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Michael Martinez

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Everything posted by Michael Martinez

  1. No responses? I guess I should note that these tracks were done in Cakewalk with mostly free plugins and instruments. Everything done "on the cheap" as it were - all soft synths, done on a laptop not dedicated for that purpose, etc... Still, I think it should be possible to get a better sound out of the mix. Interested in suggestions on how to achieve a cleaner sound, the tracks seem kind of muddied to me at the moment. Driving around listening to them in the car, a couple things stood out: the bass seems too strong, the hi-hat and cymbals aren't clear. Wondering what other people's impressions are.... Just ignore the jazz guitar, it's just something I threw together this morning as a placeholder since I can't sing.
  2. Any suggestions on improving the mix would be welcome. The jazz guitar "lead" is just a temporary placeholder where the vocals should go. lyrics are given in the links below https://www.soundcloud.com/mwtzzz * Grey Skies and Blue Waters (Laura's Dolphin Tattoo): https://justpaste.it/3dob1 * The Forever Lament: https://justpaste.it/5dmma * Steel Branches: https://justpaste.it/2cghv * Good Night, Moon: https://justpaste.it/4p3r9 * A Juncture of Peace: https://justpaste.it/7hz77 * Trickster: https://justpaste.it/321cn * I Still Hide, Laura * It's Never Late: https://justpaste.it/1ke1x And I'd greatly welcome anyone who might be interested in contributing their vocals on these songs
  3. Soundcloud seems to compress the crap out of stuff, which makes the cymbal sound bad. But if anything it probably makes the trumpet sound better. Anyway, the trumpet sounds decent. On sustained notes it sounds less like a trumpet but that's the case with all synthesized brass that I've heard.
  4. Thanks for the instructions and details, they will help going forward. For now I'm just using the built-in cakewalk TTS-1 trumpet. Add some reverb and it's good enough for my purposes as a brief instrumental bridge:
  5. @ien Thanks for the tips, I'll give it another try.
  6. I gave it another try. I copied the other folder that came with the VST into the cakewalk vst plugin folder. But this ended up crashing Cakewalk, so I gave up on it, and ended up just using a brass instrument included with the Cakewalk TTS-1 instrument. Good enough for my purposes for the time being.
  7. With synthesizer vst plugins I've been able to simply create an instrument track using the plugin, edit midi notes and it's ready to go. But a different procedure seems to be necessary to get sounds from vst plugins that contain samples, such as this trombone plugin: http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Sonatina_Trombone&id=2306 How do I get this work? If I create an instrument track with it, it says "no instrument is defined" and no sounds are heard from my midi notes.
  8. Hi, I've been using ASIO4ALL the past few days and it works fine. It sounds good too. As previous poster said, maybe they got previous bugs fixed on it. That said, when it comes time to mix and record, I'll use my Focusrite.
  9. @msmcleod Thanks so much for your suggestion! I installed ASIO4ALL following the instructions here: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/installing-and-using-asio4all-for-windows/ It works perfectly.
  10. Ever since I installed Cakewalk on my laptop, I've had to use an external USB audio interface because the laptop's own built-in equipment does not show up in the list of Audio Devices in Cakewalk. Is there a way to fix this? I'd like to be able to listen to tracks, mix - do things other than recording - without connecting an external audio interface. It'd be nice to be able to just plug headphones into the laptop's headphone jack.
  11. @scookThanks for the links. I don't think the problem was related to Always Echo Current Midi track, but I can't test anymore because I already fixed it by creating new tracks, copying the data over and deleting the old tracks. I'll keep your link for future reference in case the issue arises again. The second link for bulk setting midi channel very useful - thanks.
  12. I just realized I might know how this happened. When I first created the projected, I created several blank tracks and I tried moving one of them up to be towards the top. I remember there was some problem with this move, it wasn't successful. Maybe something got confused at that point.
