Dragon Dance - Loops For Acid
Marc Anderson’s Dragon Dance - Loops For Acid
Sample CD Review
By Cezanne Huq
Format: PC CDROM (.wav files for Sonic Foundry’s ACID)
Price: $59 us
Number of discs: 1
Sonic Foundry Website
Sonic Foundry Loops for ACID™ presents Marc Anderson: Dragon Dance. A student of African percussion instruments, Marc Anderson’s historical knowledge and performance skills are matched only by his technical expertise in revealing the mystery and beauty of instruments through imaginative sound recording and processing techniques. Dragon Dance contains essential single solo instrument sounds and performances as well as blistering walls of tribal thunder that have made Marc Anderson one of the most distinctive and original percussionists working today. Unique in the world of percussion libraries, Dragon Dance is the perfect marriage of ancient and modern sounds and technologies, crafted by an artist with an intimate understanding of both. (586 Loops/465 MB)
Dragon Dance is filled with hundreds of specialized .wav files running the gamut from pop culture audio-spheres to ethereal ambient percussions. Marc Anderson proves that studying the craft of African percussion and working through the years with Steve Tibbetts, James Plattes, etc., wasn’t just a mere circumstance. He provides you with a palette of sounds painstakingly treated and processed using imaginative recording and sampling techniques. Ever want to echo the plains of Serengeti and reveal the streets of modern day are conveniently indexed, mastered and packaged to go. Add elements like dumbek, djembe and cahons are just a few worldly instruments that inhabit this CD-ROM. All of the sounds were processed and finalized using 16bit resolution and recorded at 44.1khz.
Virtual Urth Excellence Award Virtual Urth Ratings (Scale 1-5):
Buck Value: 4.5
Sonic Quality: 4
Features: 5
Programming (disc layout): 4
Availability: Now!
Final Verdict: VU Gear Of The Year (95%-100%)
Sample CDs are always hard to gauge and finding the right one can be frustrating. What makes the Loops For ACID a must for musicians looking for new elements to inject life into tracks are the sample songs that examples the sounds possibilities. We spent hours copying the basic template provided on the CD-ROM and replacing and adding our own sounds mixing with Marc’s. Granted this a feature only ACID users but it’s a phenomenal way to experiment and finalize your ideas.
Built on the premise that sounds are Acidized, ACID allows the .wav files contained within the CD-ROM to be loaded and implemented within your music within seconds. More importantly, each and every sound is embedded with special properties, information like beats per minute, looped or not, are pre-installed. This allows ACID to load the sounds with parameters that originally reflected Marc’s intention for the sound.
In conclusion, the loops and samples on this disc are solid as a whole, to make for quite a value packed product, all for around 60 bucks. Its great to use if you own some of Sonic Foundry’s line of ACID products, but even if you don’t, it’s a nice variety of loops and grooves that you probably won’t want to pass up if you’re an enthusiast in creating loop based music. Of course, you’ll need a PC if you’re intending to load any .wav samples off these discs, which is kind of a drawback if you don’t intend to use this disc with any of the ACID products. But then again, you probably shouldn’t be buying this disc if you aren’t intending on using it with ACID, since you’d be really missing out on all the ACID enhanced features the samples offer.
Albums to consider
Marc Anderson’s “Time Fish”