Rico Belled

After using dual 1080P's for years, I went to a 4K 49" LG and LOVE, love love it. It's awesome not to have to sit close to the screen and work comfortably from 10 feet away, but if I do need lots of information it's there. Very important is that you use a GPU that can do 4k at 60Hz in full color space. R

Only gig in Florida with the band on the calendar right now is November 10th and 11th in Boca Raton. Keiko is doing Daytona Beach before that, but I believe that's with the festival house band. You can see her schedule at www.keikomatsui.com; normally I do keep my website current, although right now all bets are off and shows are still being cancelled as far ahead as July so ......

Thank! We will be in Florida FOR SURE, we play all over the state every year. Lately at the Boca Black Box Theater, Jacksonville jazz fest was booked, also in the panhandle sometimes... where are you located? R

Wow guys! Thanks for all the kind words! Let me answer the questions in backwards order: Keiko has been at this for a LONG time. I actually did a tour with her back in 2000, and then after my Ripps buddy Dave Karasony got the gig in 2011 or so, the bassist who took over for me in 2000 moved on and recommended me in 2013. JP took over not long after that from Grecco, and Jimmy came in the picture when Carlitos del Puerto produced an album for Keiko. We have now been her touring band for 3 years or so! The 'live' moniker is a little misleading here. We did not play live together, but other than the guitar overdubs, we did all play one take, then sent the files to Jimmy who put it together. Once this pandemic subsides come see a live show! We've got stuff booked! R

Hey Guys, Here's a nice one from Keiko Matsui and us poor out-of-work musicians recording from home! My track was of course done with Cakewalk by Bandlab, mixed and mastered by Jimmy with software that shan't be mentioned 😉 Hope ya like it!

Done with Waves... I did buy Gold Bundle for $49 in that Musician's Friend mess up, but only to have it for when someone insists on using it... R

I've been using a 49" LG 4K TV as my monitor and LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! Windows scaling works fine with most apps... it's just awesome to be able to sit a few yards away and still be able to see, but also get up close and get 4 times as much "information" as a 1080P display. Resolution is one thing, but you need to have a 60Hz refresh rate and full color depth too, so make sure the card you get has HDMI 2.0, anything GTX 1050 or higher will do just fine. I started with a fanless GTX1050ti, now have a GTX1060 6GB because I do like to play games. For Sonar there was literally 0 difference after the upgrade. A GTX1650 would work even better and be pretty much silent as long as your not gaming or rendering.. R

PLEASE, please, do NOT waste time re-developing this program on a platform that is more of a moving target than a hummingbird. Every single OS update breaks operation of more and more software, requiring new versions, rewrites etc. All my Mac based friends, and there are MANY, are literally afraid of some update coming along. Almost ALL run outdated stuff, some can not buy a new Mac and make their stuff (hardware & software) work. On top of that MacOS gets buggier with every new release; I hear them talking among each other. In contrast: I can STILL use the EVP73 that was last updated in the 90's I think on my Windows 10 machine, in the newest version of Cakewalk. My MOTU 424 PCI card works better than ever, again with the very newest OS, with the newest software, at latencies that very few interfaces can achieve, especially affordable ones. Please, for all that is good in the world, do not divert this wonderful attention you've been giving Cakewalk, in my opinion the best all-around DAW on ANY platform, to an ecosystem that's in such state. Instead, keep doing what you're doing and when Apple gives its pro users that next big finger (how long before the ARM version of Pro-Tools is ready? LOL How many plugins will NEVER be updated... how many audio interfaces will get drivers?) that might be the last, you will be miles ahead. Now cue all the Mac users that say "my Mac works perfectly for everything I do...." R

Those MOTUs are cool, a friend of mine has one, but just know there's no software mixer like CueMix. I have the ZOOM UAC2 and that one works at even lower latencies, great sound, super stable software. Even the built-in Verb/Delay is more than usable for tracking. R

So let me gets this straight: you're getting a free 'car', but complaining that you don't get free 'gas' too? Got it! R

Fred is most definitely available for session; he doesn't have a way to record himself, but I can do it here. R

Hey Guys, Been a while since I posted any music, but to celebrate figuring out a modern music player that 'll scan a folder of mp3s automatically, here are a few tunes of Fred Horn's we're working on. The burning piano solos are by a dude named Mahesh Balasooriya, Fred plays the Saxes, I played all the other instruments. Vocals are mostly Fred and I with my neighbor Joe for good measure. All tunes recorded and mixed in Cakewalk by Bandlab, with some quick mastering. All recorded in my apartment on some of the cheapest equipment available. I'm talking $60 mic on the sax cheap..... Most of them recored in one day, maybe spent 2 more hours on it a second, definitely need one more round of tweaking before release. Lemmeno what y'all think! http://www.ricobelled.com/wordpress/?page_id=8996 R

I did not run the latest Softube update. On a lighter note: I removed all the other plugs on a few tracks, and now it hasn't crashed in a couple of hours of working. R

Anybody out there seen this error? Happens all the time in one of my projects all of a sudden!

I wouldn't use that crappy software if the PAID me to! R