Pro Tools Music and Pro Tools Audio

[PJRB]

I think that Digi should have two products:

Pro Tools Audio (the existing program) and Pro Tools Music. Audio engineers are, and will always have different needs to musicians.

Now, regarding Pro Tools Music.

In terms of sequencing, it should:

- have the elegance of Studio Vision (perhaps you could buy Studio Vision from Gibson, Digi, or is that impossible?).
The features of Studio Vision that stand out for me:
Midi edit windows that operate with consistent design
Audio to midi and midi to audio features.

In terms of notation, it should:

- learn from the elegant structure of Igor (www.noteheads.com) which is the most revolutionary music notation product available - forget about Finale. Download it Digi, its free. Maybe you can make a deal with Noteheads, Digi. They have only one aim - to control the notational format of the internet in order to make money through commissions on music sales. Maybe as part of doing that, they will help you with the notational side of Pro Tools Music.
- have transcription abilities like MOTU's Freestyle, and a Maximise command that increases the value of all selected notes to the next whole unit length, removing unwanted rests (whilst preserving the midi recording). And intelligent selection tools. For example choose all the notes on this stave that have a semiquaver followed by a semiquaver rest.
- The notation side of the program should enable someone who wants to produce a conventional musical score to do so, Leave the 20th century art music notation to Igor et al. Whilst some on this list think that will take up too much computer power in allowing proper score printout, don't forget we are about to move into the "OSX four or more processors in one box" world.
- export NIFF files (the notational equivalent of the Standard Midi file) so that anything it doesn't provide can be added by another program
- build an elegant track/stave relationship. For example, three tracks should be able to be displayed on one stave in the notation window. And you should be able to force data to land in the treble or bass stave based on a floating/fixed split point in the track settings or a clef setting (no matter how high or low the notes, make this data display in the bass clef stave. Notation shouldn't be shoved into a separate window
- Since you cannot (currently!) convert a polyphonic audio track to midi, we need to be able to pair up such tracks with a midi track so that when we are in the notation window we view the midi track but hear the audio track. (In these pairings, editing of the midi or audio would not affect the other track in the pair).
- a new as yet untried system of entry, lets call it real/step entry which would ensure better first-off notation and better midi performances than step recording creates. This is how it would work:
- a 'metronome' would flash on the screen, adjustable at any time through a tap tempo feature.
- the second you play recording would begin (and so would the midi metronome), and whenever you stopped playing for more than a beat (a quarter note in 4/4, an eigthth note in 7/8), recording would cease, the metronome would return to the flashing metronome and the prgram would return to the end of the last played note. This would mean that whenever you needed to enter multi-beat rests you would enter them using the traditional step entry method , the numeric keypad.
This system would provide a great way to compose, as you could flit around from track to track, bar to bar, layer to layer, entering data which would sound good when played back and, would allow you to enter a bar, then have a break and enter another bar, rather than have to produce the perfect midi performance for the music you have JUST THOUGHT OF.

I want an in-built software sampler that reads all formats too, so that Synclavier like capabilities would be possible in the one program.

There is no fundamental conflict between powerful sequencing/audio and powerful notation!

The music software market in the next ten years will be dominated by a company that thinks big enough to ensure their own survival.

[PJRB]

Perhaps better titles for the two programs would be Pro Tools Musician and Pro Tools Engineer, but I hope you get my drift.

[jophoff]

Fantastic ideas. How many of these concepts are already implemented in other DAWs like Cubase VST/24/Score, Digital Performer, and Logic? Pro Tools LE on my Digi001 has been absolutely fantastic for audio when I already have a complete piece written and just need to record and master. As a compositional tool, though, you are absolutely right, it is not particularly helpful. For what I do, Digi001 is almost "One company, one solution" but not quite. What the Digi001 does, it does extremely well. It's just missing some things that its competitors do offer.