foorere wrote:Thanks Shooshie.
I think you are the reason why I become more interested in DP9.
Look:
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=60572&hilit=adjust+beats#p514116
I have already explored this and learned a lot from you.
I was just curious that the post above is about something else I didn't know.
I will update you along my work.
Here is my firs question: I exported a MIDI file from Ableton. When I inserted it in DP I get chunks of files, not one complete line:
OK. Permit me to expand on this topic, because you've hit upon one of the fundamentals that separate DP from most other DAWs: Region Objects (other DAWs) vs. Region Selections (DP). The "chunks of files" in the Tracks Window are merely representations of your MIDI, broken according to the rules governed by your preferences. You could call them "regions," but they're really just parsed phrases. They can be very helpful, and it's even possible to override them in the Tracks Window with OPTION-CONTROL-DRAG +COMMAND (after clicking), and select only what you want to select within them.
Here are the preference settings for parsing phrases:
Preferences: Editing / Tracks Overview / Phrase Settings
In the preferences, you can control the way DP parses phrases to some degree, but you're rarely going to get an entire block of MIDI the way you do in Logic. There is a reason for that.
Logic treats MIDI as a block of objects. DP treats MIDI as selectable events. In Logic, you work with objects; in DP you work with
MIDI Selections. (The link is about selecting notes and control points together to move, cut, copy, etc. in sync. Looks complicated, takes a fraction of a second to do it.)
Why am I telling you all this? Because it's the fundamental difference between DP and Logic. People like Logic because they can click and drag their entire MIDI block in one move. I find that I rarely need to do that, and if I do, it's extremely easy to select large blocks of MIDI. What I am usually doing is working with individual notes or group of notes, controllers, velocities, etc. DP is designed to make selection a breeze if you know the many, many ways to select things. I like DP, because I don't have to override blocks on every single move I make.
That said, experiment with phrase parsing or blocks of MIDI in the Tracks Overview Prefs. You may find it helpful. Sometimes I do. Sometimes its irrelevant. What's more important is learning to select what you want, quickly, using the many, many methods of selection in DP.
Some ways to select:
- • Mouse: Drag and Shift-Drag. Hint: hold down SHIFT as you mouse through the window to prevent your selection from being lost by errant clicking.) Hold down Shift-Drag (add to selection) or Option-Shift-Drag (delete from selection) to hone your selection. Use on any or all MIDI events.
• Select by Controller, by Velocity, or other events in the lower part of the MIDI Edit Window. Using the "SHOW ONLY" check-box at the bottom left corner of the window, you can show all events like the one(s) currently selected. Your selections and actions will perform only on those events.
• Mouse: Double-click a note in a track to select all notes in that track
• MIDI "keyboard" on the left of the MIDI tracks: double click a note to select all instances of that note in the current visible track(s).
• Split Notes: Menus: Region/Split Notes. Follow the dialog carefully till you get the hang of it. Very powerful feature. (not specifically a selection tool, but selects and applies action in one click.)
• Search: Menus: Edit/Search. (Tip: this can build on current selection, and you can have many criteria, both time and attribute based.)
• Select from different windows: Event list excels in seeing and selecting exactly what you want amid a sea of data. Sequence Editor excels in selecting controllers and notes together, or individual lanes of controllers. Tracks Window excels at selection by barline, or by parsed blocks of MIDI. MIDI Editor excels at just about everything.
• Markers: Click on a marker to select from that marker to the next. (or to the end, if it's the last marker) Works in the Marker Window or in the edit windows or Tracks Window.
• Tracks Window: Select blocks of MIDI by bars or by parsed phrases. Hold CONTROL-OPTION to select a bar, otherwise you'll get the parsed phrase. After clicking with CONTROL-OPTION, add the COMMAND key to select any range, overriding bars and phrases.
• Select by Range or by Event, or by either: Preferences: Editing / Tools / Cursor Selection Mode. There are also keyboard commands for those. Go to the Commands Window (Shift-L)
The Search feature (Menus: Edit/Search or CONTROL-S) is extremely detailed in what it can find and what to do with it. Save all your searches, because you can use them again in any DP file.
For example, I just received a MIDI file from someone who had managed to put hundreds of key changes in the conductor track, all in the key of F Major, and most of them sharing a location with 3 others. Whatever hamstrung DAW he used added a key change to each track in each section. In other words, in the conductor track they would be hard to select, because they overlap 3 other identical key changes, 4 at a time, thus requiring a menu to select the key change you want to work with. So, deletion would have been tedious and time consuming going through the conductor track key-change menus in the graphic windows.
In this case, using the
Event List is a lot faster than the graphic edit windows for this particular thing, because you can easily select key changes and other conductor events when they happen together. (see screenshot below).
But with so many, scattered through the entire piece, it would have taken a long time. The answer? Search. I set up this dialog:
and instantly they were all selected. I de-selected the first one, which I wanted to keep, and then hit Delete. Problem solved. Took all of 10 seconds to do the whole thing. Maybe less.
Sorry to turn this into an unsolicited tutorial, but it's something that comes up a lot, and I thought a detailed post on how we approach selections in DP might help.
By the way, the Tracks Window is overlooked by a lot of people. There's a post in the DP Tips Sheet called "Secrets of the Tracks Overview Window," which contains a few tips that help me make it part of my workflow.
I know this feels like the tip of the iceberg, but if you start in DP with the assumption that you're going to be learning to create and hold complex selections, easily and quickly, you will quickly flatten out the learning curve. Those phrases in the Tracks Overview Window will find some usefulness as you figure out what they are and what they do. They never become the MIDI Region Object of Logic, but they are still very useful. The Tracks Window, by the way, is especially useful for large-scale editing, such as swapping choruses, inserting a whole new section, and that sort of thing. It's also unsurpassed for merging tracks, moving tracks, setting up loops, moving blocks of events, and setting up many kinds of complicated selections.
Shooshie
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