Song Window & Chunks: Today I'm a happier and better DP user

[FMiguelez]

If, for some reason, you haven't used the Song window, do yourself a favor and watch the tutorials or read the chapter.

They are a-ma-zing!

I had been torturing myself with my piano sonata... I had bits and pieces all over the sequence, linearly and non-linearly, tons of takes and scratch tracks, markers for different sections, etc. Moving parts around to experiment with the form of the piece was so clumsy because tempos didn't match, and I had to keep using the track locks and Shift command to make things pseudo-work. Well, not any more!

Working with independent chunks is a breeze! Now I can move parts around in the Song window freely without having to worry about messing up the real time performances. Seriously, it just works!

I had tried doing this back with DP4, but it didn't really work as expected, so I had forgotten all about it. But now, with DP8, it is brilliantly implemented. Copying the sequence tempi and markers to the song's chunks is flawless.

So now that I implemented working with the SW for my sonata, and that every section (and parts of sections) have their own chunk, it's so easy to experiment and change things without messing what comes after. Now I can actually concentrate on the music

The only thing I wish is that we could see the wiper moving in a TO when its chunk plays in the SW, but that's a minor thing.
Oh, and I'd also love to have an option to include all the takes when one uses the Copy Selection to New Sequence command.

I LOVE the Song Window

[Dan Worley]

The only thing I wish is that we could see the wiper moving in a TO when its chunk plays in the SW, but that's a minor thing.
Oh, and I'd also love to have an option to include all the takes when one uses the Copy Selection to New Sequence command.

+1 to both of those suggestions.

I was using the Song window the other day for the first time in a long time, just like you, and just like you, I too was impressed with how smooth and easy it was to work with. That's not how I remembered it. It still looks kind of goofy to me, but it is ever so powerful.

Good thread.

[Guitar Gaz]

Yeah I think its pretty good too - and a wiper is what it needs although as its relative sizes of chunks and sometimes they differ - so a wiper may be difficult.

[FMiguelez]

Yeah I think its pretty good too - and a wiper is what it needs although as its relative sizes of chunks and sometimes they differ - so a wiper may be difficult.

Agreed.
But even some kind of little "moving dot" should suffice for the SW.

They could make the wiper move when one looks at a chunk's SE, or TO, for instance. That would be SO useful. Otherwise it's not intuitive to guess where the action is at any given time, and the lengths are relative there already, so it should be easy.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

What I love is being able to make the song components mixed to a single sequence (chunk) and DP will combine tracks with the same name. That's really slick.

[FMiguelez]

Yes. That's totally slick.


One thing I'm not clear about are the chunk's aux tracks.

The manual states that they are always active, regardless of the chunk. Is this really so?
If I share lots of aux tracks among chunks, they won't create feedback loops, or I won't go crazy guessing where some weird signal is coming from, yes?

[Michael Canavan]

Yes. That's totally slick.


One thing I'm not clear about are the chunk's aux tracks.

The manual states that they are always active, regardless of the chunk. Is this really so?
If I share lots of aux tracks among chunks, they won't create feedback loops, or I won't go crazy guessing where some weird signal is coming from, yes?

Found this out the hard way. Best to put Aux Tracks in a V-Rack when using the Song Window, otherwise your Aux tracks become very loud!
Thanks for reminding me BTW, I'm working on a song right now that's currently in various Chunks, and the Song widow is the answer VS combing to single Chunk just now.

[Guitar Gaz]

Yes. That's totally slick.


One thing I'm not clear about are the chunk's aux tracks.

The manual states that they are always active, regardless of the chunk. Is this really so?
If I share lots of aux tracks among chunks, they won't create feedback loops, or I won't go crazy guessing where some weird signal is coming from, yes?

Found this out the hard way. Best to put Aux Tracks in a V-Rack when using the Song Window, otherwise your Aux tracks become very loud!
Thanks for reminding me BTW, I'm working on a song right now that's currently in various Chunks, and the Song widow is the answer VS combing to single Chunk just now.

