[b1j]

I've been stealthily finding a few minutes to work on my ambitious recording project (four guitars and a bass), and I came across a rather disappointing feature in Studio One.

When I record a track in layers and comp the best performance from all the takes, I create an event that's really several events, one for each take (or layer) I chose for the final. In the past I'd Merge the events into one, just to signal that I have the final performance, now ready for mixing. I always liked the look of one event on each track.

Yesterday I discovered that once I Merge several events into one, there's no UnMerge after you save the file. I was surprised to find that it also means I can no longer access the bend markers in a Merged track. When I want to synch another track to it, I have to eyeball where the transients are in the merged track. It's usually not too hard, and there's something to be said for less than hard-perfect alignment with multiple voices. But it does slow things down. With my midling skill as a player, I need to synch voices together. Depending on the song or the place in the song, I tend to leave a tiny touch of imperfection to the synch.

Use the grid and quantize, you say? My piece is seven minutes of rubato –– no grid, no quantizing. Each section's tempo is held up by one part that moves throughout it, and there are several variations both between and within sections. Not constant, but it moves in waves. I like the effect for this particular piece (cantabile), but for most of what I do with pop/Americana, a grid is fine. I suppose that's why I had never noticed the Merge's destructive effect on bend markers.

So it turns out Merge is a bounce. Now that I think of it, Merging takes away the ability to fine-tune and balance the loudness among the individual layers, too. So I guess I've weaned myself off the Merge feature I used to think was cool.