Bruce Olsen

Jeez, that's good. Love the vocals and guitar. Great lyric. Love the entrance... bam! Lead-in to the solo kicks *****. Maybe look for a way to change the energy between verse and chorus, so the listener feels the energy build. Maybe start to ramp it up in the chord change at 0:46 . You sound almost like Lou Reed when you're at lower volume: 1:12-1:13 is an example of that, or "guns" at 1:50. I might like to hear verses with you singing at lower volume. I'm a drummer so there are also some things I can see to change it up. I'd add 4 bars of drums at the end of one of the choruses if you can find some big-***** drums like Taiko. Also layer them in with the cannons or thunderclaps or whatever they are (which are really great). PS. Soundcloud played San Francisco Days right afterward. I'm in Pasadena now but lived in SFBA for decades and you got me all weepy 😞 I've been all those places... Then while I was writing that it served up A little Bit. Both of those are great, and I feel the same way about LA. And yes, the lead-in to the solo does kick asterisks 😞

I think this is related to my other issues, thanks.

Thanks. This has a different UI than the full product does, so I'd assume anything on it works. I'll look again.

Thanks, I'm playing a D where the high E string plays G so that's not it.

Edit: Dragging that button onto a MIDI track will copy the selected strumming pattern onto the track. Your example will copy Pattern 2. The strumming pattern consists of notes that control the plugin when it strumming mode is turned on. They produce no sound by themselves. Additional MIDI notes need to be created to specify which chord (chosen from a user-defined "Chord Bank" of 24 chords) will be strummed in the manner specified by the strumming pattern notes. Note that the current chord in the Chord bank is not copied when you drag the circled button onto the track, only the pattern is copied. If you play the notes when the plugin is not in "strummer mode" the corresponding guitar notes will be played. In strummer mode chords will be strummed.

I'm trying to play chords and strums from Ample Guitar M II Lite's strummer by using the notes outside the instrument's range. My objective was to create a track and record the audio (which I need to send to my engineer). No matter what notes I add to PRV the VSTi does not start a strum playing. I'm able to hear them when I select chords and strums in the VSTI's UI, so that aspect of the routing seems to be OK. Thanks for everyone's help so far. P.S. I've had this kind of issue with other VSTis hat use the same kind of scheme--namely, some MIDI notes trigger a sample and other notes trigger a pattern of some type. In that case I just programmed the notes by hand, but I'm keen to avoid that. Resolved: The main issue was forgetting that CW uses different note names. Adjusting "Base Octave For Pitches" to -2 eventually resolved most of the issues.

I'm trying to record the MIDI from Ample Guitar M II Lite's strummer (I have no MIDI controllers, only a mouse 😞). Thanks to some of the previous answers here 🙂 I've been able to arm a MIDI track, hit record, and then use the play button in the VSTi to generate the strums I've programmed. The good news is that some of the notes are recorded, so it appears the routing has been handled ("Enable MIDI Output" was the key to that). The bad news is that not all notes are recorded. An unscientific experiment shows the high E string's notes are not captured. One of the other answers discussed tweaking MIDI channels because each string is assigned to a different channel but I have the "MIDI Guitar" option off, and as I understand it the channel assignments aren't honored in that case. I'd appreciate any guidance anyone can offer. I have other questions about the VSTi's other mode (where hand-programmed MIDI notes outside the guitar's range are captured by the VSTi, and call up chords and articulation) but I'll add a separate post for that, since it's really a different thing (though I'm sure the resolution could easily be the same). Resolved: The main issue was forgetting that CW uses different note names. Adjusting "Base Octave For Pitches" to -2 eventually resolved most of the issues.

Thanks to everyone! I first learned a little about MIDI in when is first became a standard, but didn't really use it then.

If you need someone to testify to that, I'm available. My main concern was that I'd have to redo a bunch of work if I didn't set things up correctly, but it sounds like that wouldn't be the case for what I'm likely to do.

OK, so I guess it matters more if you're out of the box, because routing in the box is a direct connection from MIDI data to synth...?

Thanks so much! Back in the day, when everything was done by connecting cables, I imagine it was pretty important (so your synths didn't respond to every note they saw) but I guess that's irrelevant... because you're routing MIDI notes to synths directly, I guess?

I've started writing drum and percussion parts for a band, and also a couple of melodies/progressions. I then export audio tracks that are sent to our engineer for mixing/mastering. Thus far I've ignored MIDI channels completely. Each part has its own MIDI track, with 1 or more associated audio tracks. I think everything is on MIDI channel 1 (I actually haven't looked so far). It works fine. So I'm asking how my poor MIDI channel hygiene might (realistically) get me in trouble in the future. I won't perform any of this work live: I don't even have a real MIDI controller--everything has been done with a mouse. Can anyone suggest the kind of thing that would make me clean up my MIDI act? Would getting a MIDI pad controller and keyboard controller change things? Is there anything big I'm missing out on by Ignoring MIDI channels? Thanks.

