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Hi there! Let's see quickly the very basis of Sony Music Studio 10!
Check the smart index in video description to watch what you are looking for.
Sony Music Studio 10 is a Digital Audio Workstation software, also known as DAW,
and is used to compose and create music.
Let's see the workspace. This is composed by two main parts. On top, you have the
timeline with its tracks, where you will create your music. Some quick buttons
on top help you at editing and setting all. On the other half, you have all the windows
opened. These can be quite different. You can close them using the X button, to save
come space. To open them again, simply go to View and choose them in the list.
You can also drag their contours to organize space better.
Click on the white sheet icon to create a new project. The Explorer window below lets
you import music files in your project. Simply browse, choose the audio file, and drag
it on top, in the timeline. A row, called track, appears to contain your file. All files in
the timeline are called clips.
If Auto Preview in enabled, you will hear how a selected file is. Click on it to disable it.
So you can use the play and the stop buttons to play a file manually.
There are several kinds of files you can use. Sample files are sound waveforms that
do have an own instrument. This includes any audio format, from .wav to .mp3. You
can recognize them in the timeline, if you see waveforms inside the clips.
Then you have the MIDI files. These are audio clips that save notes but don't have
any defined instrument. You can hear these in Preview because the software adds an
instrument by default.
Then you have the visible clips, such as videos and images. This software can't do
anything on these, but you can still render a full video using your music created as
soundtrack.
It is better to save often your project. You can use the floppy-disk icon, or press
CTRL+S. Saving your project means to open it again later anytime, in case you want to
edit or continue it later. You have two distinct formats available, .acd and .acd-zip. It
is always better to use the second one. If you use it, you will be able to open your
project anywhere, without losing links to your source files, since these are saved
inside the project itself. Mind that this format is much bigger that the .acd one.
Before starting, set some properties on the left. Use the bar to set the Beats Per
Minute, or BPM, which is the playing speed of the project.
When your project has clips, you can play and stop it using the player right below.
You can use your keyboard to check fast how your project is: use Enter key to play
and stop the player. If you play again, you will go on from the last point. If you use
Space key instead, the playhead will come back to its original position when you stop.
If you need to play a part on and on in loop, you need to use the Loop Region. To
create it, simply approach your mouse on top, until your pointer shows two opposite
arrows. If you click and drag, the Loop Region is created. So simply enable Loop
Playback from the player and play the tracks. You will hear on and on the parts of
your project that fall inside such region. Hold Shift down to set the region carefully.
If you click above the timeline, you will fix the playhead. So if it is outside the Loop
Region, the player will go on on its own.
You have time shown in two ways. On the left you have the minutes and the seconds.
On the right you have Bars and Beats, which is the standard measurement unit used in
any DAW. A single bar is composed by a fixed number of beats, indicated by the
numerator of time signature, the fraction you see next to the BPM bar. To learn
how this works, enable and use the Metronome tool.
Keep in mind that a column in the timeline is a full single Bar.
The timeline is composed by different tracks, one for each row.
Audio tracks welcome just sample clips,the ones that have a waveform well defined.
MIDI tracks welcome just MIDI files. In case you use visible clips, you can have a single
Video Track. You can cut, copy, paste, delete a track right-clicking on it. You can set
their size dragging their edges. If you expand enough, you find different important
bars. The first one is the deciBel meter. This indicates the intensity of the clip being
played. Check it carefully: it mustn't be above 0.0, or the song risks saturation or
distortion. Then you have the Volume bar, that turns up or down the volume, and
the Panning bar, that adjusts balance between the left and the right stereo
channels. Mind that anything inside here is referred to a unique track and all its clips
inside. So, if you increase volume, you will do so just to all the clips inside such
track, and not on other tracks!
You have several buttons in the top right corner, but just two of them are quite
important. Mute is used to turn off the whole track to make it silent. Click on it again
to turn it on. Solo is just the opposite: it turns off all the other tracks to play just the
track interested.
Let's see how to edit clips. Above the timeline, you have different tools available,
a few are very important. Time Selection Tool is the best one to organize your clips.
Any kind of clip works in the same way. You can drag it to move it in the same track
or in another track. Hold Shift down while moving to avoid snappings. You can cut,
copy, paste, delete and even reverse them right-clicking on them. You can cut a
part of a clip using the Loop Region and then right-clicking and going to Cut. Just
the part that falls inside will be cut. Adjust the zoom with your mouse wheel to be
more precise.
Approach the edges and drag to stretch or shorten the clip. If you stretch over their
natural duration, the clip will be simply looped on and on. A very small marker on the
clip indicates where the next loop starts. You can always work more carefully holding
Shift down while you stretch.
Hold ALT down and drag on the clip to make a time shift.
You can create transitons between two clips, to pass from the first clip to the second
one. Just approach them enough while Automatic Crossfades is on. You can change
the kind of crossfade right-clicking on it. Use Fade In Type to adjust the clip that has to
come up, while Fade Out Type for the clip that has to decrease in intensity. You can
put a fade to a single clip as well, approaching its upper corners. Use Shift key
to avoid snappings to the columns, as always.
If you approach the top edge, you will adjust the clip's volume, in particular if you
want to decrease it if it's too high.
To edit clips more, right-click on them and go to Clip Properties... You may need some
more experience to use this, try it out when you are ready.
The second important tool is the Paint Tool. With this, you can spread a clip looped
over and over, holding your click. The clip made will be the one selected on the left,
next to the Pan Bar. Just click on it to select it. The clip will be created starting from
where the playhead is, respect to such clip. If you right-click, your pointer will become
an eraser, deleting all pieces of clips that fall inside it. Always hold Shift down to be
precise.
You can also add effects to your clips. Just select a clip and click on the plug-in icon.
Just browse, select your effect and add it clicking on Add. The more effects you add,
the longer the upper chain will be. So when you click on OK, the Audio Plug-In
window appears, and so you can edit and modify each effect. Use Loop Playback
to hear the clip on and on meanwhile.
What about MIDI clips? They can be edited and ruled as any other clip, but still, they
do not have a proper waveform or instrument. Right-click on a vacant zone on the left
to insert a new track, in this case a MIDI one. Add your clip, and choose the proper
instrument, click on the piano roll button and choose in the list. Double-click on the
clip and activate the Loop Playback to check it. The notes are the same, but the
instrument used not.
MIDI files don't have the Plug-In button or the crossfade transitions if you approach
them. To edit their notes, you need to enable the MIDI Editing mode, on top. A
piano appears on the left. Activate the Paint Tool. If you click inside the MIDI clip,
you will define its notes. Click on the arrows to add higher or lower notes. Remember
to hold Shift down to place notes without snappings to the bars.
When your work is finished, just export it! Go to File and then to Render As. Choose the
destination and the file format. Remember to choose a video format to render any
video or picture attached. Check Render loop region only to render just the part of
your project that is inside it, instead of rendering the whole project in the timeline.
This is all! Check our channel to discover more softwares used to create music!!