Then click in the narrow horizontal strip just beneath the piano roll.
Change back to the arrow tool (type 'a' twice quicly); click and hold on the patch change icon to get the menu of patches.
NOTE: To hear changes in tempo, you must set the Tempo Control (in the popup menu above the Tempo Slider) to Conductor Track.
- Choose Setup > Receive Sync. Set the Type of sync to Tap tempo. For MIDI beat input data, set Source to PC88 and Event to the MIDI note of your choice (default is C3). This is the note you will tap to control the tempo. Set the desired number of countoff beats.
- Turn on Slave to External Sync in the Setup menu.
- To record your taps, record-enable the Conductor Track, and begin recording.
- When finished recording, turn off Slave to External Sync. Make sure that Tempo Control is set to Conductor Track, and play back the sequence.
- Automation is the process whereby volume, panning and
audio effects parameters are made to change over time. The term
comes from large hardware mixing consoles commonly found in
recording studios. These have faders that can move by themselves,
once the engineer's fader movements have been recorded by an
on-board sequencer — a process known as automation.
To record automation...
- Open the Mixing Board window.
- Press the automation record-enable buttons for the
tracks whose volume or pans you wish to vary. (These
buttons turn red.)
- Play the sequence. (That's right: play, not record.)
- Wiggle the knobs and slide the faders, as you desire.
- Stop playing the sequence, and turn off the automation record-enable buttons, so as to prevent accidental changes.
Now when you play the sequence, the faders and pan knobs will move, as long as the automation play-enable buttons are pressed. (These buttons turn green.)
There's just one problem. You've effectively entered volume and pan controller data into your MIDI tracks — that's what the Mixing Board did for you when you wiggled its knobs. Now Digital Performer expects you to provide initial values for these controllers, at the beginning of any tracks that have changing automation. If you don't do this, the volume and pan at the start of playback may be wrong.
Perhaps the easiest way to set initial volume and pan values is to rewind to the beginning of the sequence and press the Automation Snapshot button in the upper left of the Mixing Board (it looks like a camera).
If you want to use the Mackie HUI control surface while mixing, you first have to configure it for your computer account. Launch Digital Performer, and create a new project. Then choose this menu command: Setup > Control Surface Setup. Click on the + button. Choose HUI in the Driver pop-up menu, and choose HUI > HUI-1 in the MIDI pop-up menu. Then press OK. You can close the new project (and delete it). HUI now will work with all your DP projects. If you want to disable it, return to the Control Surface Setup dialog, and press the - button, followed by OK.)
- Record continuous data into a track that already has notes.
You can record pitch bend, modulation wheel (and any other
controller knobs) this way.
To keep from erasing the existing notes when recording, be sure
to press the Overdub button:
.
Sometimes people put controller data into a separate track assigned to the same MIDI channel as the track that contains notes. That makes it easier to try alternative versions of the controller without worrying about destroying the notes in the track. Then it's possible to merge the "notes" track and the "controllers" track together:
- Click on the name of the track (TRACK NAME column) that contains the controller events.
- Choose Set to Chunk Bounds from the Selection pop-up
menu. This is the downward-pointing triangle just to the
right of the End edit field in the Track List window.
- Choose Cut (Edit menu).
- Click on the name of the track containing the notes.
- Choose Merge (Edit menu).
- Use the Region > Create Continuous Data command.
- Draw continuous data in the Graphic Editor window. To do this,
first choose the pencil tool from the Tool palette, which
you can show with the Studio > Tools command.
Select the type of continous data you want to draw from the middle menu at the bottom of the Graphic Editing window. Use the left-most menu to select the Lines method of displaying data, since that is easier to read. Click and drag in the area beneath the piano roll to draw lines. The image below shows the result of drawing a volume curve with the pencil tool.
- You can enter controllers and other MIDI data using the Event
List window. Click the Insert (I) button, choose
Controller from the menu that appears, make sure the time
is set correctly (e.g., 1|1|000 if you want to insert
initial controller values), and fill in the other two fields with
the controller number and value, respectively. For example, the
graphic below shows a volume event with a value of 98, placed at
the beginning of the sequence.
- Now that you and your classmates are using controllers, do not forget to press the PANIC soft button on the K2600 to return the controllers to normal. You may not hear a channel that has been left with volume set to zero, even if the K2600 has been turned off. It is highly recommended to begin all tracks with an initial setting for all controllers that a track uses (including volume and pan), so that your sequence always begins with the correct settings.
- If your controllers don't seem to play back correctly, your sequence may not have the right setting for event chasing. "Event chasing" is the term used for what the sequencer does when beginning playback in the middle of a sequence: it looks (chases) backward to find the most recent values for each controller used, sends those out, and only then begins playing. To set event chasing, choose Setup > Set Event Chasing, press the Set All button, and then the OK button.