Songs

MultitrackStudio project files are called "songs". A song file (.hdr file extension) contains all information that is required to reproduce the mix you made. This includes:

• The number of tracks and other mixer sections.
• The position of all their knobs, effects, names of audio/MIDI files etc.
• Sample Rate used
• Mixer enabled/disabled
• Song Comments
• Chords and Lyrics
• Markers

A song file does not include any audio or MIDI data, it contains only references to the audio/MIDI files used by the tracks (ie. these audio/MIDI files are needed in order to play back the song). All filenames that are stored in the song file have a relative path whenever possible. This way projects can easily be moved to other drives or folders.

Note: The devices used for playing audio and MIDI are NOT part of the song file. This way songs can be used on any computer.

The currently opened song is shown in the main window's title bar. '(R)' indicates the file is opened as read only.

The Song menu

The Song menu contains the following options (note that some options are described in other chapters):

New Song window (Pro Plus edition)

• New: In the New Song window you can type the name of the new song. It will be placed in a folder having the same name automatically unless you browse for a folder yourself.
  
  The Template box (Pro Plus edition only) lets you apply a template. New templates can be created using the Template box as well: the Create new template... option creates a template based on the current song. Templates include almost everything related to the song, except for the audio and MIDI data in the tracks. New songs will have empty audio/MIDI files.
  There's a special "Identical to current" template which creates a new song identical to the current one. This can be convenient for live multitrack recording.
• Open: Open a song file.
• Save: Save the song file and all MIDI files and edited audio files (.aem files) opened in tracks.
• Rename: Rename the song.
• Close: Close the song.
• Comments: Read or write text which is stored in the song file. You can use this to document the project.
• Export MIDI Tracks: Merge any combination of the currently loaded MIDI tracks in a single MIDI file. This tool is intended for moving your MIDI tracks to third party notation software. The current versions of the tracks are used (ie. the MIDI files are not read from disk), so you can temporarily edit MIDI channels, or quantize tracks if necessary.