an exercise, for the heck of it, in “let’s use all or mostly all Arturia plug-ins.” And I didn’t try to make this sound like an “authentic” 303, because, frankly – go listen to DJ Pierre or 808 State! I’m not them, so… let’s see what other 303-ish / adjacent / not-so-303 sounds we can get!
Example 1: Two instances of Acid V, each fed through Arturia Tape MELLO-FI. (That reproduces some of the lo-fi tape effect that’s so obvious in a lot of early acid – see examples below.) Roland Cloud TR-606 fed through Arturia Dist COLDFIRE and another Tape MELLO-FI, Roland Cloud TR-909 into Dist COLDFIRE, and one Arturia Bus FORCE on the master track for one last layer of parallel compression and saturation.
Example 2: Acid V. All percussion comes from Arturia Prophet V3 (kick, snare, hats) and Matrix-12 V2 (the Q-Tip preset).
Example 3: Acid V with Arturia Rev LX-24. Kick is KORG MS-20 V (+ Coldfire), weird dubby hats from Prophet-VS V + Delay BRIGADE + Rev LX-24, more traditional hats from Roland Cloud TR-606 plus Arturia Dist COLDFIRE + Delay TAPE.
Example 4: wait for it, the ambient one — Acid V + Rev LX-24. And here’s a demo of modulating (erm, messing up) sequence rate.
Next up, here’s making a patch from scratch. I thought about adding a narration, but that almost detracts from how simple and quick this is. You just spawn a sequence, start tweaking – it’s very 303 in flow both when making authentic-ish 303 and when doing something out there and different.
Okay, those were made very quickly. But listen to 808 State for a real example of how the sound of acid isn’t just the 303, but the production around it – thanks to David Abravanel for the discussion on that.
If that doesn’t inspire you, I don’t know what will. The 808 State, I mean, not my examples.
Let us know if you’ve got more questions or comments on this one; we’re curious to hear!
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