Hosts & Applications (Sequencers, DAWs, Audio Editors, etc.) • Re: Digital Performer users, I want you to convince me to switch to your DAW.

The important things that blocks do is making arrangements in the song-view very flexible. But even more importantly, you can then have clips "paint over" the blocks, or parts of a block, in the song-view.
I've been watching several DP webinars, and I'm reading through the user-manual, and it appears that a somewhat similar workflow is possible with chunks. The differences are actually in favor of chunks, as you can have several chunks play in parallel, whereas blocks only let you play either the block content or the overlapping song-content.

A few years ago, I tried to use DP's chunks like this - to write songs composed of multiple independent sequences (e.g. a verse chunk, a chorus chunk, etc).

The limitations in DP were:

• The song window is hard to use. For instance:
  • the x-axis was not to scale
  • during song playback there was no visible playhead.
  • Managing overlaps between chunks required manual calculation.
  • Moving one chunk around on the timeline often involved rebuilding the song. I had to keep paper notes to keep track of where each chunk was on the song's timeline.
• No automation for shared instruments in the v-rack (only option was to automate MIDI CC)
• Mixing was a challenge. I don't mean doing the final mix, but even keeping levels somewhat consistent from one chunk to the next was difficult. Flattening a song into a new sequence of its own didn't retain VCA information.

I may have some of that wrong. This was a few years ago, using DP 10. I'm not sure if DP 11 brought an improved song window or not. I know they improved the chunks list.

Doing this kind of modular workflow has been a (pipe) dream of mine for awhile now. If anybody knows how to do this (in DP or any other DAW), I'd love to learn how!

I tried for awhile to accomplish a similar kind of workflow in Logic with its "classic" arrangement folders. I did find that it worked better for me than DP's chunks, but I stopped using this approach because I found that it was hard to manage automation for the whole timeline and the individual sections.

Reaper also seemed promising for this kind of workflow, but I couldn't find a reliable way to have multiple sub-projects share the same instruments.

Statistics: Posted by magog — Mon Jun 17, 2024 5:22 am

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