PERFORMER NOTES

Performer Notes moves on to the more advanced features of DP3's Drum Editor, plus more useful Performer-related tips, techniques and news.

A typical drum editor window — notice the note group for the three hi-hat parts, the 'Grid', 'Grid with Velocity' and 'Velocity with Duration' display modes, and the Pencil tool note settings at the top of the bottom left pane.

Last month, I looked at the basic operation of DP3's Drum Editor window, so now it's time to consider some of its more advanced features. One very nice touch is the implementation of Note Groups, a feature that exists to complement the way in which many drum machines and sound modules arrange drum sounds so that they are mutually exclusive, notably the various types of hi-hat, so that only one drum in the group can sound at any one time. The idea is that you put sounds like this into a Note Group in the Drum Editor, and DP3 will then prevent you from programming a drum part which attempts to play two or more grouped drum sounds simultaneously. It's a convenience feature, certainly, but works really well.

To create a Note Group, you just select some notes in the Note List by dragging over their names, and then choose 'Make Group from Selection' from the Drum Editor mini-menu. Thereafter, all grouped notes are covered by a single Play-enable button and appear as a single, multiple-item entry in the Note List. Notes can be removed from a group by selecting them and choosing 'Remove Pitches From Group'.

Last month, I mentioned various ways of defining the list of MIDI pitches that the Drum Editor displays for each track. Yet another way is to select 'Learn Pitches' from the Drum Editor's mini-menu. When you choose this menu item DP3 'listens' for incoming MIDI notes, and creates an entry in the Note List for all note data that it receives. Pressing the Return key on the computer's keyboard then returns the Drum Editor to normal operation. Learn Pitches can be a boon if you're playing in percussion parts from electronic kits or, for example, a Roland Octapad — you just play all your pads and DP3 learns what MIDI note number each is transmitting. It's quick, easy, and there's no messing around with keyboard or mouse data-entry.

If you're a frequent user of the Drum Editor, you may have noticed that it's able to display drum names in the Note List, next to the MIDI note number information — but only for certain MIDI devices, and some drum kits. This information is drawn from the MIDI device's FreeMIDI patch list, but not all FreeMIDI patch lists have drum names preconfigured like this. However, you can add drum names to any patch list manually, and since the Drum Editor has a two-way relationship with FreeMIDI, these names will be saved in the patch list ready for the next time you use that particular drum kit. To give a MIDI note number a name (or to rename what's already there) you just hold down Alt key on your Mac keyboard and click in the note's 'Name' column. When the drums in a kit are named like this, you can use the Name column's little pop-up menus to quickly select drums by name rather than MIDI note number. You can even click in the name field of a blank row at the bottom of the Note List, start typing in a drum name, and when you hit Return, DP3 will choose the drum whose name is closest to what you've typed.

There's one fundamental part of the Drum Editor that I haven't mentioned up until now — the Display Mode pop-up menus. These sit between the Note List and the Note Grid and determine how note data for a particular drum appears in the Grid. There are four options, the first two being 'Grid', which simply indicates the presence of a MIDI note at a certain position in the bar, and 'Grid with Velocity', which shows the rhythmic position of a MIDI note together with an indication — its vertical height — of how hard it's been 'hit'. You can change an individual note's velocity by clicking on it with the Reshape tool or writing over it with the Pencil tool. You can also 'sculpt' a row of notes with their velocities displayed by running the Reshape tool across them. The other two display modes both include duration information, along with rhythmic position and velocity. 'Velocity and Duration' mode indicates velocity by the vertical position of the note, and duration by its horizontal length. 'Free' mode is exactly the same, except that notes are no longer subject to the 'visual quantising' I talked about last month — you see exactly where they begin, their duration and velocity.

In all the display modes except for 'Grid', individual rows in the Note Grid can be resized by moving the mouse pointer to the horizontal dividing line beneath each display mode pop-up menu and then clicking and dragging. Resizing is useful because it allows more accurate display and control of note velocity.

