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Showing content with the highest reputation on 03/28/2021 in all areas

  1. Hello All, I’m sure you have all heard about the tragic and senseless loss of life due to a mass shooting on Monday here in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado. We will have a sale this weekend at the Bolder Sounds website with all libraries offered at 50% off - with 100% of the proceeds being donated to the Elevations Credit Union Victims' Assistance Fund for families of the victims. All proceeds from our sale will be matched dollar for dollar through a matching grant provided by Elevations Foundation and Elevations Credit Union. The sale will run midnight Friday (3/26) through midnight Sunday (3/28) MST. This is an opportunity to acquire discounted Bolder Sounds libraries and support Boulder families in need from this tragedy. * Your purchase during this sale is not considered a charitable donation. Bolder Sounds will be donating the proceeds from this sale. Thank you. Dennis
    3 points
  2. 3 points
  3. You do realise that Mrs Mills LP's were used as an instrument of torture by parents in the 60's on their defenceless children. Spitfire should be ashamed for dragging up these painful memories. What next, a Richard Clayderman library? I may have to go back to musical rehab. "No mum, please not Englebert Humperdinck again? Can't I at least play one Rolling Stones song?"
    3 points
  4. I'm asking for real scrutiny on this one. It's quiet and contemplative; if there are any hiccups that distract, I need to know about them. My bassist friend Jack provided upright bass on this, both for the pizzicato bass and the solo. I am indebted to him. I've been working on it for a long time, I need some perspective. Thanks in advance for any / all guidance you can provide.
    2 points
  5. 2 points
  6. Hi Richard This really is a performance issue. My best advice is to work on your vocal performance & mic technique. 'Fix in the mix' is such a tedious process! A great vocal take should only normally need a little levelling and eq plus any effects so try to work on your performance - it'll give much more satisfactory results. Yes, automation and normalisation are an option. Avoid compression at this stage! To avoid clipping: Try to stay about 8-12" back from the mic to prevent proximity effect, prevent plosives and improve tonal consistency. Also, to stop plosives, use a pop filter. If you don't have one, place your mic just higher or lower than your mouth to let your breath 'overshoot' the diaphragm. Move a little further away in higher energy passages and a little closer if lower energy to even out the gain. Turn the preamp gain down a few dB's. Digital recording doesn't need the same 'hot' signal as analogue. To improve your performance technique, practice before hand and try to gain consistency over levels, mic placement, distance from the mic etc. You should be able to see where you perform better and where consistent adjustments need to be made. The artist has the right to destroy their work and try again. I would delete the clipped / poor takes: it's quicker to re-record! Here's a summary: Try to get mic-distance down to 3 options e.g. Quiet passages: 6-8" Normal: 8-10" Loud: 12-18" Set preamp gain to only peak into the yellow, never red. Control breath and pops with technique, mic placement & popfilter. Delete what doesn't work and redo it. Be ruthless! Do a few trials and nail it down! Hope this helps! G
    2 points
  7. p. 484, "Using the Smart tool on automation" has a diagram that shows the different hotspot areas of a clip and a list of the modifier keys. Since the Smart Tool is what we mostly stick to, this page is the one to tack up over your desk if you, like me, find yourself mystified by what causes the Smart Tool to switch modes. Then there's pp. 1110-1118, "Creating and editing automation envelopes." That's the meat 'n' p'taters guide. For the individual tools, the applicable ones have their own pages. p. 488, "Using the Select tool on automation," p. 491, "Using the Move tool on automation," p. 495 "Using the Edit tool on automation," p. 505, "Using the Freehand tool on automation," p. 512, "Using the Line tool on automation," p. 513, "Pattern tools," p. 517, "Using the Erase tool on automation." Memorizing which tools are attached to F5-F9 has helped my Cakewalkin' immensely, especially when I can't get the freakin' Smart Tool to behave. Those keys would be some of the first Cakewalk-specific assignments I would have someone new to Cakewalk learn. I wish I had done so for the years I spent flying up to the Tools module in the Control Bar or calling up the HUD. The Smart Tool does so much different stuff that I can forget that there are dedicated tools that don't switch modes on me depending on where I click. Then the section on automation, p. 536 "To raise/lower an audio Clip Gain envelope," and another biggie, pp 544-546. I appreciate your asking, because it made me go through and find all these sections that I had kind of stumbled upon earlier. So now I have a list to refer to. As can be the case with that 1080-page monstrosity that is the Ref. Guide, the information is spread out and duplicated. Guaranteed, if you read those 20 various pages or even just skim them, you will pick up at least one new "hey!" automation editing move. It's another one of those areas of Cakewalk that you can get really fast and precise and creative with if you put in the time. A problem I have is that it's hard to retain stuff like this if I don't use it very often, and my frequency of doing automation makes the learning process go slowly.
