Selecting

Before you can edit anything in Digital Performer, you must first select it. Digital Performer provides many useful and powerful ways to make selections. Once you've made a selection, you can apply Digital Performer's many powerful Edit menu and Region menu commands to whatever is selected. Most selection techniques apply to any type of data (MIDI, audio, conductor track, automation, etc.)

This help page only covers the very basics of selecting. For complete details, refer to the Digital Performer User Guide.

Selection basics

There are three ways to make selections in Digital Performer:

Selecting data events

Data selection involves clicking (or dragging over) actual data events themselves in one Digital Performer's edit windows. The events become highlighted to indicate they are selected, and they can then be edited or otherwise modified.

Selecting a time range

A time range selection spans a certain period of time in one or more tracks, regardless of what data is in the region. In fact, time range selections can even be empty. For example, you could select four empty measures and actually copy them into the Clipboard — perhaps to splice the empty space somewhere in a track. Or, you could select two empty measures at the beginning of a track and then use the Snip command to remove them and move up everything else in the track to replace them.

Time range selections are always affected by Digital Performer's Smart Selections feature, which has an important impact on what happens when you make selections. For complete details, refer to the Digital Performer User Guide.

Using the Search command

The Search command lets you select data by criteria— or rules —that you specify. For information about using the Search command, see the Search help page or refer to the Digital Performer User Guide.

Edit operations that require time range selection

There are a few commands in the Edit menu and Region menu that require time range selection: Snip, Repeat, Paste Repeat, Merge Repeat and Retrograde. These commands wouldn't be able to do anything useful without a clearly defined end time for the selection, which data event selections don't provide. Therefore, these commands are grayed out if the current selection is a data selection. To use them, make a time range selection before invoking them.

Selections are global

Once you have made any type of selection, the selection remains in effect until you either deselect or make another selection. The current selection appears in all edit windows. For example, if you highlight a few notes in a track's Event List, and then open the MIDI Editor for the same track, the notes will be highlighted in the MIDI Editor, too.

The current selection remains in effect even if you close all edit windows. So be careful not to inadvertently edit a hidden data selection. Always be certain about what the current selection is before using Edit and Region menu operations.

Applying successive edits to the selection

Data remains selected even after you apply an edit operation to it. This lets you easily apply successive edits to the same data.

Playing the current selection

To play back the current selection, choose Play Selection from the Region menu.