Congrats, JR.

lacobus?

Gary

> Congrats, JR

Thanks Gary.

> lacobus?

Iacobus is a very knowledgable ACID user over on the ACID forums who won ACIDplanet’s Static-X remix contest. (his handle is mD). He plays guitar and offers lots of help over there. One day people were talking about how there hasn’t been a book on ACID since ACID 3 and ACID 5 was coming out. Iacobus commented that he was thinking of writing a book but it was a large undertaking for one person. I sent him a private email that said, “how about two people?” and the rest, as they say, is history.

Actually, I just noticed that Spot’s link is the the second page the review. The review starts here: http://www.digitalproducer.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=31006-0

~jr

Congratulations, John! Reading that review almost makes we want to try ACID... the program! Not being musically inclinded is what's holding me back.

Iacobus (interesting name) and how would you write that out phonically?

> Reading that review almost makes we want to try ACID... the program! Not being musically inclined is what's holding me back.

We tried to take both the musician and non-musician into account. Chapter 17 is Useful Formulas and Musical Aids. It has a chord modulation chart to help you understand progressions. It’s important to know how to modulate loops to compose a song and the book covers common chord progressions so that non-musicians will know what chords to modulate to that sound good together.

With regard to grocking ACID, I have to say that I didn’t really “get it” at first until I started buying sound libraries. When you use the samples, there isn’t enough of any one sample to really compose something that sounds natural and you say to yourself, “How can anyone write a song from all these disparate bits?”. Then you purchase a library or two and realize that there are lots of similar loops that are variations on a theme. Now when you drop loops from the same directory, they go together nicely because they were meant to compliment each other.

So its unfortunate that people judge ACID by the sample loops and get frustrated because it is difficult to get a particular feel from just a small sample of loops. You really need to invest in a few libraries that in the genre you want to make music in and then it becomes much easier.

> Iacobus (interesting name) and how would you write that out phonically?

Iacobus is pronounced, “yah-kuh-buss” which is Latin for Jacob. This is the name his musical peers know him by. Just like my musical peers (and now you guys) know me as Johnny Roy. It’s a stage name I took many years ago when I played rock & roll professionally live 5 nights a week for a living. I used my real name on the book because I felt it was time to just be me.

~jr

Hey JR, I said it once already at the ACID forums and I'll say it one more time, congrats on the book!!!

'Iacobus is pronounced, “yah-kuh-buss” '

Wow, I've been butchering the pronounciation of that name in my head for the past 3 or so years now.

Is the book available from the VASST site? I'd rather buy in there if I can, but I don't see it.

Nope. VASST doesn't sell the books, Amazon, Walmart, etc is where we recommend folks go. There is only the description of the book on the VASST site.
http://www.vasst.com/printproducts/bookmenu.htm has a link to Amazon.