    2 points
  8. Well, at least you're not singing it in the past tense, like Paul has to now.
    2 points
  9. Just so you know, I'm just being lighthearted. I enjoy your videos -- I love your playing. When you've gone off on musical tangents playing stuff like Stevie Wonder, I really enjoy it. I would love seeing you playing some Beatles, but I'm not seriously pushing for it. I'm just a huge Beatles fan and I just think it would be great to hear, because I bet you'd play those old songs very well. And while I don't need more piano libraries, I'd probably ending up loving this one so much that I'll eventually pick it up. I'm a total sucker for Beatle-esque and Jon Brion-esque sample libraries and effects.
    2 points
  10. Isn't that almost the same as just setting the clip length in the clip properties?
    2 points
  11. When your recordings from 1987 sound better than my recordings from 2017.... Thanks for sharing.
    2 points
  12. some good info on wide guitars: https://www.puremix.net/blog/double-tracking-rock-electric-guitars.html
    2 points
  13. HI:) All these commands are used by AZController, so if you write a preset you can use all these commands. www.azslow.com Greetz;) Bassman.
    2 points
  14. Good idea! I wouldn't mind either way! 😎 I like the control bar module concept a lot, but it should be fully customizable, basically down to individual button level if possible, like the Microsoft Office ribbon. An example is the new button for Select track envelopes with clips – a button I have been wanting for years! – it's only visible in the Large version of the Select module. But the large version of the Select module is HUGE, and I need other things more. So it would be great to have a fully customizable control bar, as close to button level as possible. 🤓 I think the Select track envelopes with clips button actually would be more logical to have in the Track View button bar, next to the Crossfade and Ripple Edit buttons...
    1 point
  15. Yep, that’s a very nice one. Good developer too.
    1 point
  16. Given the thread title, this has all gone very OT. 😁
    1 point
  17. Real amps or sims, doesn't matter. The principle is the same.
    1 point
  18. Mix comes across nicely on laptop speakers. I like the way the vocal sounds so effortless and whatever you are using for reverb sounds nice. As for crits (bearing in mind lappy speakers) the vocal line at 2:36 is a little buried compared to the rest, a little sibilance here and there (1:25 as an example) and the string pad is too much there all the time for me and as the song progresses becomes almost annoying. If it were me in the production chair that is the main thing I would want to change.
    1 point
  19. Okay, I found the answer in the Sound Forge Forum. Sound Forge opening multiple instances Essentially this is the answer: <Thank-you for pointing out the abnormality. I can confirm this behavior in both 32 and 64 bit Sound Forge Pro 14 (build 111). I am not aware of any setting but will look. Addendum: This a result of the new "Multi-instancing default", and stated in the release notes. The option to change it back to the legacy builds, was not mentioned though. It is also in the normally hidden "Internal" menu. - go to the 'Options' menu - hold 'Shift' key and select 'Preferences' - select the 'Internal' tab - find "Force Single Instance behavior" (bottom of list or use search) - change value from 'FALSE' to "TRUE" - click 'Apply' and 'OK' - Exit or restart SF> There are many other secret values here, that may be of interest to some of the previous discussions above.
