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I went and did it again. Every so often, not often enough it seems, for me to remember how to get myself out of it, I create a MIDI Black Hole. A spot in the Piano Roll from which no sound can ever emanate. There's a note on the grid in the correct place, I can right click on it to get its properties and there's nothing about it that indicates anything weird. I can delete it and re-enter it and still, no sound. I delete the previous note to make sure it's not the note-off screwing things up. If I nudge the note a little late it will happily sound, but then it will sound too late. It's a cursed spot on the Piano Roll, a place of no velocity, no note value, no sound, just silence. It sucks sound in and none comes out. But aha! This time I think to look in the Event List, and yes! It shows that in addition to the note I have entered, there is also a Zero Zero at that same start time, appearing right before it in the list. Apparently in the MIDI spec, in the event of such a collision, it's like a 4-way stop, the first note there wins. So I zoom and I zoom and sure enough, eventually there's a little speck visible at the leading edge of my non-playing note. I delete this and all is normal and no more MIDI Black Hole on my Piano Roll. I post the above for the amusement and education of anyone who has suffered from the same phenomenon or may in the future. Also: combing zero-length (and/or zero velocity) notes out of a project seems like a useful task for a CAL script. Does anyone know of such a script or where I might look for one? Or maybe there's already an easier way to ferret them out than by poring over the Event List, then zooming in and zapping them?

This will do that: (forEachEvent (if (&& (== Event.Kind NOTE) (&& (== Note.Vel 0) (== Note.Dur 0))) (delete) ) )

If he's good enough for Dave, then he's all right by me.....

deleteBlackHole.CAL Put this in your CAL directory (default is C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core\CAL Scripts ) Select your clip, then press CTRL+F1 and double click on this CAL script.

It doesn't really happen to me, no. I try not to work on a piece for too long at a stretch, then I enjoy getting back to it the next day. I particularly love listening to it when the drums are done, which always pulls the whole thing together. What happens later on is that I'll listen to a piece from a few months ago and have little or no recollection of coming up with the parts, which is slightly worrying! 🤣

Not so much nowadays. I developed a penchant for sound design and ambient music and threw off the shackles of worrying about conventional song arrangements. Very niche market, for sure, but I really enjoy the process and the end results. I am in no way suggesting that anyone else do this... It just works for me. cheers andy

Oh absolutely. Shelve it and court another one. Absence will make the heart grow fonder and you'll re-like it and hear all your mix mistakes again at a later date.

These stories put me in mind of my old Fender Bassman that had a 2 prong plug. As most of you will remember how "safe" those were. But you usually knew when you had to flip the reverse switch as you most always heard a hum. Otherwise you would be blown across the room when you touched your mike with your lips! But one of the benefits was if I turned the amp up it picked up AM radio and I used to listen to it in my room that way. The other thoughts on this topic is how many people these days are freaked out about RF emissions from Smart meters and cell towers. They talk like this is some sort of new heath issue. Most of those old radio towers blasted out a lot more RF energy than a cell tower. And there also was all the TV station towers which are now gone. Greg- The ferrite choke worked for my friend who had the hum in his 2i4. I hope it works for you. All my USB audio gear now have those type of USB cables. They are a good idea. I even have power supplies ( wall Warts) that came with a choke on the low voltage side. It's a bad on Focusrite's part that they don't include one of these cables as it would seem the right thing to do.

Came across this old photo of Snowball. She came into my parents house as a kitten when I was a teenager. She never left and became part of the family. She loved to soak the sun on the back patio.

... the most difficult time of the year for Rick Astley.

It looks like an extended demo. Not very interesting, IMHO.

It's okay we mostly forgive you 🤔

Really? I have my Fly Swatter ready 🤣

Yep, I understand intention this promo but it is also kind of ironic for me if reading literally its name, is it? IK always had great promos for new users or users with a small number of their prods. Unfortunately for users with almost everything (or everything) upgrade is kind of frustrating about price. It is their choice - of course - to treat light hitters or newcomers as heavy hitters. But is it causing heavy hitters to feel appreciated? Rhetoric question... I guess... Also nice to be answered. Even if it would be not expected type of answer better than to be ignored.

So true. Found out i can do exact the same in Melodyne with my guitar playing, that was a game changer as well. Now i can play that i play well...

I love the Cakewalk Piano roll... Its my greatest tool...

Wow. That brings back memories.......

Check out @Jim Hurley's thread on the NI forum. He has linked a video showing you how he does that. Something to do with "affinity." Mind you, that was for stand alone Reaktor I think, so perhaps it isn't possible with plugins.

Yeah, it was. Oh well, I think I'll just hit the piano roll and get my DAW to do the hard work...

No, no... Just like our new start-up business name ("Two Bright Nerds, LLC"), I'm a nerd. I try not to be too much of a geek. 😉 😆

I think I make this into a little blog just because. I am now uninstalling whe whole NI Komple 12 pack. But 2 of them failed to uninstall så i have to install them again just to uninstall them for a CLEAN install. But... Trouble one. The drive is too small for the isntall it say. But as you see here, there is plenty of Space. But i think i Just install it to a HDD drive first and make it work and move the sample data to the SSD.

