Adding a bar of silence at the start of a project

[outofhand]

DP projects always start at bar 1, with the content starting to play immediately.

That's fine for working, but when bouncing to disk I like to have a small amount of silence at the start of the file, rather than have the audio kick in immediately.

I am wondering if anyone else here does this, and what your method for achieving it in DP might be.

I know that there's a preference in DP for making the bar counter start at 0, but this isn't practical as when you zoom out the timeline divides the grid into bars 0-8,9-16 etc, when the audio itself will be on the grid at 1-9, 10-17 etc. So selecting 4- or 8-bar sections when zoomed out becomes impossible. (Does this make sense? You can't select bars 1-9 when the grid is snapping the selection to 0-8)

Curious to see if anyone is doing this in DP, rather than just adding space to the start of the bounced mix in a wave editor afterwards.

[doodles]

I start my tracks at bar 2 or 3. Always stick control/automation data at beat 1 of first bar. Gives me a couple of bars to play with then.

[csavetman]

DP projects always start at bar 1, with the content starting to play immediately.

That's fine for working, but when bouncing to disk I like to have a small amount of silence at the start of the file, rather than have the audio kick in immediately.

I am wondering if anyone else here does this, and what your method for achieving it in DP might be.

I know that there's a preference in DP for making the bar counter start at 0, but this isn't practical as when you zoom out the timeline divides the grid into bars 0-8,9-16 etc, when the audio itself will be on the grid at 1-9, 10-17 etc. So selecting 4- or 8-bar sections when zoomed out becomes impossible. (Does this make sense? You can't select bars 1-9 when the grid is snapping the selection to 0-8)

Curious to see if anyone is doing this in DP, rather than just adding space to the start of the bounced mix in a wave editor afterwards.

I suppose you could scroll down to conductor track under the Project menu and select insert measure. Insert 1 bar starting at bar 1 would probably do it.

Also an option. Select all and then select Shift under the edit menu. Select later and enter 1 measure.

Hope that helps
Carlos

[James Steele]

One thing that I like to do is actually set my Chunk Time start to measure -1. Yes, you can use a negative number. So I get two empty bars (-1 and 0) and then my song starts on the downbeat of measure 1. I also give the chunk a negative start time in the elapsed time to compensate. So I first set my Chunk start to measure -1, then locate to measure 1, take note of the elapsed time, and then set the chunk start to the negative of that time value, assuring that my elapsed time of a song is accurate.

[csavetman]

One thing that I like to do is actually set my Chunk Time start to measure -1. Yes, you can use a negative number. So I get two empty bars (-1 and 0) and then my song starts on the downbeat of measure 1. I also give the chunk a negative start time in the elapsed time to compensate. So I first set my Chunk start to measure -1, then locate to measure 1, take note of the elapsed time, and then set the chunk start to the negative of that time value, assuring that my elapsed time of a song is accurate.

Hey James-

I've never thought of doing that. If you bounce the session, will it bounce with 2 measures of silence at the top, or is that silence just for listening back in that session?

Carlos

[James Steele]

One thing that I like to do is actually set my Chunk Time start to measure -1. Yes, you can use a negative number. So I get two empty bars (-1 and 0) and then my song starts on the downbeat of measure 1. I also give the chunk a negative start time in the elapsed time to compensate. So I first set my Chunk start to measure -1, then locate to measure 1, take note of the elapsed time, and then set the chunk start to the negative of that time value, assuring that my elapsed time of a song is accurate.

Hey James-

I've never thought of doing that. If you bounce the session, will it bounce with 2 measures of silence at the top, or is that silence just for listening back in that session?

Carlos

I always choose a selection bounds before starting a bounce to disk.

[outofhand]

All interesting ideas, thanks. Will try.

[mhschmieder]

I start at bar 2, or bar 3 if it's a fast tempo.

If you have any MIDI at all in your project, this is a good practice anyway, as timing doesn't tend to stabilize right away. This has less to do with DP than with how much data has to be dealt with serially at the outset.

Depending on the workflow of the project, I may need a count-in, atop the usual one bar of silence.

At the mastering stage, I use BIAS Peak Pro to delete this buffer all the way to just ahead of the first audio signal, then insert (usually, but some projects require a different amount) 1 second of silence (generally essential to prevent players from skipping and/or missing the start of the audio).

[mhschmieder]

BTW I'm just stating what I've been doing; not recommending it as ideal. I have been meaning for some time to experiment with other approaches, such as negative timelines as mentioned above.

[Shooshie]

All interesting ideas, thanks. Will try.

The selection boundaries are essential. That controls the range that DP bounces to disk.

Shoosh

[williemyers]

complete ditto to what James said (starting on Bar -1). I've been using that for years, it's always worked a charm. And all of my templates are set to being on -1/1/000.
As for bounce boundaries, I've **VERY* rarely, DP will drop the first MIDI note of a track set for Bar 1/Beat 1. But no matter how careful you are setting boundaries, it can happen. So I set my start boundary for 0/X/477 and it *never* drops the first note!

[Rick Cornish]

FWIW, I start my sequences at bar -1 and set tempo in the Conductor Track to 120 so I can put a 2-bip on the downbeat of bar 0. Also set time code start at 00:59:56:00 so bar one hits at 01:00:00:00 (which makes it much easier to line-up video). Even if I'm not writing to picture, this is helpful. For example, I put CC messages at beat one of bar -1 on every MIDI track to zero-out pitch bend and mod wheel settings and set CC7 volume to 127 in case of any odd leftovers from previous sessions.

[frankf]

When I create individual cue chunks from a master spotting cue, I determine the tempo and time signature of the beginning of the cue first then insert 2 bars before bar 1. This way I ensure the count off is consistent with the start tempo of the cue and the cue start time is the same as in the master spotting cue from which it came. Locating and dropping in a 2 beep is easy at any tempo.