The Cubase facility looks very nice, and I'd be more than happy to have something as capable. But by implementing it, the only reaction outside the existing user base would be something like, "Nice, but Cubase had that 10 years ago." What's developed really depends on the plans BL has for the product. I assume they want to attract new users, so they need to be building things that will... attract new users. I'm not product management for CW (I used to be PM at multiple big software companies) so I don't have the pulse of all new users, and I don't know what the BL business model is intended to be, but I can offer a few suggestions. From my unscientific sample, most new users want to compose. They're new to music and hear something cool in their heads and want to make sounds. Even existing users have expressed an interest in a composition tool, so let's stick with that. I'd consider separating composition from song development, in the sense that there's an initial phase characterized by generating and testing concepts, but at some point in time the composer has main themes worked out and a distinct phase of development begins. A DAW UI is great for development, but it's pretty heavy for composition, so I'd argue there should be a distinct composition UI. It would be building/managing tracks in a project behind the scenes, but would not necessarily offer all options when in use. For example, say it offered only CW instrument plugins during this phase, or automatically handles (say) routing. Defaults would be chosen, to be changed by the user later in the project. This lets the effort be directed to the composition capabilities. As far as those capabilities, I'd look at Captain Chords and Scaler, probably others I don't know about. It needs to enable easy development of A/B comparisons of chords, melodies, and rhythms. As far as the UI itself I'd suggest that, at this late date, it's important to build something that can leapfrog current offerings. I think CW can take some cues from modern "code-free" software development environments, such as the Unreal engine. Apps like that have been commonplace (at least in enterprise software) for at least 20 years, and libraries for building that kind of app are readily available. So rather than work directly in the DAW's tracks, I'd ask the composer to work on a blank canvas and create sections ("Chorus", say, or "Verse Line 1") as they write. Each section would be a clip, except it would be represented by (say) a rectangle. Initially it would just contain just the chords, using whatever chord selection assistance was developed. Compositional assistance tools would help the user fill in with as much detail as desired--melody, rhythms, samples, whatever was allowed. The rectangles (each containing a clip) would be connected with arrows leading from one to another. Pressing play would start at the "current" rectangle and proceed along the arrows to subsequent rectangles. You can imagine looping, "play along with", "vamp until" and other constructs so clips didn't need to be duplicated. Changing a chord could be done within a single clip, by stepping through clips serially, or in a single operation. Ideally it would be possible to switch between the composition UI and the track view, though there might need to be a "promotion" function to "compile" the current choices into a project , and the unchosen alternative clips would be saved somewhere. Some of the capabilities (change key) would also available in track view as a menu-based option.

Thanks for the input, and I checked, but ripple editing was the culprit

I'd tried that, but it seems to have been ripple editing (below).

Ten thousand thanks: "Ripple Edit All" was checked! I never use it intentionally, but I must have set it on somehow. I pasted some MIDI (in track 1) and the audio was displaced to the right after a MIDI paste. It's in track 23--way down off the screen--and the intervening tracks are currently empty so I didn't notice until it it was too late. At least once I locked the audio track before pasting and that didn't seem to make a difference. Anyway, I really can't thank you enough!

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried locking the audio track's content and position when I copied the MIDI, but the audio track was still chopped up. I'll give this a try. [Ripple editing was the problem]

On 2021.09 This has worked before so I'm sure I'm doing something wrong but I can't spot it. I'm writing a drum part to go with reference audio track. After completing some of the MIDI I received an updated audio track with arrangement changes, etc. But: I can't seem to find a way to import it without wiping out my MIDI content. Drag/drop onto existing track, adding new track, whatever I do, my MIDI track gets blanked. At one point I had the Now Time pointing a few bars into the project, and the audio import did not blank out anything to the left of the Now Time. So I tried importing past the end of my MIDI data and moving the audio left where it belonged--but this blanked out the MIDI as well. I also had trouble duplicating the MIDI data with copy special and paste special. After completing 1 verse/chorus, I tried to copy/paste the MIDI for them later into the song (I tried on the PRV and the track view). But this affected the audio track, either by blanking out the audio, or moving the audio over a bar to the right, or moving the audio past the end of the inserted MIDI. The Arranger Track sections are getting all messed up as well, especially y the copy, even though I'm not copying anything but note evenys (I don't use automation or anything else-this is dead simple MIDI). Can anyone suggest some setting I may have missed? TIA I don't have enough hair for this 😞

Thanks for the input!

Thanks for responding. Did you see anything about my process that might shed light on the problem with levels changing? Any comments on my questions? There's just MIDI data, not the audio I needed. I learned about arming tracks first and it seemed perfectly natural to me: play the MIDI and record the audio it creates. I avoided freeze because it doesn't handle sidechains (I don't have any at the moment but I'm a fan of picking 1 method that always works instead of having to carry a lot of exceptions around in my head, only to be bitten in the butt by something I forgot. I'll try bounce, though if it doesn't let me check/manage levels in the process it may not help me debug this issue.