That's how the Plugin Collective has always worked, although some Novation hardware also facilitates access.

If you don't need the specificity of Mark's CAL script, there's always the Process > Deglitch menu (aka "the MIDI guitarist's best friend"): BTW Mark - good job on the sampled piano!!

Oh dear, you seem to be going through the wars lately ØSkald, sorry to hear about that. It is so frustrating when stuff like this goes awry and no one provider stands up and says, "yeah, it's us, I'm sorry." I hope you get it all sorted soon.

Excellent! More studio time! 👍😆 (Of course, it may change your chosen genre(s) towards a darker setting though! LOL.)

Soon we will be able to get reimbursed by showing small video ads on our motherboard's and gear's viewscreens.

The OP hasn't followed up yet, so this thread so far is just general advice for anybody reading it with the same question.

They've been having system issues & there's quite a few complaints about it. It was suggested to re-subscribe to their newsletter again. Good luck!

Been using some of that cable tidy stuff on some of me cables:-

This is only semi-related, but a 'road story' about hum. I've been in the same duo since 1985 and we're still making a living by gigging. Part of the reason for that is we went into the private party / yacht club / country club / condominium / retirement development when the MADD mothers with their good intentions started ruining the night club business. On the gig I plug everything into a power conditioner to keep all the ground potentials similar. The power conditioner keeps both surges and dips from destroying my synth modules and other gear. One place that hires us a couple of times per year, and has been doing this for over a decade has a strange problem. I play sax, wind synth, flute and guitar on the gig and my guitar has Seymour Duncan P-Rail pickups. The P-Rails can be configured for P-90, Rail, Series Humbucker or Parallel Humbuckers with a few slide switches. In this particular room, if I have the selected pickup(s) in either of the single coil modes (P90 or Rail) the hum is deafening. In either humbucker mode it's quiet. When I get there, I've learn to put both pickups in the humbucker mode before I start playing. I'm glad it's a simple fix. I have no idea what the problem is, and the person who hires us says other groups have had problems with hum too. Insights and incites by Notes

When this came in 1972 i was blown away. Still get emotional by it.

Thanks Larry. Maschine is also updated to 2.8.1

I was having a bad hum on all my guitars, acoustic plug-in and electrics, single and double coil and humbuckers, but only in one room in my house.. Turning 90 degrees and keeping the guitar exactly perpendicular to the ground helped somewhat but it was always there - regardless if I was plugged into an amp, FX pedals, a DI to my interface or directly into my interface. But nothing else hummed. I never thought "premium" cables did much good but I invested in some short (6 ft.) Mogami gold cables and ran them wherever the guitar signal went (to and from FX units, pre-amp, amp, interface, etc.) Voila NO HUM. I finally realized it was because the room is over the garage and the garage door opener is creating some kind of electrical field (even when the mechanism is not running) that the guitar signal was picking up through the cheaper cables, even though they were decent shielded Fender and similar cords. But absolutely no hum with those Mogami Golds. Not sure this will help you if everything has noise and static.

Ah, that explains it.............

So far the inability to shut my eyes without seeing horrors the like of which I had previously thought to be unimaginable. I may never be able to sleep again.

Okay, here are a couple of photographs I took last night:- Let me know if pictures linked here do not show up. I think I am having "issues" with my web provider. Sometimes hitting F5 a couple of times will force them to show.

I like Neely's stuff, even though I'm not sure I'd ever use much of it? His vid on 7/11 polyrhythms is a mind bender, though he does a good job of explaining how to count it out:

🙄 Same here.

Thanks very kindly SPAK for you great feedback on this tune. It took much time, effort and organization to produce. The first version was probably the best it could be given the time, tools and skill level I had in 2011. All the tech blather above is my way of saying how pleased I am the state of the art for home producers like myself has advanced to a point where very old projects can be pulled up and actually improved upon. When I listen to the mix now I hear dozens of subtleties that were simply buried on the first pass. And yes, I do believe that is a real Hammond. I was brought forward in the new mix. It one of the things that was kind of buried before. Cheers... - D

See what happens when you want to save up to buy Paradigms? You have to sell your pickups! Told you they were expensive! 😁 Cool stuff, Chuck! Almost a bit of a Tony Iommi kind of vibe to your playing there, and I can definitely see why Cobalts would benefit your playing style!

😀

Cool Story. First home was covered in Aluminum siding and the roof insulation had the old stuff with the metal reflective backing. It was like a huge antenna. Needless to say Murphy's Law set into motion with three radio transmitters within miles of house. When I plugged in Amps I got AM radio all the time. Glad we only lived there for 3 years.

