How do YOU use chunks & songs?

[muxlow]

Hi ho, newbie here.

I'm reading my DP5 manual and got the parts about notions of chunk and songs.

The implication for recording an album of songs (ie: NOT film work, sound design, etc.) seems to be:

••• Chop up your song (ie: musical composition, ie: "Enter Sandman") into Chunks (ie: intro chunk, verse 1 chunk, chorus chunk, guitar solo chunk, etc.) so you can easily rearrange a song on the fly...

••• Make a Song (ie: a DP Song) for the song out of the various Chunks you've put together. Then move on to the NEXT song (ie: "Whole Lotta Love") and repeat step one. At the end, you have a SINGLE Session with individual Songs for all the songs that might go on the album...

••• Make a "master" Song of all the individual Songs that are going to go on the CD; this lets you easily play with running order, cross-fading, gaps, segues, mastering?


Is that about right? It's sounds wonderful, if true...

Very curious. Thanks for any input!

[Washlines]

It has been a while since I have done a single song in DP. I do whole projects in it nowadays. When I used to do just MIDI-only (back in 1995 when it was still performer) I worked in the way you specified. Only I don't remember the songs-part in Performer: you just made an extra chunk and dragged all the other chunks in there (sub-nesting support). I remember just having break-chunks that I dragged to connect to other chunks together, it worked great.

Now I mostly do harddrive recording and I use the chunck for whole songs/sessions. I make a layout using markers to know what part I'm at (and to apply the different tempi if necessary) in a song. When it time to record a song it's soo darn easy to be able to duplicate a chunk to try another take (e.g. drumtakes). Later we decide which was best.

A few weeks back I was recording live Jazz and I had a whole set (about an hour of music) in one chunk. I used the markers to keep track of the start-points of the songs.

I have done MIDI and harddisk recording in other programs before I came back to DP 3 years back. It run my old 1996-files and it looked like not much had changed GUI-wise. I could resume where I had left off 10 years or so ago. I REALLY felt like coming home . . .

Cheer,

Arjen

[muxlow]

Cool! I'm finishing up an album in PTLE and doing one-song per session and it's a nightmare keeping things synched up (it's metal, so you want each song to sound more or less exactly like the others).

Sounds like DP Songs are are exactly what I've been wanting.

And with the way I write (rearranging songs post-tracking), it sounds like Chunks are going to come in VERY handy.


Aside from incremental session backups and a solid overall backup procedure, do you do anything else to deal with the possibility of a corrupted session?

Also, how often do people experience session corruption? Someone else on here said it happens fairly often in DP...

[carrythebanner]

I use chunks so I have a particular revision of the project readily available to compare. For example, I was working on a sound-for-cartoon project, and when I received an updated animation, I duplicated my working chunk and adjusted my edits. This way, my previous edits were available in the old chunk if I ever wanted to compare the current working state with my last milestone, without having to open & close projects.

Also, if I want to try something out real quick and I don't want it mucking up my current sequence (like if I suddenly got an idea for something totally unrelated to the project I'm working on), I'll add a new chunk and plink around in that.

[richardein]

I never use songs. I kept on finding something that it couldn't do the way I wanted it to, tied notes or some obscurity in handling tempo changes and just gave up. This was many years ago. Maybe it's improved, but back then it was just too much grief.

Typically, a project that lasts an hour or more may have two or three files. One may just be sketches that are loaded into the others. That's because a large DP file slows down and gets buggy when it's large. At least it did up through DP 4.x The working files contain pieces in every stage of development from sloppy sketch to several alternates, each a different chunk.

Now occasionally, one of the project files becomes totally unusable after one godawful crash or another, so I often have a folder called "Dead Sequences" in my project folder. In there are all the crashed files, just in case I get desperate or they are magically restored - neither of which has made the data come back, but I hold on to them anyway. Since tossing my Studio 5's and going usb, I've had less, but not zero, dead sequences, and I've usually been able to reload the individual chunks into a fresh file.


Needless to say, I back up often.

[billf]

One of the things I love about DP is that it is highly flexible in how you can get things done.

I never use Songs. I tend to use DP in a linear fashion for the most part, so Chunks and Songs aren't windows I visit very often.

[funkyfreddy]

I often use chunks to go off on different tangents or as forks in the road so to speak. It's easy to duplicate a chunk or sequence so I often use previous work as a starting point for something new.

[Shooshie]

I use chunks in various ways. I may put an entire project (16 songs or so) in one file, using a different chunk for each song. [Note: I will refer to the Song-Chunks as "Songs" (in quotation marks with upper-case S), while plain old song will have its everyday meaning] These chunks will be cued in the order I want to perform them, and then using the chunk-chaining buttons, I will have DP stop after each song and cue the next chunk, so that all I need to do is hit "start" for each song in live performance.

I also keep files that have dozens of chunks, such as the entire Bach Flute Sonatas, or the Well-Tempered Klavier, or the Etudes of Skryabin. Needless to say, I back up a lot. Using chunks in this way makes it a breeze to use virtual instruments in V-Racks, which makes the same "rack" of VIs available to every chunk without having to add VI tracks to each chunk. You can assign the MIDI Out for any MIDI track in any chunk to any VI in your V-Rack for that file, and it's basically just like using rack gear. All it takes to create a new VI track then is to add a track and assign it's MIDI Out. (or you can select an existing track and use "Add Similar Track" command, for instance, with the keyboard command of Command-Control-S). That makes adding a VI so very simple that it only takes about 3 seconds to do it.

But the "Song" feature is spectacular when you really need it. I've used it to overlay musical segments that need to stack up vertically with the ability to adjust them independently of each other very quickly and easily. An example of that is overdubbing audio/music/sound-effects for a movie, or creating sound collages. For instance, once I had to create the effect of an orchestra warming up, with all the players doing their licks and tuning and warmup routine. I did separate chunks for each one and just arranged those chunks as I wanted them in the "Song" window.

