Intuem 4 - Tour

Check. 1.. 2.. 3.. Check.
Intuem has audio play-through capability so you can check recording levels before laying down a track. Since the play-through goes through any AudioUnits on the track and also uses the mixer, you can check your gain, AudioUnit parameters, pan and final volume.

One step recording.

Recording in Intuem is as simple as enabling a track while playing. There's no special mode you need to use that can accidentally erase everything you played, and when you're done recording, just stop playing. This is called "Insert Recording" and it's the basis of all recording in Intuem both for audio and MIDI.

Multiple audio recording possibilities.
Intuem can record audio from multiple audio input devices at once, including ReWire devices, and you can record almost any set of channels from them simultaneously on multiple tracks. Once you've got the audio into a track, that track can be changed to record at a different sample rate or even a different set of audio channels or from a different audio device while keeping the previously recorded clips in perfect time.

Step Recording
When you need to record without keeping time you can Step Record and enter notes one at a time using your MIDI keyboard or computer keyboard. You can even enter chords and can change duration at will.

Keep an eye on the clock.

You can keep on top of your composition with two handy toolbar controls: the metronome switch, and the tempo field. The tempo field will continuously display the current tempo under the scrubber as Intuem plays. You can also use it to set the tempo simply by clicking in the field and entering the value you want, including fractional amounts.

Ready when you are.
You may want Intuem to start recording right as you start playing, and we're with you. Just switch on the "Wait for Note" recording feature and enable a track. When you press play, Intuem will wait until you begin performing before joining in itself. Your first recorded note (or controller even) will be placed exactly where you positioned the scrubber. This is a great way to fill in a passage. It's also a handy way to synchronise Intuem with your own rhythm.

Ready when Intuem is.

Intuem has a metronome count-in feature to help you get ready for Intuem's tempo just as you're starting to record. You can set the count-in period from 1 to 8 beats, or from 1 to 5 bars.

For the perfectionist in you.

If you like to keep trying until you get it just right, then we've got the thing for you: backup copies of your performances.

They're called takes, and you can have as many as you need and switch between them as often as you like.

Keep it live.

It's easy to record and edit your performance into a hard, machine-like sound so we added the option of re-recording selected characteristics of your performance. This is called "Re-Trigger Recording."

All you need to do is select the notes you want to change, choose to change the time, velocity or pitch and record. As you perform, only the selected characteristics you chose will be applied to the selected notes. This is also a great way to record a very difficult passage or for making a hand-drawn passage sound live.

Recording in layers.

Recording while in a loop is often used to record drums because you can record each drum part with each pass through the loop, using the layers to build a complex pattern in no time.

Loosen up.
Make your performance sound more dynamic by making micro adjustments. Although quantising is a good thing, it can make some music sound machine-like and too rigid. Altering the notes by tiny amounts in time or duration can help soften the sound. Intuem will let you move a note by a 1000th of a quarter note.

Make mono and multi-channel audio.
Intuem can turn a group of mono clips into a single multi-channel clip, and it can take a multi channel clip and turn it into multiple mono clips so you can edit them and route them to speakers seperately.

Fine Control.
When you need to make tiny adjustments to controllers and notes, and dragging by mouse is just too much, you can nudge them using the arrow keys, and when moving in time, you can move in quantised intervals by holding down the Control key.

Go ahead, change your mind.
With unlimited undo and redo, that cover MIDI and audio operations, Intuem is able to back-up your every move, letting you get your music just the way you want it.

Edit notes by dragging marked handles.
That’s right, no more invisible regions around notes to hunt down with your mouse. Selecting notes in intuem reveals the handles so there’s no guess work, just click and drag.

Draw music.
If you don't have a MIDI keyboard you can always draw the notes with Intuem's pencil. You can draw freely, or draw to quantise intervals. The blue bubble follows your movements showing you where you are and what you're doing.