    1 point
  20. We learned this for a bartender at a club we were playing in many, many, many years ago He would request it by holding up his hand and then opening 3 fingers, one at a time. 1 2 3 - Len Barry
    1 point
  21. There you go. Answers to help you weigh the matter of "do I address this by building my mixing skills or my singing skills?" I feel kinda sheepish saying this now, but a few years ago, when I decided to really start singing, at first it was an exercise in learning how much I didn't know after winging it for decades. Somehow I was of the belief that I either had singing "talent" or not, so I should just go with what I had and see what I could make of it. Fortunately, my ability to focus on imperfections got the better of me and I just kept recording the same song over and over and over, like for a period of a couple of weeks every day or so I'd try again to get a usable take. I noticed a bunch of stuff, like on listening to my playbacks, I would do some in one register, then some in another, like I didn't even know what the singing melody was supposed to be even though I had written the song. It turns out that my sense of being in tune was pretty good, I wasn't singing sour notes, they were on key, just kind of whatever my voice wanted to do with the note. One of the things I find fun to do after getting a lot of takes of the same instrument is to unmute ALL of them just to get a laugh. So I started to do this with my "discarded" takes and I started to turn into this huge men's choir. Kinda sounded like the Moody Blues on a camping trip. I could hear my technique getting better over the weeks, the later takes had things like vibrato and held legato notes. Well DUH, what I hadn't realized is that the voice, just like piano or guitar or bass or whatever, is an instrument that you make better by practicing. Singing and recording the same song over and over again for a couple of weeks got me able to do some cool stuff like extending my range, singing in (intentional) harmony, pay attention to phrasing, breathing, all this stuff I took for granted having previously only "sung" in the very forgiving environments of church congregations and inadequately mic'd underground rock shows. TL/DR: Moral of the story: singing improves with practice just like any other instrument. Mixing skills are necessary to make singers sound their best. You have takes with irreparable flaws: the clipping. Anything else can be patched up pretty well, levels, plosives, whatever. But clipping is so baked in, even with RX it's hard to get rid of it without losing transients in the highs. You have total access to the singer, you. Studio time is presumably free-to-no-cost. If it were me, I might do both (and sometimes I do exactly this): Comp together the best vocal track you can from your pieces, then use that as a guide vocal (and/or insurance), and try some new "pressure's off" takes. Set up the popper stopper like Gary says, get a glass of water, set up a music stand with your lyrics, lower the lights, turn the input knob on the mic pre 1/8 counterclockwise from whatever you think is "safe," put it in comp/loop mode and let it roll. Don't have to even do whole takes, just step back and let it come around again if you blow it. It will be easier with the guide vocal you comped together. Give yourself permission to improve as a singer rather than beating up on your voice for being "pathetic." And breeeeeeeeathe.
    1 point
  22. Thanks for the tip @msmcleod that's something I had never realized/considered! 😀 It would be awesome though to be able to rename the "mouseover name" of MIDI CC's, since I rarely expand the automation lanes... I usually edit them in the main track using the Edit Filter. And it would also take effect in the menu: But still a great tip, thanks! 👍
    1 point
  23. Yes, there is: scroll up to see the first reply in this thread by scook. 😆 Scook mentioned (and linked to) the included MIDI plugins you insert on MIDI tracks, they work well. Velocity is good to inject more life to hihat and percussive patterns and Quantize can also do randomness, and it's also one of the many ways to apply swing in Cakewalk. But I agree it would be a quicker workflow to implement some humanization features directly into the PRV and/or Inspector for MIDI tracks. It would be especially nice to just have a slider for Swing. 🎶
    1 point
  24. There are 2 good plugins from TBProAudio that do this, too: DynaRide (39 EUR) is similar to Waves Vocal Rider, but it has more possibilities and it can also be used for Bass and other instruments! GainRider (59 EUR) is more visual and more academic with a lot of controls. Tell me more!
