Chapter 17
Useful Formulas and Musical Aids
When dealing with ACID and other applications such as Sound Forge, you’ll probably find it handy to know some basic, useful formulas and aids that will help you if you’re constructing loops of your own.
Not many users know that a four-beat sample that’s exactly two seconds long will loop perfectly in a tempo of 120bpm. Why is that? It’s all in the math.
Calculating Tempo and Seconds
To find out the tempo a four-beat sample would best fit into:
Example: 240 ÷ 2 seconds = 120bpm
Similarly, you can find out the number of seconds you need for a four-beat sample to fit within a particular tempo. This especially comes in handy when using Sound Forge:
Example: 240 ÷ 80bpm = 3 seconds
If you have a sample that’s ...
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