PERFORMER NOTES

The easy-to-use, but curiously powerful Split Notes window.

Over the last couple of months, Performer Notes has been covering the fundamentals of selecting, moving and copying MIDI data, and I'm pleased to say we're almost there. In the Edit & Region Menus, the Cut, Copy and Paste commands work entirely as you'd expect, but it's worth noting that pastes occur either where you've first made a time-range selection (by dragging in the time ruler) or at the position of the playback wiper. If it's the latter, the paste is made 'measure relative' if the Smart Selections option is checked in the Edit menu -- this preserves the original positions of notes in the bar, no matter where you've placed the wiper in the 'destination' bar. If you don't want this behaviour, so that the first note is pasted exactly at the wiper position, you simply turn Smart Selections off.

For functions like Repeat, the distinction between time-range and data selections, as discussed two months ago, still applies. However, the Shift function (accessed by holding down Command/Apple and hitting the 'L' key), which works on either selection type, really comes into its own in conjunction with the Graphic Editor,

Current Version     Digital Perfomer: v3.02.

Aside from these functions, there are two more powerful features that every Digital Performer power-user needs to be aware of. I'll be discovering the wonders of the Search command next month, but now it's the turn of the Split Notes function, which is almost as useful, but even less well known.

Editing MIDI in the Graphic Editor window is great for making very precise changes to the pitch, location or duration of notes. Sometimes, though, every MIDI user wishes their sequencer would act with a bit of intelligence and carry out some more complex tasks automatically. In DP, Split Notes makes a decent stab at doing just this, acting like a very choosy Cut or Copy command, selecting data based on pitch, duration and velocity criteria, and even offering to place the 'split' data in new tracks. Best of all, Split Notes manages to be flexible and powerful whilst remaining easy to use.

The first thing you do is indicate the region of MIDI data you want Split Notes to work on, by selecting it in any of the editing windows. Split Notes is then accessed from the Region menu. You must first decide if you want it to Cut or Copy the notes it 'splits' from the selection -- choose Cut and they'll be removed, whereas with Copy they'll be left in place. Next you decide what happens to the cut or copied notes by selecting one of four radio

Quick Tips     Gain quick access to the Split Notes window by hitting the Command/Apple key along with either of the minus keys on your keyboard -- a very logical shortcut. When defining pitches or velocities in Split Notes, you can type in new values, click and drag in the text fields, or even play your MIDI keyboard -- DP is always listening...

Now comes the real fun. The bottom of the Split Notes window is where you specify the criteria by which notes are split from the selection you originally made. The main one is pitch, and you can select a range ('Notes Between...'), individual notes (by clicking on the mini-keyboard diagram), any number of notes from the top or bottom of a chordal part, or 'All Notes'. The 'Optional Criteria' can further refine the split, and here you can specify a range of durations, On velocities and Off velocities. By the way, after all this don't forget to hit the Apply button to carry out the Split Notes action!

To put all this in context, here are some examples of things you might want to try with Split Notes. For starters, it can work wonders on a MIDI part where you've accidentally hit several wrong notes very briefly. Just configure the window to 'Cut', and 'Send The Notes To Clipboard'. For pitch select 'All Notes' and then switch on

Does exactly what it says on the tin -- the handy MS Decoder plug-in bundled with DP3.

Splitting up drum tracks (as I mentioned earlier) is easily achievable by selecting 'Cut', 'Separate Tracks By Pitch' and 'All Notes'. However, let's say you want to remove just a hi-hat part in order to have it played by another sampler or synth. This time you still cut and use 'Separate Tracks By Pitch', but by also choosing 'Selected Notes' and specifying the keys to which your closed, open and pedal-closed hi-hats are assigned, you can remove just those parts. Should you then need to recombine the split tracks into a single hi-hat track, you can use the nifty Merge Together command. Select the MIDI data in the tracks that Split Notes creates and copy it to the clipboard. Then you just highlight the name of an empty MIDI track, position the playback wiper somewhere appropriate, hold down the Alt/Option key and choose Merge Together from the Edit menu.

Finally, it's conceivable that you might want Split Notes to make a selection which is more complex than it seems able to handle. For example, you may wish to copy the top and bottom notes of a piano track into, say, bass guitar and sax tracks for a 'quick-and-dirty' piano trio arrangement. Because the pitch criteria are offered on mutually exclusive radio buttons, this doesn't seem possible, but of course it is, by just using Split Notes on the same selection twice, using 'Top' notes the first time and 'Bottom' the second.

It's also worth remembering that your initial selection doesn't have to be in only one track -- it could just as easily encompass a number of tracks, and Split Notes would then apply its selection criteria to all the tracks as if they were one big single track. This way you could quite easily extract a single high string line line (say) from a number of 'upper part' tracks which overlap each other.

The stereo miking technique known as middle and side is, quite rightly, very highly regarded for the precise imaging and mono compatibility of its resultant signals, but many people are put off using it, because it requires the output from two suitable microphones to be properly decoded. If you have Digital Performer v3, though, MOTU has done most of the hard work for you by providing the MS Decoder plug-in. It's probabl

PSP Audioware's emulation of the classic Lexicon PCM42 delay, now available in a dedicated MAS version.

MS Decoder has just two controls -- a stereo width knob plus a button for configuring the input from your microphones. The idea is that you route the output of the figure-of-eight mic to one side of your stereo track, and the cardioid (or omni) to the other. You don't have to worry which way round you've got them because the routing into MS Decoder is handled by the 'swap' button -- with the channels configured correctly the stereo image unambiguously snaps into place. The stereo width control is really just a volume control for the figure-of-eight channel -- when it's set to 'mono' MS Decoder is passing only the cardioid (or omni), panned centre.

There are a couple of extra things to note about MS Decoder. First of all, it's quite important that the mic levels on each side of the stereo channel are roughly equal, because you'll never get a proper stereo image if the figure-of-eight signal level is too low. What's more, because the stereo-width control can only attenuate the figure-of-eight signal, you're denied the ability to produce the sort of exaggerated stereo effects possible with a traditional three-channel analogue decoding setup. The solution, in both cases, is to place a Trim plug-in ahead of MS Decoder and boost the figure-of-eight channel manually. Trim is also handy if you inadvertently (or not) make a recording with your figure-of-eight mic upside-down. Inverting the phase on its side of the stereo track using Trim restores the correct Left/Right imaging.