    1 point
  25. Very nice job on this one John . . . the chords and piano parts are well conceived, and it's a very clear mix. I very much relate to the lyrical content, also well done. Those staccato strings in the 3rd chorus really add a great and uplifting feeling, getting the point across about that "love of a lifetime", and I'm thinking it might be good if they were in the first 2 choruses as well ? Thanks for posting here !
    1 point
  26. So check out what John did today with Mrs. Mills during his livestream today, it is really something. Check it out starting around the 29:15 mark. He released a free Unified Mrs. Mills Library.
    1 point
  27. There’s a few ways to do this. One is to go clip by clip and normalize to about -1.0 db. This will take care of takes that we’re recorded at lower levels. I prefer to do this in Wave Lab but in a pinch Cakewalk can do this. Then for sure you’ll need to hit a compressor to level it out. I use the pro channel PC 76 u And then push the input until it just starts to move. I will use the BT brick wall set at -1.0. To catch overs
    1 point
  28. Yes, my wife and I were discussing this yesterday imagining the Paul who sang it for the first time imagining hold so far out 64 was and now a 78 year old Paul thinking, man time sure does have a way of flying by.
    1 point
  29. Came across this today. Islands in the Stream Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work. From the article summary on Slashdot "The platforms have driven the price of content to zero," says William Deresiewicz, author of The Deathof the Artist. "This demonetized content is still generating a fortune. But the artists aren't getting that money." "Artists today are beset on all sides by monopolists and oligopolists," argues a 7,000 word analysis in The American Prospect. "Like so many sectors of our economy, government inaction has allowed the music business to consolidate, with devastating effects on musicians. Radio is to a shocking degree in the hands of one company, Liberty Media. Two companies, Live Nation and Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), control a large number of venues and artist management services, with Live Nation dominating ticketing. The major labels have been whittled down to three. Record stores, alt-weeklies, and other elements that nurtured local music scenes are largely gone. Dwarfing all that in significance is streaming, which has become the industry's primary revenue source, despite giving a pittance to the vast majority of artists. For the main streaming companies — YouTube and Spotify — music is really a loss leader, incidental to data collection, the advertising that can be sold off that data, and the promise of audience growth to investors... This radical upending of the industry's business model has benefited a few stars, while the middle-income artist, like so much of the middle class in America, struggles to survive... Chris Castle, an entertainment attorney who used to work at A&M Records, could see it coming when he caught wind of an advertisement for a rebooted version of Napster that operated as a primitive streaming service. The tagline was: Own Nothing, Have Everything. Castle recalled: "I thought right there, that's the end." David Lowery, lead singer of Camper van Beethoven and later Cracker, who now lectures at the University of Georgia in addition to making music, described the internet as reassembling all the gatekeepers that kept artists away from fair compensation. "We celebrated disintermediation, and went through a process of re-intermediation," he said. The article points out that in 2018 YouTube already accounted for 47% of all on-demand playtime globally, according to figures from a nonprofit trade group — while RIAA figures show that streaming now accounts for 83 percent of all recorded income in the U.S, while digital music downloads now earn even less than vinyl records. It remains to be seen whether movement building from all stakeholders, from musicians to fans, will be able to force platform monopolies to give creators just compensation. But the winds are shifting in Washington around Big Tech, and a united front of artists could prove key to raising public sympathies against exploitation and toward basic fairness. Artists would rather think of themselves as outside the system. "The wonderful thing about the DIY vision is also its weakness," noted Astra Taylor, a writer, filmmaker, and activist whose husband, Jeff Mangum, fronts the lo-fi rock band Neutral Milk Hotel. (Astra has occasionally played with the group.) But the system has come for them, and toppled the structures that allowed them to create. Everyone loves music, and most of us now have the capacity to listen to anything, anywhere, at any time. We can't hear through the noise that the people who brought us this musical bounty are in trouble. In the article Marc Ribot, a guitarist who has played with Tom Waits and Elvis Costello, complains that "The same neoliberals in anarchist drag boosting indie labels in the '90s are now boosting Bandcamp. I love Bandcamp. I love the food co-op too. They've been around since the 1930s, they're 3 percent of the market, will never be any bigger... We need to either tear the whole thing down and create real socialism where I get an apartment for my good looks, or a functioning market."
