| Digital Performer |
Article Index for Digital |
Website Links For Digital |
Information AboutDigital Performer |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT DIGITAL PERFORMER | |
| music software | |
| mac os software | |
| mac os x software | |
Digital Performer is a full-featured Digital Audio Workstation / Sequencer Software package published by Mark Of The Unicorn (MOTU) of Cambridge, Massachusetts for the Apple Macintosh platform. DIGITAL PERFORMER'S ANCESTRY Mark of the Unicorn released Professional Composer in 1984 . It was one of the first application programs for the Macintosh. The program used the Macintosh's high-resolution graphics and printing to allow the user to publish scores that appeared professionally engraved. In 1985 , the company released a music sequencer which they named Performer. Performer took advantage of the Macintosh's crisp graphic interface for arranging and performing with various synthesizers and other devices which recognized the relatively new MIDI standard. Sending a series of electronic hexadecimal codes, such a Sequencer could direct many instruments, commanding which notes to play, at what loudness, and for how long to sustain them. There are many deep features in the MIDI protocol; MOTU developed extended capabilities in Digital Performer for handling these controllers and other actions (including remote operation of the software itself) through user-customizable graphical consoles, allowing the operator direct access to deeper features of instruments, stage lighting and various types of machines, all via MIDI interfaces and custom graphic buttons and sliders. THE COMPETITION Another top-notch Macintosh sequencer, Opcode's Vision , challenged MOTU's Performer in what was for years a neck-and-neck race for more sophisticated features. The most important of those features was the introduction of the Graphic Editor window, which MOTU added to Performer in late 1991 , some months after it appeared in Vision. This editor displayed music graphically on what resembled a horizontally scrolling " Piano Roll ", with lines or bars representing notes. One could drag the bars around on the page and change their pitch, their timing, and their length. Arrangements or edits could be made very quickly, since it was no longer necessary to type the coordinates of each note manually. While Vision's interface catered more toward the songwriter's working technique, Performer was more aligned with the ethics and methods of composers of larger works, and is often found in use by composers of film scores, and other professional composers and arrangers. Both were very popular, but Vision's parent company, Opcode, was bought by the Gibson company , and unfortunately development on Vision ceased. Orphaned Vision users changed to other popular sequencers, including Performer, Cakewalk , Cubase , and Emagic's Logic , which would eventually become a property of Apple Computer. THE NATIVE DIGITAL AUDIO WORKSTATION (DAW) ARRIVES In 1990 , MOTU added the ability to synchronise audio ( Digital Audio ) to Performer and released it as "''Digital'' Performer," months after Opcode added this capability to Vision. Digital Performer was originally designed as a front-end to Digidesign 's Audiomedia hard disk recording system, which later became Pro Tools . Digital Performer's specific appeal was its MIDI environment, which was fitted into the same transport system as the audio environment. This enabled users to record their MIDI instruments and mix the results with other live audio recorded in the studio (or Vice Versa ). Personal Computer s of this time were too slow to handle high quality recording via their own CPU, so the addition of DSP Co-processor cards was necessary to create a functioning audio recording studio. As the Mac's CPU became powerful enough to record the digitized audio directly to hard disk, the DSP cards were gradually rendered unnecessary. Foreseeing this, MOTU created its own Motu '''A'''udio '''S'''ystem (MAS) which helped Digital Performer to tap the Macintosh's native power to record music directly to its own hard drive without the need for external co-processing and dedicated drives. By 2000 , Digital Performer allowed users to Record , Mix , and Master audio for commercial releases. DIGITAL PERFORMER IN MAC OS X – PRESENT DAY AND THE FUTURE Version 3 of Digital Performer was the last to run on OS 9, the Classic Macintosh operating system. After a complete rewrite, MOTU released Digital Performer 4.0 in May of 2003 , which ran exclusively on Mac OS X . Beginning with version 4.5, MOTU introduced a number of important new features to Digital Performer. The two most important of these are built in pitch correction capability, and a Masterworks EQ plugin that rivals high end 3rd party EQ plugins in terms of quality. Beginning with version 5.0, MOTU also introduced a set of virtual instruments. Now up to version 5.12 as of 2nd May 2007, and available in and Apple's Logic . NOTABLE USERS Some notable users include the film composers Danny Elfman 1, Michael Giacchino , Elliot Goldenthal 2, David Lawrence 3, Dream Theater , and Don Davis 4. REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|