Write music.
Part of the Step Recording feature lets you type music into Intuem so you can easily enter a manuscript or prepare a passage for livening-up with re-trigger recording.

Select audio samples by drawing a marquee around them.

You can select in a single channel and can spread the selection over multiple channels, even over multiple tracks. With samples selected you can edit them.

Handle audio clips like building blocks.

Audio clips are the building blocks of a composition, you can move them anywhere you need to just by dragging them. The follower bubble shows the amount of movement in beats and in seconds.

Tighten up.
Make your performance sound sharper by aligning notes exactly on beat boundaries and to precise note sizes.

Intuem has two quantize operations: aligning to a perfect beat boundary; and to a perfect note size. The two align operations move notes all to the same start time, or arrange them dynamically over a short time period.

Give me strength.
Intuem supports adjustable quantise strength. Instead of quantising your performance to metronomic precision, you can keep some of the nuance of your original by quantising only part of the way (1% up to 100%) to the precise beat interval.

Edit controllers by drawing or moving the blocks.

You can draw in controllers just as easily as drawing notes. What you see is exactly what you get -- no guessing how many MIDI events will be generated for a curve or line. What you draw are the actual events that will be used to enhance your music, events you can count on.

Moving controllers, including tempo, by grabbing a block and dragging it up/down will change the value. Dragging left/right will move it in time.

Advanced Pencil Tools.
Intuem 4 introduces new pencil tools for drawing controllers in precise linear ramps, quadratic, cubic and sinus curves. You can choose the event density for each of these and can see the actual events so you know exactly what you're playing.

Amplifying and normalising.

Intuem has the built-in facility to amplify audio clips or just sections of clips. Intuem makes it easy to normalise audio to its maximum possible without clipping, by pre-scanning the selected audio and determining how much amplification is needed to normalise. Nevertheless, you're free to choose any value you need.

Fading audio in and out.

Intuem has the built-in ability to fade audio in and out with several transition curves to choose from:
• Linear is a constant-rate transition, very simple and sounds quite stale.
• Fast Curve is a quick transition to the audio, and comes in two varieties, quadratic and the initially faster cubic. These are the most often used transitions.
• Sinus is a very pleasant, natural sounding transition following a sigmoidal curve resembling the shape of the letter "S".
• Slow Curve is a relaxed transition and comes in two varieties, quadratic and the initially faster cubic. This is good when used over a fairly long section to fade quite gradually.

Have an Out-of-Application Experience.

Need to perform advanced editing that only a specialised waveform editor can do? No problem. Intuem has a quick and simple way to export an audio clip for external processing and can bring it back in again with a "Replace" command, all the while giving you undo/redo for the entire operation.

Edit Overdose.

If the above mouse-based editing operations don't satisfy you then try the new Event Inspector.

You get all the events in your tracks available to you in a filterable list and custom editors for every single possible MIDI & audio event type, including a nifty SysEx editor that's the simplest and easiest to use that we've ever seen.

All your controllers are available to you. All at once if necessary.

Intuem presents your controller data in the clearest way possible: as graphic blocks, with value labels, in dedicated tracks right below your MIDI notes or audio clips. You can show as many at once as you like, and you can have them appear in a number of different styles.

Multi-track selecting.

Need to copy a multi-track passage? That's no problem at all. Just draw your selection over the tracks and copy. When you need to paste, move the scrubber to the right spot, click in the track which is first to receive the copy, and paste. Could it get any simpler?

Precise view scaling.

Track and controller view height are changed independently by dragging the view's bottom edge, and scaled by Option-dragging the edge. Width is scaled by dragging any labeled bar marking. Now you have precise control of just how much you view at once and exactly how big it is. Default height, scale, and contrast levels, are set in Preferences.

Compartmentalise.

