Steinberg Nuendo 3 Operation Manual

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Working with hitpoints and slices 19 – 461
The first thing you should do before editing hitpoints is to listen to each 
slice in the Sample Editor, to determine what they contain. The aim is 
basically to avoid “double hits”, like a snare hit being followed by a hi-
hat hit within the same slice. You also want to determine whether any 
hitpoints have been added that should be removed: 
1.Open a loop in the Sample Editor.
If you have already created slices you can open them in the Sample Editor by...

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19 – 462 Working with hitpoints and slices
The “Use” pop-up menu
The “Use” pop-up menu on the toolbar affects which hitpoints are 
shown and is a useful tool for removing unwanted hitpoints. The op-
tions on the pop-up menu are:
How many slices do I need?
If your main reason for slicing the loop is to change the tempo, you 
generally need as many slices as you can get, but never more than 
one per individual “hit” in the loop.
If you want to create a groove (see page 468), you should try to get...

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Working with hitpoints and slices 19 – 463
Disabling slices
You might run into situations where there are too many slices – a sin-
gle sound may have been split into two slices for example. You could 
of course reduce the sensitivity to get rid of the hitpoints you don’t 
want, but then other hitpoints could disappear too, which may be un-
desirable. What you need to do in a situation like this is to disable an 
individual slice, using the Hitpoint Edit tool:
1.Select the Hitpoint Edit tool....

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19 – 464 Working with hitpoints and slices
3.Raise the Sensitivity slider to a higher value so that a hitpoint appears, 
separating the two sounds.
Most likely this will add a lot of other unwanted hitpoints as well.
4.Audition to make sure you got what you wanted.
5.Select the Hitpoint Edit tool and point at the handle.
The speaker icon changes to a normal arrow pointer.
6.Lock the new slice by clicking on its handle.
Locked hitpoints are dark blue in color.
7.Drag the Sensitivity slider to the...

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Working with hitpoints and slices 19 – 465
4.Press [Alt]/[Option] with the Hitpoint Edit tool selected so that the 
mouse pointer changes to a pencil tool and click just before the start 
of the sound.
A new hitpoint appears. Manually added hitpoints are locked by default.
•If you click and keep the mouse button pressed, you can adjust the 
position of the new hitpoint by dragging.
Releasing the mouse button adds the hitpoint.
5.Audition the new slice with the Play tool to make sure you got what...

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19 – 466 Working with hitpoints and slices
About Q-points
Optionally, hitpoints can have individual Q-points. These are mainly 
used for audio quantizing. Their function is to define the point to which 
the quantizing will apply. Sometimes a slice might have a slow attack, 
and a peak further into the slice which you wish to use as the Q-point. 
When you apply quantize, the Q-point will define where the warp tab 
will be added and thus the point which will be stretched to a grid po-
sition when...

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Working with hitpoints and slices 19 – 467
Creating slices
After you have specified the correct loop length and time signature and 
worked on the hitpoints in the Sample Editor so that one sound per 
slice is heard, it is time to actually slice the file (if that is what you want 
to do – there are other uses for hitpoints as well, as described on the 
following pages). This is done by selecting “Create Audio Slices from 
Hitpoints” from the Hitpoints submenu on the Audio menu.
Now the following...

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19 – 468 Working with hitpoints and slices
Creating groove quantize maps
You can generate groove quantize maps based on the hitpoints you 
have created in the Sample Editor. Groove quantizing is not meant for 
correcting errors, but for creating rhythmic feels. This is done by com-
paring your recorded music with a “groove” (a timing grid generated 
from the file) and moving the appropriate notes so that their timing 
matches the one of the groove. In other words, you can extract the 
timing from...

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Working with hitpoints and slices 19 – 469
Other hitpoint functions
On the various submenus on the Audio menu you will also find the fol-
lowing functions:
Create Markers from Hitpoints
This is located on the Hitpoints submenu. If an audio event contains 
calculated hitpoints, this function can be used to add markers – one 
for each hitpoint – to an automatically created marker track (see page 
178). This can be useful for locating to hitpoints, and for using the 
Timewarp tool (see page 517) to...

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Set Tempo from Event
This Advanced submenu function sets the project tempo according to 
the original tempo of the loop (as calculated by the Audio Tempo Def-
inition tool). The result depends on whether you are using the Tempo 
track or a fixed tempo.
• If you are using fixed tempo, you will be asked to confirm that you want to 
change this – click Yes to set the fixed tempo to the event’s original tempo.
• If you are using the Tempo track, but there are...