WEEK 2: LDT [Introduction]

Some Thoughts on Sample Based Music

I first began using Acid Pro as a system of music making in 2000 about six months

after leaving Canada. At the time my only other instrument was an acoustic guitar that I'd bought in my travels. Acid Pro gave me the ability to paste in small pieces of sound or music and build complex sequences. Originally I used the loops that were provided with Acid Pro and would mess with them as much as possible in order to make them my own. Later I began to record my own loops using various software synths. As I began to acquire more hardware and I moved away from doing music with looped samples. I began to use Acid Pro exclusively as a means of mixing tracks that I'd recorded on my small digital eight track recorder and rendering a final mix in Wav format to be tweaked and mastered in Sound Forge.

The use of samples (to be provided by Eric and Darren) to create a track is in some ways a return to the roots of my computer based recording process. I have yet to hear what exactly they will send me and I have no idea whether I will use their loops exclusively, add more of my own or if I will throw in some tracks recorded on my digital eight track. I will however post at least two versions of what will come as a way of showing the process in some greater detail.

For my week as the featured artist I have requested that the others provide tracks with a BPM count of 80 BPM in the key of D. Look for their contributions over the next several days and my efforts to follow on Thursday and Saturday.

LDT