Thanks very much for the ideas, I'll take a look at the things you suggested. As I continue to think about this it feels like I'm missing some important concept. Some answers for you: The MIDI was entered by hand in the PRV; I don't have any controllers. A Drum Map is used to display meaningful note names and send the MIDI to the plugin's input. I'm not assigning MIDI channels, but this is the only MIDI device in the project. (I assume I should start managing MIDI channels in the future as I develop more complex pieces with multiple plugins?) I'm using the free Steven Slate SSD5 drum plugin, which is actually a sampler, not a synth. I direct each instrument sample (Kick, Snare Top Head, Snare Bottom Head, etc) to a distinct SSD5 output. I'm interested in 11 of the samples. In addition to the MIDI track, my project has 11 audio tracks, each assigned to one of the outputs I'm interested in. I've verified this mapping more than once. Each of those 11 audio tracks is eventually sent to my engineer, so by my understanding I wouldn't be able to use bus outputs. I also have about a dozen other reference audio tracks (guitars, say, or a previous full mix from my engineer) that I listen to when writing /editing parts. I don't record them, they're not a problem. Here's the process I've been following to create the audio in those tracks--when done, my expectation is that each of the 11 audio tracks has all FX baked into it.(Is that correct or a misconception?) The Gain control and the slider on each of the channel strips start zeroed out I write/edit in the MIDI track with the PRV. If one of the tracks is too loud I'll adjust it with the gain control, leaving the slider alone. I don't care about the levels, I care only about the way it sounds. This may be changed often as I work on various parts in MIDI. When the MIDI parts are ready, I listen through a few times and adjust the gain control so that the peaks are around -12. The overall mix may not sound good, because it's about the levels, not the sound. I arm all 11 tracks and hit record (I haven't used bounce--does it make a difference?) I watch the levels as I record, and here's where things start going bad. I've found levels go way up here, or way down, with clipping on the resulting audio. So I tweak the gain control and try again. (I don't think I always delete the bad audio files: does it matter?) After I have the levels all around -12 I'll re-record the tracks as above. When that's done, I'll mute the MIDI track and listen to my 11 tracks again--and once again, the levels will be all wonky. Some ridiculously high, some very low As far as routing, here's a rundown: 11 audio tracks (recorded as described The tracks all route to 2 busses, 1 for all cymbals and 1 for all drums. This isn't realistic for mixing but... I'm not mixing. The 2 busses route into a drum master bus. The drum master is routed to a bus called Master. I also have about a dozen audio tracks from the other band members routed similarly (i. e., there's one bus for the lead guitar, one for the bass, etc. and all of those busses also route into the Master bus.) I use these to gauge what I'm doing on drums. The Master bus is then routed to a track called "Master Mix". We have sometimes used BandLab at early stages of demoing, and I sometimes do a quick mix of a demo drum part in CW and upload the drum mix track to BL. The output of this "Master Mix" bus is assigned to my headset (don't @me). The drastic nature of the level changes makes me wonder if phasing has a role to play in this...? Anyway, thanks for any light you can shed on this.

Background: I've started writing drum and percussion parts in MIDI for our band. I send the resulting audio files to our engineer for mixing/mastering. Basically, I'm acting as my own recording engineer. When I played real drums, I was my own roadie so this is way better. For the most part I don't add any FX, I just look for decent drum and percussion synths. In a few cases I've used the PX-64 percussion strip (say, for reducing the overtones on a ride cymbal bell). My objective: to give our engineer dry mono audio multitracks somewhere around -12 dB. so he can do the rest. My problem: I'm having huge difficulty getting any consistency between the levels I see when I'm writing/editing a song recording it exporting/re-importing before I send the component tracks to him At the end of the process I'll have some tracks with significant clipping, and also some tracks down around -15 or -20, even though I tweaked them at every step of the way to remain close to -12. Both CW and Audacity show me basically the same thing. I handle all the tracks at the same time (meaning--I believe-- that all my settings should be consistent across tracks) so this inconsistency is really puzzling, so there must be something huge I'm just missing. My process so has been to arm the audio tracks for recording (not using bounce) and then exporting them (and I'll add an aside here about how much of an improvement the brand new export feature is: thanks to all involved, it's very nice--especially the file name tags). I doubt bounce would make a difference based on the strange level behavior. I've looked for hours for some info on this, and as thorough as the reference guide is, it's still a reference and if there's anything in there (or in this forum) on this I can't find it. Can anyone suggest things what might have caused this, as well as the types of things that could go wrong in the process? Thanks!

You can also click, a second time, on the name of the faulty section in the arranger track. That leaves the section tab selected, but deselects the tracks. I discovered this just 2 days ago in desperation: my bandmates had rearranged the end of the song and I needed to fix my drum tracks to comply.