    1 point
  30. A picture would be nice to see what you are seeing. Other then that you could ask support@cakewalk.com for help.
    1 point
  31. Thanks, yes this is the one. It was 75 bucks new so nothing to lose. It's a cool bass now, really like it.
    1 point
  32. Good to know. Can you perhaps send us screenshots of your settings?
    1 point
  33. You never thought of when you’re 64? We’re almost there!
    1 point
  34. Aaaaandddd allow us to update libraries without having to redownload all 36 GB just to fix a tuning issue on a flute.
    1 point
  35. Agree. Even a search for FX box would save time, and this could let you set up a macro.
    1 point
  36. And also excellent 2nd video on editing CC data.
    1 point
  37. v2.0.7 added a couple of extra checks to prevent cw130auto.dll from getting out of sync with CbB. Note: v2.0.6 and 2.0.7 are Launchpad specific. These changes do not affect the other tools.
    1 point
  38. Alright wookiee! So glad you got to hear this one, The meter Actually feels quite natural to me You get to straight dance and waltz in one measure!
    1 point
  39. No this is a good place to ask. The more tutorials the better. I use OBS studio which is free and Magix Movie Studio platinum which was $60 There’s 2 ways I can get Cakewalk audio captured along with the narrative. First is to use WASAPI shared. Second is I will use a small mixer that has the 3/4 output of my interfaces ( DAW playback) and the mike plugged in. This returns to my interface and is recorded by the screen capture. This way I can control the balance between the narration and the DAW with hardware. I’m real scattered if I try and narrate in real time. I mumble and I can also make mistakes and leave out important stuff. so my solution to this is for The last two I made I cheated and wrote a script. I recorded the audio with Cakewalk and edited out bloopers as I progressed. I mastered the audio and then I played it back as I ran the screen capture trying to follow my own instructions. The screen capture records the audio but i use the original by adding it in the editing software and sync it up. I then add some background music and add text and pictures where needed. It’s a Lot of work! But it’s a great hobby as I find learning more about the movie software interesting. I guess we need tutorials on making tutorials
    1 point
  40. Hi, I've got a new song out - called "Waving to Wendy" You can hear it here: https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=14190831 It features the usual suspects - but also features some tablas for percussion 😉 Superior Drums MODO Bass Pianoteq Piano (incl. artificial solo) a few synths and Kontakt and of course some real Strats and a Tele All comments welcome.
    1 point
  41. Hi folks Sorry I've been missing for a while - I hope everyone is well. Here's a song that @Lynn Wilson and I co-wrote and recorded. The topic is pretty transparent and sorry if it upsets anyone but it comes from the right place in our heart. Lyrics below link A Breath of Air Written and performed by Lynn Wilson and Staypress V1 There's been a weird sort of atmosphere In the northern hemisphere Neighbour versus neighbour Conflict without waver Pre-chorus After years of division let's hope that we Can build a new democracy Chorus A breath of air A moment to think A while to recover from the political stink A breath of air Fill your chest With a thought for the future and a hope for the best V2 There's been some disinformation Spread around the nation Theory upon theory People getting weary Pch. 2 After years of division let's hope that we Haven't broken our democracy Chorus Middle bit We're sick of all the fighting No more inciting Pch 2 Chorus to end
    1 point
  42. When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind. ✌️
    1 point
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