Digital Performer 4.6 is now available as a free download to users of version 4.5. This upgrade’s big new whiz-bang feature is Pitch Automation. DP detects the pitch of your audio track, and lets you simply draw in pitch correction (with or without formant shifting), drag sections to change notes, transpose, convert audio to MIDI, and various other pitch tricks. On their website they say, “this allows you to manipulate pitch non-destructively in real time using Digital Performer’s standard track-based automation features. From simple pitch correction using the pencil tool, to individual note transposition, to wholesale transposing of an entire audio track, you have unprecedented control over the pitch of your audio tracks.”

There are many other features, too. The Pattern Gate Plug-in is like a drum programming environment for programming complex, rhythmc gates. (And it looks nice too.) There are improvements to the way instruments and effects are managed, and lots of new features relating to film scoring. And there are many other little tweks. My favourite is the Audio Click feature: you can now use any sound you like for the click track (metronome), rather than having the standard boring click. This could really get out of hand — when the click track gets complicated enough, you can probably dispense with the actual music and just program click tracks.

Or maybe I’m just being silly.

Buy Digital Performer 4 at SameDayMusic.com