Starise

All righty then.

Some things never grow old. This is one of them. Always a pleasure to listen to your material.

Nice harmonies and retro sound! 

This has a nice retro kind of sound garage band sound to it IMHO.  I like that real genuine feel it has.

Hard hitting very relevant subject matter.  Thanks for sharing! 

This seems to fit in with those who like to wear the programmer hat a lot when making music. I say that because Reaper has been described as needing a lot of setup to get it the way you want it. You need a lot of patience for some of that cinematic/game work. Large templates and track counts. Makes sense concerning stability too. It's a smaller lighter less demanding on cpu program than some others. People who like it can't say enough good about it (Reaper). If a person is prone to get frustrated easily using music software they would probably want to avoid Reaper as a 1st choice. Yes, that kind of person might get frustrated with anything. That would be more so with Reaper IMHO.

I think Jim's overview of those DAWS was well done. I have been curious about Cubase and midi. Not curious enough to buy it yet. I probably wouldn't use half of it.Everything I need has always been within the limits of what I have.

I know  at least one full time composer who uses Reaper, so I guess there are always exceptions here and there. I think Ableton is also a strong contender for music creation and arrangement. For the first year I couldn't get around it very well. One day things just clicked for me using it. I had to stop thinking in terms of loops and look at it more like parts of a song. This and understanding how the arrangement and session views worked together helped.

For straight up audio tracking and adding in a few midi instruments Cakewalk is the clear winner. Nothing else allows me to get from an idea to a completed work as fast when working in both midi and audio. Even though Cubase is probably the strongest contender in the area of midi, CbB is no slouch either and has been described as a very close second to Cubase. Many of the user base work in nothing but midi and have used only Cakewalk for years.

bayou bill, great topic.

I was just making a backing track last night. Doesn't sound bad at all in my opinion. I might use it in public.

Backing tracks have come a long way. Well done, you can't tell the difference. The biggest benefit to me is the ability to build a whole bad at your fingertips.

I have just started doing it, but I have used backing tracks that were professionally recorded already. No bass player? No problem. Just unmute the bass on your tracks.

Very well done. I hope to hear more from you.

@David Sprouse, Thank you!

@ SPAK much appreciated!

@Wookie, I'm not exactly sure what happened. The one site I suspect I can't prove they did anything.  On SC to gain plays someone has to play the track. I have been solicited by them before.Those sites somehow give listeners a benefit to listen to your track and charge you to use the service. If it is some kind of a promotional thing, I was never informed of it which makes no sense, since they would want to take credit for it.  None of this ever made any sense to me because A. There is no monetary gain in any of it. B. Promotional exposure is just more people on SC listening. None of them are paying customers.They just click play. C. Why would I pay someone to promote me in a place where promotion doesn't matter, or put another way, why would I want plays from people who are only playing the track because they work for a promotional service? I guess I fail to see any relevancy to any of it. Maybe I'm missing something.

bjorn, thank you! I made two versions of this. This one is more aggressive and might have more bottom end. Which would you keep?

https://soundcloud.com/starise/thy-kingdom-come-1st-version

@Will Hacket- Thanks for your suggestions.

@Amicus 717, Thanks. That sound came from a precision sound library. The rest was mostly Amadeus.

@ZincT, Thank you! It's just a bunch of kontakt libraries and me playing them.

@The Galtieriebrothers, Thank you for listening.

Ok sounds like you're a busy guy too. I'll invite you to my band and try to get something rolling from there. I play keys and can  play prog. I'm on a break at work now so not at liberty to be doing all of that. Thanks!

Cutting edge for the time though. My cassette recordings were nowhere near as well done.I still have a Mackie gathering dust in the studio.

Well the title probably raised more questions than answers. 

This is an orchestral piece I'm working on. I think there's something odd going on with SC. I don't pay anyone for exposure, but it appears one of those promo sites latched onto me? I really don't know. Ugh I need to change that grainy pic I loaded. 1st version on a private track.

https://soundcloud.com/starise/thy-kingdom-come-1st-version

Very restful music. Love the sound of an acoustic guitar. Matches the theme of the poem well.

Very nice track. Interesting history on it. I'm amazed CW loaded the old project. I'm sure there is still a lot you would be capable of with this if you had the desire and thinking out loud, the time.  

Thanks for sharing  it!

