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Tracktion Manual
Chapter 4b - Editing (continued)
How do I edit midi clips?
Midi clips aren't editable until the track they're in is made tall enough to show a detailed midi editor. See here for various ways of changing track heights, but you can also double-click a midi clip to quickly enlarge it.
When the midi clip is big enough and the mouse is over it, an extra toolbar pops up with midi editing tools and options. The piano keyboard on this toolbar lets you:
- Scroll up and down by dragging the keyboard with the left mouse button.
- Zoom the range of notes visible by dragging the top or bottom (not the middle!) of the keyboard with the right mouse button.
There are 3 midi tools available, which you switch between using the buttons on the pop-out toolbar. The tools are:
- The selection tool - this lets you select sets of existing midi notes or controller events, drag them around and copy/paste/delete them.
- The pencil tool - this lets you draw new midi events or controller changes onto the clip, and also trim the starts and ends of existing notes.
- The eraser tool - this lets you erase parts of existing notes or controller events.
The midi editor is either in note-editing mode (the default), where midi note on/off events are shown, or in controller-editing mode, where a particular midi controller is displayed as a continuous sequence of values. There are buttons on the pop-out toolbar to switch between these modes. The tools have slightly different effects in each mode - for more help about the exact functions of the tools, have a look at the pop-up help available when you hover over each of the tool buttons.
A special-case controller-editing mode is velocity mode, which lets you edit the velocities of note-down events as if they were controller events. To make it easier to edit the velocity of just a subset of the notes, this mode will only act on those notes that were currently selected when velocity-mode is entered. If no notes are selected when entering velocity mode, the velocities of all the notes will be shown.
There is also a sysex editing mode, where midi sysex events are displayed as blobs which can be moved around. Individual events can be selected in order to edit their (machine-specific) contents.
I want a blank midi clip to edit - how do I create one?
Select the track you want to add the clip to, and in the track's properties, there is a button marked 'insert a new clip'. This will insert a new midi (or audio) clip at the cursor position, which you can then trim to the size you need.
How do I deal with midi channels and program numbers?
All individual midi messages contain a midi channel number between 1 and 16. In Tracktion, channel numbers are assigned to midi clips, and when the clip is played, its channel number is applied to each of the events inside it. To change a midi clip's channel number, just select the clip and change the number in its properties panel.
When recording from a midi input device, you can select the device and change its channel property, which will manually set the channel number given to newly recorded clips that it creates. If this number is set to 'any', it will use the channel number from any incoming midi messages it receives.
The midi program number is a midi controller message that specifies the type of sound to be used. Although the program number can be edited in the same way as for other types of midi controller, there are also some shortcuts for setting it:
- A midi input device has a program number property, which if specified will be applied to any clips it records.
- A midi clip has an 'insert program change' button that lets you quickly insert program changes at the cursor position, or apply a program number to the entire clip.
What kind of devices can I use to play back midi clips?
If you want to play back a midi clip using an external midi device (or an internal hardware midi synthesizer), you can choose this device as the output for the track that contains the midi clip.
A more powerful approach is to use a soft-synthesiser plug-in to turn the midi notes into audio data. If a soft-synth is placed as the first filter in the track that contains the midi clip, its output can then be passed through to other audio effect filters in a way that wouldn't be possible for a hardware midi unit. Using soft-synths also means that the synth's settings are stored in the edit and playback will always be exactly the same when reloaded.
How can I play midi devices 'live' from a keyboard?
Find the midi input device that your keyboard in plugged into, and connect it to a track (i.e. drag it over rightwards so that it has an arrow pointing to the track). Then make sure that this track is sending its output to a midi device or a soft-synth that can play things back.
If the edit is in e-to-e (end-to-end) mode, midi events from that input will be continuously forwarded to the track, and should be played. The button to toggle e-to-e mode is in the bottom-right of the screen near the transport controls.
If using soft-synths, you'll want to make sure the playback latency is as low as possible to make them quick to respond to keypresses.
What other tricks are there when recording midi?
It's possible to use a looped record mode for recording midi. To do this, set your in and out markers around the area to loop, turn on the 'loop' option (bottom-right of the screen), connect a midi input device to a track, and press record.
In loop mode, successive layers of midi input are overlaid on the same new clips, so that, for instance, different drum sounds can be played one at a time to build up a complex drum loop. After the recording is stopped, pressing undo will undo each layer in turn, so mistakes can be corrected without throwing away the entire recording.
Midi input devices also have an option - 'merge into existing clips' - that means that midi recordings which overlap an existing midi clip will merge the contents of the two clips together into one big one.
How do I change the timecode type and time-signature?
An edit can show the time either in terms of bars/beats or minutes/seconds. Clicking the timecode button on the edit screen produces a menu that lets you select the type that's being displayed.
This menu also lets you pop up the tempo dialogue box, which is irrelevant for minutes/seconds mode, but in bars/beats, this lets you adjust the time signature and tempo. When adjusting the tempo, you can choose whether to rescale all the clips in the edit to match the new tempo, or to leave it everything as it is and just change the way timecode is measured and displayed.
When moving clips and other items around, their start times can optionally be set to snap to the nearby intervals; snapping can be turned on/off with the button on the transport controls (bottom-right of the screen). The intervals to which things snap will depend on the timecode type, and the current zoom level - so if zoomed right out, things might snap to the nearest bar, but when zoomed in, it might be to the nearest 1/32 beat.
