User Manual

CHAPTER
211
23 Playback
OVERVIEW
Except where noted, this chapter applies to both
MIDI and audio track playback.
MIDI Playback basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Audio playback basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
How to play a sequence or song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Monitoring levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Editing during playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Screen re-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Muting and unmuting tracks during playback. . . . . . 213
Soloing Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
‘Partial-solo’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Looping playback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Playing the current selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Event Chasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Auto scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Scrubbing multiple MIDI tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Scrubbing and grid snapping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Scrubbing audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Slow and fast forwarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Stop Sounding MIDI Devices (Panic) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
MIDI PLAYBACK BASICS
When Digital Performer “plays” MIDI tracks, it is
not playing audio of any kind. Instead, it is sending
out performance information in the form of stored
MIDI data to MIDI-equipped instruments. These
instruments use the data as instructions for when
to turn notes on and off, how loud to play them,
and so on. Conceptually, Digital Performer is
similar to a player piano which uses a set of
recorded data (the piano roll) to control its
“instrument” (the piano mechanism). The
synthesizer, sound module, or virtual instrument
produces the actual sound, and Digital Performer
tells it when and how to do so.
AUDIO PLAYBACK BASICS
When Digital Performer plays audio tracks, it reads
audio data from the hard disk and sends the
digitally encoded audio signal to your audio
hardware (the built-in speaker output of your
computer or your MOTU audio interface, for
example). The digital-to-analog (D-to-A)
converters in the audio hardware then convert the
digital audio signal into an analog one that plays
from the speakers you have attached to the audio
hardware. Because the audio data is stored on the
hard disk, Digital Performer has random access to
the audio and can cue virtually instantaneously to
any location in the stream of audio. For more
information about these basic hard disk recording
concepts, see chapter 8, “Hard Disk Recording
Concepts” (page 51) in the DP Getting Started
Guide.
HOW TO PLAY A SEQUENCE OR SONG
To play a Digital Performer sequence or a song:
1 Open a Digital Performer project.
2 If the project contains more than one sequence
or song, choose Chunks from the Project menu and
play-enable the sequence or song that you wish to
play back.
Only one sequence or song can play at a time.
3 Play-enable the tracks you wish to play back.
If you are playing a sequence, double-click its name
to open its Tracks window and click the Play-
enable button to the left of the track names you
wish to hear. If the track is not play enabled, you
will hear nothing from the track. If you are playing
a song, play-enable the tracks in each sequence that
the song contains.