  13. I've got several projects that I'm working on and I do not have this problem with any of them except for the last one I started. I don't know what I did to get it to this weird state: I've got Cakewalk's SI-Drum-Kit assigned as an instrument on each of four different tracks, so that I can dedicate one for kick, one for hi hat, another for snare, and a fourth for toms and other stuff so that I can EQ them differently. Additionally, I have some other tracks with different instruments assigned to each of them. The topmost track is the drum track to be used for Toms. Right now it has no music data in it, it's a blank track. The weird thing is that if I solo this track it plays the data that's in the track right below it (which happens to be kick drum.) Same thing with the track below it: if I Solo it it doesn't play its own data, instead it plays the data in the track below it. And so forth until I run out of drum tracks. The track below the last drum track is an instrument track with a non-drum instrument. If I solo this track, it plays correctly. Any thoughts? Is this just some weird state and I should scratch the project and start fresh? Or is there a known way to fix it? On a related note: is there a way to bulk-assign a particular midi channel to the midi notes contained in a track? When I created these drum tracks I forgot to assign them to Channel 10 and they are all currently using Channel 1.
  14. Just a quick update. The four offending plugins (one or more of which are the cause of the problem) are: IMI Chorus Lisp Graillon 2 Kjaerhus Classic Delay If I narrow down which one of these caused it, I'll post it here.
  15. I determined that the clipping was occuring on one of the vocal audio tracks and the feedback problem stopped when I disabled the plugins on that track. So it's definitely one of the four plugins that I was using there. I haven't checked yet to see whether or not digital clipping has been occuring - this is something I will watch for next if I re-enable those plugins. Thanks for the recommendation on Limiter No6. I will grab a copy and test it out.
  16. Ok, can you recommend a limiter that I can use for safety purposes on the master bus? Preferably a free one. Thanks for the suggestion to check which buss/track is doing the clipping. I've been looking at the master buss, which is clipping, but I think as you said it makes more says to go through and see which track(s) has a history of clipping as that would make it easier to identify the culprit plugin.
  17. Is Boost 11 sufficient for this purpose? It doesn't have any way to adjust threshold or ratio... Yep. I tried it. It does kill it right away.
  18. Got it. I was looking at the wrong view (wasn't seeing seeing the place to insert the buss level effect on the Master). alright, I've the limiter functioning, so I feel better now that my ears won't be assaulted. Now, I'll try out the Global FX bypass next time it happens.
  19. Well, I need help inserting a limiter onto the master buss. There's not a limiter module available by default on ProChannel. I thought I could insert a limiter vst in there as a new module, but I'm not seeing any option to do that ...
  20. Excellent suggestions! I will do that, and will give an update once I have it.
  21. I'm not finding it. I looked through my audio tracks - all of them already have Input Echo off.
  22. Ah, interesting. Thanks for the quick reply. Let me check into this and see if I can find the culprit.
  23. I sing it/play it on the piano and whatever tempo feels natural to sing it, that's it. To get this to a bpm value, tap your foot while you're singing it, then turn on the metronome in Cakewalk and adjust it to match the tapping.
  24. At random times (several times in a 30 minute period, so not infrequent), there is a sudden appearance of what seems to be "feedback" in the Master bus, and it builds up very quickly to max out the decibel level on the meter, and then Cakewalk seems to automatically silence it. Needless to say this is not only annoying but potentially dangerous to the ears. To try to remedy this, I have increased the ASIO buffer sizes, have disabled the WiFi card. Neither of these helped. I don't know if this is caused by a bad VST plugin, too much demand on computing resources, or some other cause. If I launch a project in Safe Mode the issue has not happened but I have only done this a few times for limited periods so I don't know if it's accurate to say it never happens in Safe Mode. Has anyone else experienced ear-piercing feedback for no apparent reason?
  25. Thanks for the replies guys. I downloaded the Fabfilter 30-day trial. I will also definitely look at the QuadCurve and Sonitus. It sounds like these are much less wieldly than my hardware EQ. I'll start learning how to use them and I'll post my impressions about it once I get familiar with them. I also ran across an eight-part youtube tutorial "Cakewalk by Bandlab Tutorial" by "Your Home Recording" which looks like it should be a decent overview of how to navigate the DAW and accomplish basic tasks.
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