How can I set the tempo to match a wave file that I already have?
If you have a wave file that's been looped accurately, select it and click the 'auto-tempo' button in the clip's properties. This will be let you choose a tempo based on the clip's length and number of beats/bars it contains, (and can also use the size of the marked region instead of the clip's length).
How can I get a click-track to play along to?
Clicking the 'click' button (on the transport controls, bottom-right of the screen) will toggle the click-track. To get extra click-track options, hit the 'click track' button at the bottom-left of the screen.
How do I crossfade between clips?
All audio clips have fades-in/out that can be moved by selecting the clip and dragging the small icons at their ends. The shape of fade can be changed in the clip's properties.
If you have two clips that overlap on the same track, and you want to create a crossfade in the overlapping region, just select one of the clips and press the clip's 'auto-crossfade' button.
How do I loop audio clips?
Instead of pasting in multiple copies of the same clip, you can select an audio clip, and press its 'loop this clip' button. When a clip has been looped, you can trim its length to any size you need, and its contents are looped to fill the gap.
To trim the length of the internal loop, select the clip and drag the vertical white bars left and right to stretch the loop length. To slip the loop without changing its length, drag one of these bars with the ctrl key held down.
How do I time-stretch or pitch-shift audio clips?
When a clip is selected, you can use its 'speed' setting to change its playback speed. This can be combined with its 'keep original pitch' toggle button to time-stretch it.
To stretch a clip, you can also drag its start/end trimming controls with the alt key held down, which will stretch either the start or end of the clip without moving the other end.
To pitch-shift a clip, you can also use the built-in pitch-shift filter, either dropping it onto the clip or its track.
How can I add a fade/in out to the whole edit?
Click on the master level meter (bottom-right of the edit screen) to select the master level controls. In the properties panel there are settings that let you set lengths and shapes for a master fade in/out. Master fades are shown in the time bar at the top of the screen as a line or curve.
My edit contains too many filters to play back without glitching - what can I do?
When an edit has a lot of filters and starts to need more cpu than is available, Tracktion has a facility called track freezing that can allow some of the tracks to be automatically pre-rendered whilst allowing them to be un-frozen later and changed.
To freeze part of an edit, select those tracks that you're not currently working on, and in the track properties, press the 'freeze' button. This will take a moment to render the tracks, and they will be shrunk on-screen to indicate that they're currently uneditable. The edit should, however, still play back as before, with the difference that the output of any filters and soft-synths in these tracks will have been rendered, so scrubbing may sound a little different.
To un-freeze one or more tracks, just select them and click the 'unfreeze' button.
How and when do I have to save an edit?
Edits are auto-saved periodically while open (the frequency of auto-saves can be changed on the 'miscellaneous' section of the settings screen) so that if the power fails, the last saved state will be restored. An edit can also be saved manually, by clicking on the 'save/revert' button (or pressing ctrl-S).
Before closing an edit, however, you'll be asked if you want to save, which will commit the changes you've made since the last manual save. If you choose to discard the changes, (or click the 'save/revert' button at any time during editing and select 'revert'), the edit will be returned to the state it was in the last time it was manually saved - any intervening auto-saves will be thrown away.
This system means that it's possible to open an edit and mess around with it without losing the ability to throw these changes away, but it also provides the reassurance of regular auto-saves while doing this.
How do I turn my finished edit into a wave file?
Click the 'export' button on the edit screen, and select 'create an audio file..' to get the rendering options.
This dialogue box lets you change:
- The destination file, file type and sample rate.
- If the in/out markers are set within the edit somewhere, it gives you the option to render just this section.
- If one or more tracks were selected, it lets you choose whether to just render these tracks.
- If the 'remove silence' option is switched on, the resulting wave file will be trimmed of silence at its start and end.
- If 'normalising' is selected, the voume of the rendered file will be scaled so that its peak volume never exceeds the maximum.
- If 'adjust level based on RMS' is selected, the edit's average RMS (root mean square) level will be measured, and its overall level will then be adjusted during rendering so that its average level can be scaled to match a level which you specify in the dialogue box. Unlike normalising, this won't prevent parts of the edit exceeding the file's maximum level and distorting.
When the rendering has finished, the finished audio file will be added to the project as a new clip - to play it, go back to the project screen and it should be the first item in the project.
How do I render subsections of my edit?
The most flexible way of doing this is as for normal rendering, where tracks and marked regions can be selected. This will create
If you want to render one or more tracks and replace them with their rendered versions, you can press the 'render track' button on a track's properties, which will do just this.
How do I make a copy of my edit that I can go back to later?
On the project screen, select an edit, and in its properties, press the 'create a copy' button.
How can I do simple operations (resampling, changing bit depth, reversing, etc.) to wave files?
Tracktion has a few useful built-in destructive editing operations that can be performed on wave files.
To do them, go to the project screen, and select an audio clip from the list. In its properties panel there is an 'edit audio file' button. As well as giving you the option to launch an external wave editor, this has a 'basic editing operations' option.
On the dialogue this produces, you can choose from:
- Trimming silence from the ends of files
- Changing the sample-rates and bit-depths of files.
- Reversing a file's direction.
- Making a stereo file mono
Each of these has its own options, but all will act on the wave file directly, so they can't be undone, and any edits that use this file will be affected.
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