Intuem can convert MIDI to audio in one step giving you a single editable audio clip to arrange with. You could create that clip from several MIDI tracks at once, or a small riff of just a few notes. You can convert MIDI that's played internally or externally and even from ReWire devices. Once you've converted some MIDI into an audio clip, you can arrange it as you need. Duplicating a chorus or part of a verse is as easy as duplicating and dragging an audio clip across the screen. You don't have to convert everything into audio, you can leave some MIDI to make each section a bit different from the others like it.

Quantise, copy and loop like a pro.
Audio clips can be quantised, just like notes except each clip can have a quantise offset time so the time of attack is properly taken into account in the alignment with musical boundaries. You can copy an audio clip as many times as you need without consuming extra disk space, and you can edit a clip while keeping the copies untouched. You can arrange the clip in loop fashion with special tools that leave absolutely no silence between them guaranteeing a tight fit.

Optimise.
If all you have to play through is QuickTime Musical Instruments, then you've got quite a lot. Mac OS X's built-in synth has over 230 programs (instrument sounds) that you can draw on and is compatible with the GM and Roland SoundCanvas GS standards. That means it has a full General MIDI and GS set of programs — a very wide variety indeed, and responds to GM and GS System Exclusive messages (raw data specific to a device and its configuration.)

Polish.

Complete your composition by adding lyrics, cues, and comments. Intuem also lets you set the meter and key, so your music not only looks very professional, it's notated accurately.

Arrange on a grand scale.

When you've polished your work you're left with playing it. Make it an event with the new Playlist.

You can queue up any file Intuem can read from compositions and projects to MIDI files and a variety of audio files. You can have as many playlists as you like and when you play one, Intuem automatically opens all the documents for you so everything plays without delay. Unless you want delays--you can set a start time offset to introduce a gap between songs or use it to cause a song to start before the previous one finishes for a polished overlap. Control it all with the Apple Remote that came with your speedy new Intel Mac and you're centre stage.

Master or Slave, read or write.
Intuem's mixer lets you experiment without changing your composition--you can change any control without having it saved in your track. Or how about the reverse: recorded automation doesn't play, instead the mixer has complete control over all MIDI controllers, AudioUnit parameters plus gain, pan and volume so you can experiment. Clear and obvious mixer mode names eliminate confusion and accidents.

Need to set controller levels through the entire composition via the mixer? Then use the new "Set Levels" mixer mode to do that quickly and easily.

Ready to lay it down? Switch on "Write" and every change made to a mixer control is inserted into your composition to be replayed exactly as you entered it, everytime just like, er... automation.

Automation. It's not just for the mixer anymore.
The same modes that let you record automation from the mixer now work with AudioUnit panels so you can record everything and lose nothing in your session.

Control the controls.
Like power? Intuem's mixer gives you every MIDI controller and AudioUnit parameter in your composition at a glance. It's a lot to deal with so Intuem has clever controls to make managing all that data easier and clearer than any other mixer on the Mac, or PC for that matter. There is a wide range of controls to choose from: three types of circular sliders, horizontal sliders that configure themselves to show the positive and negative ends proportionally, a dedicated slider array that's particularly handy with a graphic EQ, a two axis slider, a simple on/off button, and a pop-up for choosing mode settings.

Audio coming out of your ears, then going in, then coming back out again...

Sometimes you need to add effects to a group of tracks at once, or apply effects in real-time to AudioUnit MIDI instruments, and now you can.

With Intuem 4, you can create a chain of one track outputting to another, each applying effects as needed on the combined mix.

Check out the example to the right: The two MIDI tracks, Lead & Rumble use the FM7 AudioUnit instrument. You want to apply some equalisation to the FM7 output and can do that by creating an audio track (named "MIDI Effects" in this example) and setting the FM7 to output to it then adding the EQ effect to the new track.

What if you want to apply a bit of reverb to the entire mix? To do that you simply create another audio track (named "Final Aux" in this example) and have the two audio tracks for Vox & Guitar and the MIDI Effects track output to it. Add the reverb to the new audio track and you're done. When you're mixing you can control the output volume of the entire mix with one track: "Final Aux." All effects and mixing will be applied in real-time with no need for freezing audio tracks. You can have as many of these auxiliary tracks as you want and have as many effects on each as your computer can handle.

