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TASCAM GigaEditor 4
GigaStudio 4 Instrument Editor
User Manual
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TASCAM GigaEditor 4 User Manual Copyright © 2008 TEAC America, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means for any purpose other than the licensee’s personal use without the express written permission of TEAC America, Inc. All information in this manual is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of TEAC America, Inc. The software described in this manual is provided un
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Table of Contents Chapter 1: About the GigaStudio 4.0 Instrument Editor..............................................................................................5 What’s New? ...................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Launching the Instrument Editor ...................................................................................................................
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Editing in the Region Window..................................................................................................................................172 Drag Modes....................................................................................................................................................................173 Changing the Vertical Resolution.............................................................................................................................1
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Chapter 1: About the GigaStudio 4.0 Instrument Editor The GigaStudio Instrument Editor is a separate application that works with GigaStudio. The Editor allows you to create your own instruments or edit existing Giga instruments. You can run the Editor simultaneously with GigaStudio, but it’s not necessary. The Editor itself can load instruments into memory, allowing you to hear your edits by playing an external MIDI controller or by right-clicking the on-screen keyboard. What
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3. The wave view has a new mode in which the sample is drawn as if the amplitude envelope has already been applied to it. This mode is toggled by a small button near the zoom and unzoom buttons. 4. Giga 4 supports a unique audition sample for each instrument in a .GIG file (not just a single audition sample for the whole file). Right-click on a sample for options. 5. Right-clicking in the parameter value list (lower right) brings up a new “Copy to all instances” menu option. The val
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If an instrument is already loaded into GigaStudio, you can also launch the Editor from the Loaded Instruments pane. Right-click on the instrument and choose Edit. The Editor will open with the selected instrument loaded. This can take a few moments if the instrument is particularly large. Opening the Instrument Editor from the Windows Desktop When you’re doing intense instrument construction, you may want to run the Editor alone without GigaStudio. 1. You can launch t
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This will launch the editor and open the selected .gig file. You can open multiple .gig files at once by selecting several of them and hitting the Enter key. Opening a .GIG file from the Instrument Editor With the Instrument Editor open, you can open any .gig file using the standard File-Open command. 1. Go to the File Menu and choose Open… [Alt] + [F] + [O] or [Ctrl] + [O] 2. Use the Open Instrument File dialog to navigate to your .gig file. 3. Select the file and c
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This window is very similar to the Open dialog in other programs, but there are a few features that are specific to GigaStudio: The Recent dropdown list contains a list of the most recently used folders. Selecting a folder in this list causes the window to jump directly to that folder. The Sample name box lists all of the samples in the currently selected instrument file. Select any sample in this list and click the Play button to hear that sample. If you are working with instrument
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Anatomy of a .GIG File Above is a graphic representation of the components of a GigaStudio File. Getting familiar with these will make it much easier to know what you are doing when editing and creating GigaStudio Instruments. The basic elements are: • Banks. A bank is a collection of instruments. • Instruments. Instruments are the basic performance object in GigaStudio. An instrument is loaded on a MIDI channel, either alone or as part of a multi-instrument “stack”. • Regions
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Banks A GigaStudio file can contain up to 128 instruments, each assigned to a bank. By default, all instruments are assigned to bank 0, but banks can be numbered from 0 to 16383. Bank numbers are used when GigaStudio responds to MIDI bank select messages. Banks also help to organize instruments within the Instrument Editor. They give you a folder structure to work with when you have a large number of instruments to deal with inside the same .gig file. Banks are the top level
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Dimensions Regions are futher subdivided by dimensions. A dimension can have up to 128 splits each triggering a different sample. A dimension tells GigaStudio which sample to trigger based on the position of its assigned MIDI controller. Samples A .gig file also contains a collection of samples, imported initially from individual .wav files. Each dimension split is assigned a unique sample to play back. (We’ll refer to the process of assigning samples to splits as ma
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Chapter 2: Creating a Giga Instrument Giga instruments can range from the very simple (an instrument can be made from a single sample) to the extremely complex. In any case, the general procedure for creating an instrument consists of the same basic steps: 1. Create a new, empty file in the Giga Editor. 2. Import the samples your instrument will use. Samples are imported from individual .wav files. The editor will bundle the samples into the .gig file with the instrument when you sa
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Creating a New File To create a new, empty .gig file, choose File-New on the Editor’s main menu. (The first button on the main toolbar does the same thing.) An “empty” file will contain a single empty instrument, with no regions or samples: Importing Samples Samples are imported from individual .wav files, in 16 or 24 bit integer, mono or stereo format. As you import samples, they are added to the Sample Window in the lower left portion of the Editor. Samples are organize
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By arranging your samples into folders that match your instrument’s splits, you’ll be able to use the Editor’s more powerful mapping features such as folder drag-and-drop, and the Instrument Wizard. Creating sample folders When you create a new .gig file, you will always find a “default” sample folder in the Sample Window. You can rename it if you like. You can start importing samples into this folder or you can create new folders. 1. To create a new folder, right-click anywher
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The Import samples command 1. To import individual samples into a folder, right-click on the folder and choose Import samples. You can right-click anywhere in the Sample Window, but the samples will be imported to the currently selected folder. 2. This will bring up the file browser: 3. When you select a sample, the sample’s properties are displayed, including its word size and sample rate, length in seconds, and size in kilobytes. 16 TASCAM GigaEditor 4 Manual
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4. Select a sample or a group of samples and click on the Open button to import the samples into the folder. (To select multiple samples, click while holding down the SHIFT or CTRL keys.) 5. The samples will now appear in the Sample Window. Within a folder, samples can be sorted either alphabetically or by pitch. Right-click in the Sample Window to select the sort option from the context menu. The asterisk by each sample indicates that these samples have not yet been wr
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The Import directory command This command is used to import an entire directory of .wav files at once. The samples are imported into a new folder named after the source directory. 1. Right-click in the Sample Window and choose Import directory. This will bring up the folder browser. 2. Select a directory and click OK to import the directory into the Sample Window. Any .wav files in the directory (or .dxl files, which are accelerated Giga samples) will be imported. Other typ
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Importing Samples from the Windows Desktop Often the most convenient way to import directories and samples is to drag and drop them directly from the Windows Explorer into the Sample Window. You can drag samples from the Windows Explorer to any folder in the Sample Window: 1. Here we are dragging to the folder named “Import Sample Folder”. 2. Now the samples appear in the folder. TASCAM GigaEditor 4 Manual 19
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3. You can do this with more samples and put them in any of the folders. In this example, we put some Kick samples in the “Import Sample” folder where the crash samples are. Then we put some Snare samples in the “Default Sample Group” folder. Importing Sample Folders from the Desktop You can also drag an entire directory, or even multiple directories, from the Windows Explorer into the Sample Window. For each directory that you drop, a corresponding folder is created, and any
