Amazon.com Review
It's true: great things do come in small packages. In this case, Sonic Foundry's
Acid Music 2.0 provides a powerful CD-ROM music-production tool that is perfectly suited for amateur and dedicated music crafters alike. Unlike other music-creation and recording programs, Acid Music focuses on layering sound samples (loops) onto tracks in the intuitive interface. The package includes hundreds of sound samples--drums, percussion, bass, guitar and synthesizer riffs, sound effects and more--and hundreds more are downloadable from the Web. Thus building songs is a breeze. Grab a loop from the sound-library window; drag it into the track window; drop it into a track; and add effects such as reverb, delay and chorus. The program automatically synchronizes the loops' key and tempo-a true time-saver, though not without occasional quirks and glitches that require manual adjustments. Before long, grooves worthy of a spin in a dance club are pounding from your speakers.
As you might expect from a loop-based music tool, your musical creations tend to naturally lean toward the techno, house, industrial, ambient and related genres. But the beauty of this program lies in its versatility. With the ability to plug in an instrument and lay down nonlooping tracks--such asan entire song's guitar part--Acid Music functions as a full-featured recording studio capable of producing music in any genre.
Once you've amassed a collection of self-produced tunes, the next step is to find an audience. Sonic Foundry came up with a wonderful solution for this step: ACIDplanet.com. From right inside the program, you can post a song onto this community-based Web site, where others can download or stream your tune, then (gulp) rate and review it. Whether you want to create simple tunes for house cleaning or the next college radio hit, Acid Music provides the tools. Just add a fast computer system and a healthy dose of inspiration. --Eric Twelker, Amazon.com
Manufacturer's Description
Express your musical creativity with unprecedented ease and flexibility with Acid Music 2.0. Acid Music is the perfect - and affordable - software solution for creating original, royalty-free music quickly and easily. Create music in any style imaginable with its multi-genre loop library containing over 600 loops.
"Paint" your music without messing with MIDI, complicated sequencers, or musical instruments. Enhance each individual track with great-sounding effects that are sophisticated yet simple to use. After you're finished with your tune, burn it to CD with ACID Music's Track-at-Once CD burning, export to MP3, or publish online.