Taking Notes
One incredibly useful new feature in version 4 is the ability to make notes on each track. Having a text-based notepad inside your DAW can certainly come in handy, and Studio One 4 goes all-out now that it’s finally got one of its own.
Simply right-click any track in the mixer or arrange window and select Edit Note to access its info, whether you’re jotting down a couple of words, a quick idea or a whole treatise on why that snare is compressed just right and will never need any more work.
In the mixer, click the spanner icon (top-left, next to the I/O button) and you can toggle the
Show Channel Notes checkbox. When this is checked, the notes you’ve written for every channel will appear at the bottom of their strips, below the fader and just above the track name display.
Back to that right-click note-taking capability, you can access the same function from the Song menu by selecting Song
Information. There’s also a tab here allowing you to make notes on the entire project (song) as a whole, although this is only available to view through this particular dialog.
From here, you can also access the global Track Notes tab (as shown on the left), in which the notes taken for all tracks can be previewed and browsed together in one place.
So why should you take notes on your project? Well, you could make reminders of what’s been done for when you load up the track later, use it to plan what you’re going to do next, or use it to pass comments to other people who are going to be opening up the track after you… or nothing at all, depending on personal preference.