How Do You Use DP? Music, Design, Recording?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I'll start.

I'd guess that 95% of my usual work in DP involves creating new original music for various productions.

Probably 5% or so involves editing of extant materials for clients. This might be original stuff by other living (or recently living) composers, as well as the classical rep and contemporary music from diverse ethnicities.

About .003% of my time is spent figuring out why something doesn't work the way I think it should.

[Dan Walsh]

I do mostly singer-songwriter productions and get the odd band in once in a while.

About 30.0% of my time is spent figuring out why something doesn't work the way I think it should.

[FutureLegends]

Right now I'm trying to concentrate on working on my own new project.
I will start using backtracks live for the first time so it's a whole new thing to me. First show is in less than two months and management and publishers are breathing down my neck for finished material (which I had no plan of doing before the show). But it's all fun!

Occasionally I record other bands. Then it's usually bands recording demos or their own releases. Been mostly rock unfortunately

Used to do a fair amount of live recordings at a rockclub too using DP and the original 828.

[Prime Mover]

I use DP for songs/pieces. I've made it work really well for musical structures (10seconds and longer). I haven't gotten my head around using it to it's fullest for shorter sound design productions, though.

Back when I used to do sound effects for radio and theatre, about 10 years ago, I found myself much more comfortable using a waveform editor and all destructive edits. I used SoundForge back then. For sound effects it's really helpful to actually see the wavefrom as you make changes to it. Time stretch, pitch shift, layer sounds together. Back then Soundforge didn't have multi-track capability or insert editing, so every merge, layer and edit was destructive and immediately vissible. Call it barbaric or brute force, but it was very tactle and immediate, not to mention raw. I produced some great sounds with that formula. Got through my undergrad in electronic composition doing it that way for a lot of effects-based material.

The common DAWs focus is on music, be it DP, ProTools, Sonar, or whatever. You CAN do sound effects on it, as I have had to more recently, but its interface isn't structured around that quite as much as a waveform editor is. I tried Peak back in 2003, hated it, couldn't stand the interface. Looked into "Wave Editor" which looked more promissing, but I haven't had the chance to put it through the gauntlet.

[stephentayler]

I use DP for recording and mixing my own compositions, for mixing album projects that are sent to me, creating soundscapes for audio and video art installations, mixing surround for concert and music DVDs, I even mixed an entire movie soundtrack (all the dialogue, effects, sound design, music etc) and any experimental sound work that I can think of.

Veeerrry flexible..... I only occasionally reach for PT for a couple of things that DP can't do.

Lovely.



Stephen

[Shooshie]

I have a lot of musical interests spanning a lot of styles. Most of my preferences would fall somewhere in the area of Classical, though I've been moving that toward something else that I have no name for. Sort of a classical, improvisational thing with no focus on any style other than what comes out naturally. It may utilize piano, orchestral instruments, and/or electronic instruments. Example: Mogollon Rimprov from 2007. Warning, for some reason it's a bit loud. [edit: if the link won't stream, it will download if you really want to hear it.]

Professionally I've done various pop things, as well as classical, jazz, folk… well, just a lot of things. For 17 years I did mostly rock stuff, but I added a classical polish to it. This was for a live concert that toured the US many times. Prior to that there were about 16 years of hard-core classical, the last five of which utilized DP. (well, Performer, to be accurate) So, that's about 20-some-odd years with Performer/Digital Performer. It has made me a good living.

Now I'm working on stuff of my own, which is what I've always wanted to do. It's the first time since college that I've been able to do so 100%. I am also recording and arranging guitar/vocal groups or piano/vocal, and other little projects that come by way of friends and family. I'm also enjoying that, because after all these years in the business, I have never done those simple little things before, and I'm finding that they are not really simple at all. Wonderful experiences.

To answer your question more directly, I use DP personally for music. Professionally I have used it for recording, design, and for producing and directing live performance. I have used it in the past for score production when it didn't get too complicated. Nothing could be faster!

Shooshie

[bdr]

I've done quite a few film scores in DP as well as TV series, also producing/sequencing songs for artists, my own music, editing songs, doing backing tapes for my kid's school...you name it. I basically live in DP with an occasional outing to Sibelius.

[mhschmieder]

Although I've done several film scores, they were for low-budget local indie films and so I have not yet used the frame sync feature of DP.

My work with DP falls into several categories, and I madly try to balance them all in any given quarter, which is hard when clients are flaky:

1. original music (to be discussed in the other topic)
2. jingles -- so far, just for websites
3. film music -- strictly for local-based productions
4. backing tracks -- on the wane, thankfully (too much work!)
5. recording other bands -- so far, just local musicians
6. music for games -- still not sure if any will make the finals!

I use similar approaches for most of the above, mostly varying the starting templates. Much of the material is MIDI-based, but there's a large amount of live playing involved as well -- sometimes on the same project. The majority of the work is contextual vs. one-offs, so I use the Chunks feature a lot!

[kassonica]

I do a lot of full band tracking and mixing work in DP, using it as a tape machine and mixer.

MIDI work is far less, but growing.

Also I use it for creating soundscapes and using reason in rewire mode.