Newbie Introduction and curious about V-Racks

[Brian Jackson]

Greetings MOTU Nationals.

Since time is valuable you can skip this first paragraph about me. Back in the Windows 98 days I fell in love with a MOTU sequencing program called 'Freestyle'. It allowed working in sections, each with an 'overlap' measure. Adjust beats and sense tempo made real-time performances a breeze. Sadly, MOTU discontinued development, and I've always wished for that MIDI workflow in the DAWs I would use in the future. I recently 'discovered' DP had most (or all) of those features so after a short trial I ponied up the $500 and am now a proud new DP license holder. What a well-written user manual too!

As my first post here, I'm hoping a few folks might jump in on their best practices for managing V-Racks. The idea of working in 'Chunks' feels natural, and having all the VI 'players' referenced rather than embedded in each chunk seems the most efficient way to work. I'd be grateful to learn from others here the dos & don'ts of V-Racks. Thank you.

Regards,

Brian Jackson

[Chandrasekar]

If you are using multiple sequences in a project that share the same instruments, you may consider the V Rack (Virtual rack) to load those instruments.
It saves on the loading time when switching between sequences. (Particularly good if you are doing live show)
Otherwise you may never need the V rack.
But you should use it a few times to familiarize and understand it.
If the computer is fast and you don't mind the the VST loading time you will not need it

[HCMarkus]

@Chandrasekar makes some good points.

I got away from using chunks some time back, but many still find them useful; I'm sure at least a couple will chime in here.

[bayswater]

I agree on Freestyle. Its a mystery to me why DP doesn’t deal with freely played MIDI as well as it did.

On V-Racks, I also use them in templates. I can put VIs I may or may not use in them with some basic setups, and then click on the button that turns them “off” in the template. The template will load quickly because they’re “off” and then you can turn them on if you need them in a particular project.