Another usage of the "Song" window for me has been in combining song sections that have a break between them where the tempo goes a little off for a while, such as in the cadenza of a concerto. You can do the first section of the piece, then the cadenza, and then the coda, all as separate chunks. Arrange them in the "Song" window until the timing is to your liking (much easier than messing with the time in a single chunk), and rejoin them all as a new sequence. It takes about a minute to do all of that, compared to much longer if you do it in a single chunk.

Of course, there is always the "building block" approach for creating songs. Do the bridge and the verse. Pop them into the "Song" window in the order and number that you want, make a new sequence from them, and you're ready to do the vocals for the entire song, as well as the little details that make each section unique, such as sax licks, guitar riffs, and so forth. It's just so fast and easy that it makes more sense than copying and pasting, though you can do it that way, too.

It takes a few tries to get the hang of it. Once you do, it's very easy.

Shooshie

[kelldammit]

i'm not sure i'd risk doing a whole albums' worth of material in one project, at one go...
i do find it useful for experimenting...or if you write "backwards"...i.e. you get inspired and add layer upon layer to your verse...which becomes verse 3. duplicate that chunk, and start stripping things off, and changing things around to make verse 2, copy that, strip it down further for verse 1, etc. it's also great to be able to move song segments around quickly...hmmm...mebbe that verse part is a much better chorus...??

oh, and another not very widely discussed feature...you can also do various submixes (to test fx, etc) per chunk as well...all contained in the same project. very very cool. v-racks are indispensable for this kind of stuff! you can reference the same VI's/effects across all of your chunks/submixes within a project...so if you LOVE that plate reverb, and it's gonna stay for sure...into the v-rack it goes. then you can play with delays and whatnot in different submixes, till you find the one that works best for you, then into the v-rack IT goes...and so on.
anyway...i digress. when that song's mix is finished...then export your stems, and import them into your mastering project, where they become a chunk (as have your other exported stem mixes). you can then juggle the running order around easily. next, use markers to set your start/end points of each desired track, select between the markers (after finalizing your final fx/dither settings, etc) and bounce the finished tracks out separately. you'll have to burn to cd elsewhere though.

that's just one way to go...there are lots of options...whatever suits you best.

kell

[muxlow]

Can chunks be stacked vertically or do you just string them together horizontally?

[mastermix]

Song/Chunks mode is indispensable for dance music producers
and djs using DP..like me...

I believe Chunk/Song mode is one of those under-the-hood power
features that require patience and careful experimentation. It is a
kool way of "automating" the arrangement of reuseable parts of a
song or track.

I just finished a remix for a big name artist that had almost
300 edit points -- Linear arrangement would have made this
project almost impossible..given the deadline I had...

Chunks/Song mode, when used with the new 'Folders' feature
in DP5, can be a real time-saver...this feature alone is one reason
why I use DP...

Kris..

[Shooshie]

Can chunks be stacked vertically or do you just string them together horizontally?

Vertically or horizontally, or both.

Shooshie

[magicd]

Chunks and songs were originally designed for people who did multiple music cues, typically for TV shows or movies. The idea was that you could have separate sequences, which could then be strung along a time line (Song) for the final episode playback.

I use clippings as an arrangement tool. Clippings are incredible for drag and drop arranging.

Here's how I use Chunks.
Lets say I'm recording basics for a band. My style is to record into a single sequence chunk as if it's one long piece of tape (I still call it rolling tape. Probably always will.) I like to do this because I have a chronological record of the session. I drop markers in at each take as we record.
As we work on basics, I'm getting a common mix. I usually have a reverb send/return, drum subgroup, and master fader with limiter.

Once the basics are recorded, I can make selections and create new sequence chunks. I usually don't do any editing, overdubbing or, automation in the original master chunk. If I want to edit sections from different takes of a song, I may initially select more than one song for the new sequence chunk, and do the edits in the new chunk.

Once I've backed up the original session to DVD and decided which are the keeper takes, I can delete the original master chunk, select unused soundbites, and delete those soundbites. Now I will be left with sequence chunks for each of the keeper takes. All the chunks will have the same basic mix and track layout.

I do incremental backups when I work. Each time I open a file I Save As and add a number to the end of the file. As soon as I finish basic tracks I archive to DVD. Anytime I do overdubs I back up the new audio to a second drive for short term safety. I make new DVDs periodically.
This technique works very well in terms of being able to go back to previous or alternate versions of the file.

As I get into the final mix, I am switching between chunks for each song. When I'm ready to start bouncing stereo mixes, I create a new chunk that has one stereo audio track. When I bounce the mixes for each song, I choose the option to add the bounce file to the soundbites window. I then drag those mixes into the stereo audio track in the mix chunk. This allows me to assemble the order and spacing of the final CD.

I do my mastering as part of my mix. I don't apply any automation of processing in the final mix chunk. Alternately, you could do your final mastering in that last mix chunk. Also, instead of using a single stereo track in the mix chunk, you could use separate stereo tracks for the bounce files. It's a personal preference in terms of automation, effects, etc. If you work at 24 bit you'd probably want to wait until this stage before doing any mastering, dithering, etc.

If I do make changes to the stereo files in the mix chunk, I either merge the soundbites or re-bounce. Since I don't typically do automation of processing in my mix chunk, I usually just merge the individual mixes with any fades or trimmed in and out points.

If I bounce, I bounce to AIFF. If I merge, I export the merged mixes from the soundbites window as AIFF. I drop the AIFF files into iTunes or Jam and burn the CD.

Magic Dave