DP 4.5 First Look: Jim Crocini
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Jim Crocini
Award-winning composer and producer
I had a project recorded in 1991 on 16-track analog tape which I transferred to DP 4.5. There were drum parts, piano, bass and 4-part backup vocals. I needed to update everything with some new overdubs, including new drums and bass parts. But, we wanted to keep the old backup vocals. There was no timecode, SMPTE or click to line things up, and the tempo of the original changed slightly throughout the song.
Normally, keeping everything together would have taken many hours of trial-and-error; figuring out tempos and dragging around audio files to align them properly with new tracks. However, I just used DP 4.5's Beat Detection engine. I simply applied Beat Detection to the drum part. With some minor tweaks, I had a complete tempo map in a very short time. A major time-saver!
Later, I even quantized parts of the old drum recording (and that's on a long AUDIO file, not MIDI). It sounded great! I ended up keeping more of the old material than we expected since we were able to quantize audio files. 
Needless to say, with the new tempo map, and beats to align to, I was able to record the new parts in perfect sync and kept the backup vocals exactly where they were supposed to go.
In another project, I had five-part multi-layered choral harmonies. They were exposed with no backup instruments...lots of overdubbing. I needed to do a lot of editing to get them just right. However, with all that cutting up and shifting of audio from different sessions, the edits were sometimes noticeable. I used to have to add audio or figure out ways of adding crossfades to fix these.
This time, though, I choose "Smooth Audio Edits," and adjusted a few parameters. DP 4.5 detected the room noise from the each file that needed to be joined, and automatically filled the space. 
I did a whole string of edits with one command. Now the vocals sounded like it came from one take, and saved a lot of editing time. Wow!
With all it's new features, Digital Performer 4.5 is very customizable. I don't feel locked into someone else's vision of how things should be organized. I set them up as I want them. The new single preferences window allows me to do this easily. Even though I could disable the Consolidated Window, I really can't imagine working without them now. With the sometimes limited screen real estate available, having all windows in a single window is very intuitive. I can find a Mixing fader instantly in the sidepane by clicking on a Track in the Overview. Plus, I can have independent windows whenever I want. The workflow is logical. In my opinion, I have never seen anything so customizable and flexible. For ease-of-use, there's no equal.
Jim Crocini is an accomplished recording artist, composer and studio producer. He has composed over 83 songs and has recorded over 60 of them, including the 1984 National Canadian Song Competition winner, "In The Spotlight." Jim has staged, produced, and performed in his own musical productions, and was the musical director for Toronto's longest running musical, "Let My People Come" for over 3 years.
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