Recording audio directly into a voice track in DP3 is easy — you just select an input, record-enable the track, and away you go. Recording like this has a major drawback, though — your signal will always be recorded 'dry' (ie. with no effects processing), unless it's being routed through some outboard effects units on its way to DP. Putting MAS (MOTU Audio System) effects into the track's insert slots won't change anything, because they'll only affect signals during playback, not during recording. It's the same for the track's fader and pan knob too — their position won't make a scrap of difference to the way your signal goes onto disk.

This is the simplest possible setup — external audio is routed into the Aux track (on the right), passes through PreAmp1 and Multimode Filter before being routed via a buss (buss 5 in this case, as indicated in the pop-up menu) to the record-enabled voice track on the left.

If you're new to this sort of routing, try creating a new project with a single mono Voice Track and a single aux buss. The idea is to route audio to the voice track via the aux; then, if you put plug-ins on the aux buss, the signal will be nicely 'wet' by the time it reaches the record-enabled Voice track. The settings are simple — you just make the Aux's input one of the physical inputs from your audio hardware, and its output a buss. Set the input of the Voice track to the same buss you've selected for the aux output, and finally check that the voice track's output is set to the physical output (or output pair) on your audio hardware that you use for monitoring. There's one last thing to check — in the Audio Monitor window (which allows you to observe the signal levels getting to your audio hardware, amongst other things) make sure the little headphone icon in the window's title-bar is selected, so that it lights up. This is a shortcut for Audio Patch Thru, also accessible from the Basics menu, and essential if you want to monitor your input as it comes back out of the computer.

You should now be able to hear the output of your mic, guitar, stylophone or whatever, so now try putting a plug-in effect in one of the aux's insert slots. For instant gratification, try a reverb, but an infinitely more useful treatment for tracking purposes is the MAS Dynamics plug set to Compressor mode. Guitarists could also give PreAmp1 a whirl — it's no Pod, but it's still better than a lot of pedals.

If you're recording a live gig (pop or classical), MW Limiter is a fine choice to help you get a healthy signal level onto the voice track at all times. It can't guard against overloads in your hardware's AD converters, of course, but it can prevent signals hitting full scale within DP itself. Another useful treatment is using Multimode Filter with its modulation source switch set to 'Env'. This way, it tracks the level of incoming signals, and opens the filter according to volume of those signals; it's superb for auto-wah effects, especially on bass parts. Prosoniq's NorthPole VST plug-in also excels at this.

Routing through effects this way allows you to really play with sounds and hear the results immediately. Providing you can achieve a workable latency, there's little need for outboard effects — in fact I now nearly always start DP projects by creating a few 'channel strip' auxes as described above. All incoming signals pass through one of these, before being routed to a voice track for recording.

Next month, I'll be describing some really intriguing possibilities using this sort of input routing.

VST Wrapper v3     Native Instruments' Absynth running under VST Wrapper v3. After extolling the virtues of Cycling 74's Pluggo plug-in suite and VST host in last month's column, I'm pleased to report that very soon, there should be a new version of a similar, complementary product, Audio Ease's VST Wrapper. As I write this column, in early December, I've already received a few different 'builds' of VST Wrapper v3 beta from Peter Bakker, one of the main programmers at Audio Ease, and it's looking very nice indeed. Wrapper v3 successfully addresses problems with 'tricky' VSTi plug-ins like Steinberg's LM4 and PPG Wave 2.V, and Gmedia's MTron, whilst generally managing to be more stable and use less memory. Best of all, perhaps, Wrapper v3 supports Steinberg's Halion sampler, offers multiple audio outputs via MAS busses, and achieves near-sample-accurate MIDI. All this is offered by the current beta version, so the release version might well do even more. I mentioned PSPAudioWare's Vintage Warmer plug-in last month, and a MAS version has now been released. Interestingly, though, it's really just the VST version 'wrapped' in a single-plug version of VST Wrapper v3. It would be nice if more VST plug-ins could be released this way, especially if it means that any VST/MAS compatibility issues are addressed by the plug-in manufacturer and Audio Ease before release of the plug-in. To keep right up to date with VST Wrapper development, stay tuned to www.audioease.com and reports from the NAMM show, some of which should arrive in time to be included in the next issue of SOS.

Home | Search | News | Current Issue | Digital Editions | Articles | Forum | Subscribe | Shop | Readers Ads

Advertise | Information | Links | Privacy Policy | Support