Blades, would you consider a Transiberian Orchestra, prog rock kind of thing ?  I still haven't had the time to put something up for my "band".  This whole process will be slow for me since I'm a part time musician and make my own music on the side with a FT job in between. I'm willing to give it a shot though. I mean what the heck are these DAWS for anyways ??😉 I have one guy who wants me to work with a track he played through an echo -pedal on guitar. I promised him I would download and work with it. I can free up some time somewhere though.

What style are you most interested in?  I'll make whatever you want.

I sent the invitation to my second account. Sorry about that. I didn't intend to have two accounts. You should get it now.

Thanks!

Thanks for your views Alex H.  I think I'm going to try this again just for fun. I started a band. Wei Liang I invited you to the band. What's next?

I released an album on CD baby. I didn't promote it and it didn't fly very far. My expectations were low. Not because I didn't think people would like the music. Mainly because I knew that no marketing or push would result in little sales.

Amazon or no Amazon, without a push of some kind you are buried under miles of other albums almost immediately. The day you release your album 100 other people did too. I didn't do it for the money. I just wanted an album online.

You fortunes could reverse if you could somehow maintain a high visibility on search engines. Good luck with that.

There are a few guys here who have pro studios and use CbB but I don't know if they are around right now. Probably too busy mixing.

21 hours ago, yapweiliang said:

Just make a new band and invite band members. You could test and make something with me if you like. I haven't tried downloading BL stems to work with CbB so i have no idea of quality. I would guess that it is good enough even if not lossless format. Particularly i don't expect a mobile phone microphone to give particularly high quality recordings. But i have incorporated a mobile phone recordings of singing into a mix and it sounds fine. 

Wei Liang 

I was actually thinking of doing something like this. I appreciate your willingness to try BL out with me. I have a few obstacles in my way. I believe I somehow managed to get two accounts accidentally. This all happened when Cakewalk users were being moved over. I remember signing on and requesting a change. I know this account is different because I had other material up on the other account. I will likely use the account you mentioned. 

Also I am not my my main computer most of the time, so I can't really do anything at present. I will look to see if you are there and follow you. I'll see about starting a band. I'll offer an open invitation to Micheal too, if he wants to look me up and join. If too busy with the other guys I understand too.

I think that eventually it would be a good idea to put up tracks in the songs section expressly made for  BL venture. No one put me up to this. I just think it's a natural progression to better unify the idea of BL. I do have a certain standard of quality though. I have used cell phone recordings which were quite good. 

Welcome. We can't go back. We might as well jump in.

@Wei Liang, I will familiarize myself more with this selective kind of approach. I didn't know you could do this. How about audio quality? Is the audio the same as an exported 16/44.1 .wav file? I think this would work best for me. Thanks!

@ØSkald , This was my experience as well. I put up a slow acoustic track and someone added a rap vocal track to it lol.

@mdiemer, I never looked at it that way. 

I guess if someone took a track of mine from BL and marketed it for profit I would not be a happy camper, unless I had artistic rights to it. If OTOH I put something up on BL for fun and people were creative with it, maybe came up with something totally different, that might be interesting to a point.  I see it more like a fun pastime instead of serious project recording.

Another thought I can't help having, what if we spend large amounts of time making something that someone else who put no effort into grabs and plays with it adding something else they found to it. IOW people who don't really create, only grab audio and mix it.  This seems a bit unbalanced to me. Of course, I can also grab someone else's hard earned work and use it on BL. At least I think I can. I'm not familiar with it  to that extent yet.    I could be selective in what I choose to upload . I wouldn't upload anything I cared about concerning having it modified or changed.  Couldn't be too personally attached to the music. It might go in sounding like pop and come out sounding like country.

Classical music, yes I understand. I don't see much in BL that supports this genre. Maybe it does and I haven't seen it.

To be fair, I didn't originate this thread to try and find fault with BL. On the contrary I'm trying to find the best way to utilize it. It also seems like a display of music medium like SC.

Thanks for your opinions. I think many here are easing into BL gently. I'm one of those. 

This brings up yet another question. Is there a benefit to using Cakewalk other than a way to upload tracks? IOW  couldn't we do that with any DAW. Or are the tracks identified as Cakewalk tracks that maybe hold the CbB DAW settings?  This doesn't appear to be the case. It looks like CbB uploads simple wave files.