Until I discovered V-Racks I found the Song Window unusable for playback of chained Chunks - aux tracks were the reason for the imbalance in levels. V-Racks solves all that - if you merge Chunks with aux tracks I seem to remember they are not merged like other tracks - so takes a lot of tidying up. If however everything runs from V-Racks then this is not an issue. I must admit when I first realised what V-Racks did (probably from this forum) I was embarrassed I had not used them before. I had been moaning about each Chunk having its own Mixer whereas Vision had Mixers that were common to all tracks and instruments. With V-Racks the same can be true - I keep the mixer on V-Rack edit mode and don't look at other tracks in the mixer unless really necessary - otherwise all my audio and MIDI sound sources run through the V-Rack. And then the Song Window becomes the way to audition, arrange and merge chunks.

[FMiguelez]

Yes. That's totally slick.


One thing I'm not clear about are the chunk's aux tracks.

The manual states that they are always active, regardless of the chunk. Is this really so?
If I share lots of aux tracks among chunks, they won't create feedback loops, or I won't go crazy guessing where some weird signal is coming from, yes?

Found this out the hard way. Best to put Aux Tracks in a V-Rack when using the Song Window, otherwise your Aux tracks become very loud!
Thanks for reminding me BTW, I'm working on a song right now that's currently in various Chunks, and the Song widow is the answer VS combing to single Chunk just now.

Until I discovered V-Racks I found the Song Window unusable for playback of chained Chunks - aux tracks were the reason for the imbalance in levels. V-Racks solves all that - if you merge Chunks with aux tracks I seem to remember they are not merged like other tracks - so takes a lot of tidying up. If however everything runs from V-Racks then this is not an issue. I must admit when I first realised what V-Racks did (probably from this forum) I was embarrassed I had not used them before. I had been moaning about each Chunk having its own Mixer whereas Vision had Mixers that were common to all tracks and instruments. With V-Racks the same can be true - I keep the mixer on V-Rack edit mode and don't look at other tracks in the mixer unless really necessary - otherwise all my audio and MIDI sound sources run through the V-Rack. And then the Song Window becomes the way to audition, arrange and merge chunks.

Damn!
There's one thing I really won't like about the Song Window right there

So far it hasn't bothered me because I'm in the early MIDI writing stage, but with my other projects that will definitely be an issue for me.
I mean, I can definitely see the logic and benefit of aux tracks being always active like that, but my main template relies on aux tracks in each chunk (where I have the wet effects), so they can be automated easily, especially if I'm writing more than one cue per DP project.

I wonder if this is a property of Aux tracks to be always active like that, but we don't realize it because normally (when not in Song window mode) only one chunk can be play-enabled at a time, so it doesn't normally affect us, or they just behave like that exclusively in Song mode?

I also wonder if this issue could be worked around by using regular audio tracks instead of aux tracks? If that's the case, that might be the ticket for me.

So when I use the Song window for more involved projects, I would have to move all my aux tracks to a V-Rack, forsake automating them, and do this just before I start copying selections to new sequences, so they all match. Hmmmm... Doable, but not ideal.

I still LOVE this new method of working, especially if everything is still in the early MIDI stages.

MOTU, would it be a realistic suggestion to ask to be able to toggle this Song/Aux Track behaviour on and off, or is this inherently programmed into aux tracks and that's the way they are designed?
If we could have such an option, and you implemented the wiper moving in the respective TO or GE windows, the Song Window features would suddenly be 50 times more useful.

I just want my cake and eat it too

[Shooshie]

Let me just say what I've always said about the Song Window, which has been indispensable to me at many junctures of my career. It's a part of the path, NOT the destination. When you get things as you want them in the Song Window, turn it back into a chunk. That's the only way to get around the limitations of the Song Window while being able to capitalize on its many benefits.

Shooshie

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Eggzactly!