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Achieving Flexible Tempo In Digital Performer : April 2006 Home Search News Articles Forum SOS TV Subscribe Shop Directory
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In this article:
The Conductor Track Speeding Up & Slowing Down Five Goes Live: DP 5 New Feature Digest Adjust Beats For Audio Snapping
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If you favour the feel of music that results from real people playing real instruments, the strict-tempo approach of a sequencer can feel like a straitjacket. But DP offers many ways of breaking out, and this month we explore them, as well as bringing news of the major update that is Digital Performer 5.
Robin Bigwood
The big news for us from January's USA NAMM show is the forthcoming release of Digital Performer version 5, which being due for release in "Q1 2006" might even be out now. You can check out the 'Five Goes Live' box elsewhere in this article for details, and see www.motu.com to keep up with availability. First, though, the topic for this month's DP workshop...
These days we're used to hearing heavily produced music recorded to a strict, unchanging click. The resulting, somewhat mechanical, quality is a key feature of many dance music styles. However, much of the natural musicality we associate with music from the 1960s and 1970s arises from the fact that it wasn't recorded to a click, and that the musicians, who were probably playing as a group rather than endlessly overdubbing individual parts, were subconsciously and naturally varying the tempo throughout each number. Sequencers such as DP, by dint of their built-in click tracks and bar-and-beat time rulers, can tend to steer users into going down the 'mechanical' route, but it doesn't have to be like this. By using DP's Conductor Track a special track that shows up in every DP sequence and can't be deleted you can dial in as many tempo changes as you need over the course of a sequence.
The Tempo Control pane of DP's main transport window is where you can switch your sequence over to Conductor Track control, to start exploiting some of the temporelated powers of the program.
4. In the Event List window, click the title-bar's 'I' button (which stands for 'Insert') and choose Tempo Change.
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5. DP brings up a new tempo-change event in the list, ready to be configured. You can specify location, beat 'type' and tempo. So if you wanted a tempo of 132bpm, for example, where the beat type is your basic crotchet (quarter note), at the beginning of your sequence, you'd type 1, 1, 0 (referring to the bar, beat and tick position, with a press of the Tab key after each number), select crotchet, hit Tab again, then type in 132. Finally, enter the data by hitting Return. With just this simple method you can try out a few ideas, such as setting start tempo, nudging up the tempo of choruses, or gradually increasing tempo over the course of a sequence, to subtly manipulate the mood and feel of the piece. As you may have guessed, you can also write Conductor Track tempo data graphically in the Graphic Editor window. Here's how: 1. With the Event List you opened above still open, choose 'MIDI Graphic Editor' from the window's mini-menu. (There might be one open if you're using the Consolidated Window view.) You can normally also get there just by clicking the Conductor Track track name in the Tracks window. 2. Scroll to the point in your sequence where you want to write the tempo data.
Entering tempo data in the MIDI Graphic Editor window, with the Tools palette 'docked' on its right. Note the location and tempo information at the top left of the window. This constantly updates as you move the mouse pointer, allowing a high degree of accuracy if you're working graphically.
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3. Hold down the 'P' key to select the pencil tool, then move your mouse into the tempo 'lane'. While you're holding down the 'P' key, your mouse moves on an X/Y axis, with location left to right and tempo up and down. There's an information bar above, which updates live to show the tempo you're about to enter and the location where it'll end up, so watch that for precise feedback (see bottom screen overleaf). 4. Click to enter the tempo data. This technique also works in the Sequence Editor, but make sure the Conductor Track's active layer is switched to 'Tempo', using the pop-up menu in the track information panel to the left (see screen on page 204).
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Snapping
At the bottom of the Adjust Beats window, the Snapping pop-up menu allows dragged beats to snap to Notes or Audio Beats, Markers, or nothing at all (None). If you're adjusting beats to audio that has been beatanalysed, choosing the 'Audio Beats' option can be a tremendous help, as it takes the guesswork out of finding the exact location of important transients.
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Adjust Beats is being used to align the bars and beats in DP's Conductor Track with the bars and beats of an audio recording that has variable tempo.
1. Create a MIDI track and set its output to None, but record-enable it. 2. Hit record, and as your audio track plays back, tap your MIDI controller keyboard (any note) in time with the music. 3. Go back to the beginning of the sequence and start adjusting beats, as described above, but use the 'Notes or Audio Beats' snapping option. As long as you can see the MIDI notes you just recorded, it should now be easy to snap your beats to the beginning of these notes. The result should be a tempo track that plays well in time with your audio. As well as assisting in Conductor Track beat-matching, Adjust Beats is also central to some more advanced techniques, which border on the 'liquid audio' concept used in certain other applications (such as Ableton's Live). We'll be looking at some of these ideas next month.
Published in SOS April 2006
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