Turn MIDI into audio, add effects.

Intuem can convert, in one step, your MIDI music into audio, even if it plays on an external MIDI device or to ReWire. When MIDI is audio, you can move away from fiddly hardware and CPU sapping software instruments and get down to polishing your work with AudioUnit effects, and there are hundreds of AudioUnit effects to choose from.

Hit 'em With Both Barrels
Intuem not only supports AudioUnit effects, but when you add an AudioUnit music effect to an audio track you instantly get a coresponding MIDI device too. You can control these AudioUnits not only by their parameters and panels, but from a MIDI track as well so you get full use out of the AudioUnits and get double the value for your audio tracks.

Preset pleasure.
AudioUnit presets are a boon to productivity--no need to set-up a zillion parameters or risking loosing your AU's state every time you open your composition--and Intuem puts them at your fingertips like no other app with a toolbar attached to every AudioUnit panel window. It's an Intuem first and you're going to get a lot of use from it...

From the toolbar you can see what preset is currently loaded, choose a preset from the pop-up, which automatically finds the presets saved in standardised locations on your Mac to make things faster, or load one from any file. You can also create a preset at any time by clicking "Save as Preset." Not to be outdone you can also choose the current automation mode from the pop-up on the right hand end, because in Intuem 4 you can record automation right off the controls on an AudioUnit panel.

Freeze!

Applying lots of AudioUnit effects can take its toll on your computer. To alleviate that you can "Freeze" an audio track, even a ReWire audio track, into a single audio clip with all the effects and controller changes applied. With a clip like that, you can save a lot of CPU power for other things. If you want, you can freeze all the audio tracks in your composition into a single clip, then export it as a finished audio recording of your composition.

Low Overhead
Converting MIDI tracks to audio and freezing audio tracks into a single audio clip is a great way to manage a composition, but you can reduce your CPU load even further by hiding tracks so they're off screen and removed from Intuem's audio processing pathways. When you save your composition the hidden tracks are saved too, and you can bring them back into the composition any time you need. Now you can keep all your hard work and not have your CPU pay for it!

Sharing with the best of them.
You can use Intuem to convert your midi to audio and then you can freeze all the audio tracks into a single audio clip. You can then take that clip and export it as audio in one of several formats:

• AIFF and AIFC, at 8, 16, 24 and 32 bits at sample rates up to 48kHz (up to 96kHz if exporting a native format AIFF file)
• AAC/MPEG-4.
• MP3
• µLaw (AU)
• Sound track only QuickTime movie file.
• WAVE audio file.
• 3GPP wireless media.
• Ogg Vorbis.

Your masterpiece is done, now publish it.
Intuem can print your music with professional, proportionaly spaced staves in the standard manuscript format. Your printed music will include lyrics and pedal marks, page and bar numbering, and a fully filled-in title page. You can size your music to print even a full score orchestral piece, or the individual parts. Download a sample PDF and see for yourself!

You can also share your work in electronic form by saving it as a Standard MIDI File, or as an Intuem Composition. Either way they'll both have the same great sound and resolution.

The right fit.
Sometimes you may find that you've played at a different tempo than Intuem was set for and discover that your music does not appear to be correctly notated. You can refit the notes into the bars and beats by shifting and stretching or squeezing them while Intuem automatically adjusts the tempo to ensure the music sounds the same. You can think of this as a way of getting Intuem to correct its tempo to match your performance.

Have it both ways.
Dynamic music sounds great, it's "alive" and finely nuanced. Quantised music, on the other hand, prints beautifully. How about some middle ground? Intuem gives you the ability to edit the appearance of your music without changing the sound, so you can have all your dynamics, and still get a tidy manuscript. This is called non-destructive editing: it's changing how notes look, not how they sound.