I have two radio stories: 1) I used to live near a college campus. Their radio station tower used to be miles away at remote campus extension but they decided to put it on the main campus. It was so close that if it toppled, the tower would hit my house. I got WQCS in everything. My stereo set, my amps, my reel-to-reel tape deck, and the TV. I complained to the FEC who send out an engineer who also was the engineer hired by the radio station. Needless to say, nothing got done. Since I was renting, I eventually just moved. 2) Played a grand opening party on the parking lot of an office building right next door to an AM radio station in Stuart Florida. The people heard the radio in their wired phones and everything else. I sensed trouble right from the start. We set up the PA and of course had the radio station coming out our speakers. In a rare bit of insight and luck I saw a water pipe bib and spigot next to the building, I scraped paint off a bit of the pipe and it was copper (it was an old building). So not knowing if it would work, but grasping at straws, I hooked my vehicle's jumper cables to the scraped pipe and the other end clamped to my road rack rail. Problem solved, and the gig was saved. Insights and incites by Notes

http://helpcenter.celemony.com/hc-2/faqs/?qOpen=67

TBH, I don't use a vibrato bar that much either, but I do a massive amount of bending in my lead playing. This video is not a good example (because I made some mistakes in it) but you can get a good idea the type of style I play...

Elastique preserves phase coherence so you should have no problems stretching multiple clips. You dont even need to do it destructively via process Length. You can select all the clips and slip stretch them all by the same amount. The shortcut key to do is hold down CTRL-Shift and then Drag the right edge of the clips to slip stretch them to the amount you need. Make sure the stretch method in the clip inspector is elastique pro. This will dynamically and non destructively stretch the audio to the new length.

I am with you about not wanting to re-wire the house. The grounding is my real concern, and you can ground that specific circuit to your equipment. The house itself should have an earthen ground on it to the breaker box (can ask the person who did the work to verify), but I am not sure if the GFCI is really grounded. In some older homes I have seen them run earthen grounds through walls to ground individual circuits (copper wire to metal stake outside the home). My concern is that the GFCI circuit may not really be grounded, but just replacing a 2-prong outlet with a 3-prong (with no functional difference other than another hole). The electrician who installed that should be able to answer what they did... just so they don't BS you (installing a GFCI with no ground may be a code violation there), ask them "where is the ground on that GFCI you installed, and how is that a common ground for the house?"

Sounds like it could be a ground loop. Isolation transformers, grounding everything together, lifting grounds, keeping power cables away from signal cables, etc., all work, but sometimes different methods work on different systems. You could have a defective piece of gear too, but I'd suspect a ground loop first. With my own gear, I start with plugging everything into the same outlet on a little multi-outlet zip strip. That lets me know everything is at the same ground potential. If I still have hum, I start experimenting and tracking it down. BTW, do you know why PA Systems hum? - - Because they don't know the words. (groans are appreciated) Insights, incites and lousy puns by Notes

In general, if you've got a MIDI interface then any MIDI compatible keyboard controller will work with Cakewalk. Most keyboard controllers are USB nowadays (the good ones are both USB & MIDI), but again, most will work with Cakewalk. I'm unaware of any that don't. As far as recommendations, it's a bit difficult to answer this without knowing a bit more about what you're wanting to use it for. There's basically four types of keyboards: 88 Note weighted keyboards (basically like a piano). 25, 37, 49, 61, 76 note full size keyboards - these can be semi-weighted or not. So basically your standard organ or synth type. 25, 37, 49 & 61 "Minikey" keyboards - like the old Yamaha portasounds. 25, 32 & 37 note nano keys - really small keyboards, usually used for non keyboard players, portability (i.e. will fit in a laptop bag), or for triggering keyswitches on some VSTi's. All of them may or may not come with the following: Velocity Sensitive - the harder you play, the louder the sound. Most have this, but check just the same - IMHO it's really a must. Aftertouch (Pressure sensitive) - this is rarer nowadays, but basically it can alter the sound by "pushing" the key with more pressure whilst you have the key held down. I quite often use this for vibrato. Pitch Bend Wheel - for doing pitch "bends" ( a bit like bending a string on a guitar, or using the whammy bar) Modulation Wheel - usually used for introducing vibrato, but can be assigned to most things like filter cut-off, or a leslie speaker effect. DAW Controls (such as faders, transport controls), extra knobs & sliders to alter your synth sounds Obviously that's a lot of features to take in, and there's dozens of keyboards out there depending on what you want. I'd take a think about what you're going to use it for, then shop around. If you've found something you like feel free to ask for opinions here. [Edit] Ones I'd personally recommend: 88 note: Studiologic SL88 Studio Full size: Too many to mention, but Alesis & Native Instruments do good ones, as do M-Audio. Cheaper options are Samson & Behringer. MiniKeys: The Korg microKey range NanoKeys: M-Audio Keystation mini32, Korg nanoKey

AEA R-84 Ribbon mic. It suits my voice best. Other decent mics I have for vocal are: 1x AKG C414 B-ULS (Transformerless mod). This one seems best on female vocals 1x AKG SolidTube. If I did not have my AEA R-84 I'd use this one for me.