RICHARD HUTCHINS

I think punch points is most likely, I do a lot of that especially on my vocals as I dont like using the comping method. Sorry late response for some reason I dont get e mail notifications even though its switched on

Yes it didnt seem to signify anything, just curious really.

Hi all Today and for no apparent reason I got this red horizontal line along one of my clips ( see screengrab) . I'm sure knowledgeable people know what it is but can someone enlighten me? I suspect its Cakewalk deciding to spring a new annoyance on me to spoil my weekend but that' s nota rational thought!

Good tips Terry, I often use melodyne for Octaves, once in the mix they dont sound too artificial. But often I tweak a note or too and yes it just sounds odd. An app to make my voice more "interesting" would be nice. And an app to stop my wife grimacing when she hears me sing would be priceless.

Hi Yes, vocals are mine, I do everything myself as I don't know anyone who can do it for me! By " my vocals need a lot of help" I meant that whilst I can sing after a fashion, the tone and range of my voice is limited and I think it lets my songs down. So I use melodyne for the odd note that is not pitched correctly, and also sometimes for a range I simply cant hit. Some good ideas and suggestions in your reply which I will look at thanks.

Noted! Thanks I'll try those approaches, my vocals need a lot of help!

I agree, except it does take a lot more time. And everything takes forever for me as I am a bit of a novice. But to be fair a couple of tracks is all it takes to beef things up.

Hi all After a long hiatus ( dont ask) I'm back to recording. My voice is pretty poor ( to say the least) I can sing in tune but its weedy and lacks any redeeming factors whatsoever. So I often use the multiple tracked method outlined in Creative Sauce. My question is this; how do I correct it using Melodyne ( essential!) and then do the copy tracks to beef it up? Do I correct them all using Melodyne or just the initial master track that then gets copied? Wish I could sing! Rich

Yep, that was it, all sorted and thanks for saving me a load of time!😀

Hi all, Forgive me if I've asked this before. I have dragged a drum track from AD2 into Cakewalk, and then moved it along to where it should start. But heigh ho it is completely ignoring me and still playing from the first bar which I don't want! Okay so I delete it. .... it still plays, I cant see it anymore, but it plays. I've had similar problems with Melodyne and I worked around this. But Drums? Please! Here is a screenshot, take my word that pressing play means I still hear drums even tough there is no midi visible. I know its something daft but I havent time to spend hours trying different things, I need cleverer people than me! Ideas folks? I could start again but if theres one golden rule in Cakewalk its to minimise the messing around time and maximise workflow.

Yes I agree, it looks like re recording it. But thanks everyone ( as usual) for taking the time to spell it out to me! My vocals are poor and so as a consequence I dislike re doing them, it really doesnt come naturally to me, much prefer to be playing keys or guitar etc. But in this case there is clearly no option. Longer term I need a brilliant vocalist who is not working and is unknown, tried advertising but to no avail, all the really good ones are in bands, or have egos the size of a house! Or both. Deep breaths here we go... Thanks again though for sparing your time in replying and helping.

Hi all, I am reviewing my 2 year old tracks armed with a lot more knowledge ( thanks to this forum) but sadly not nearly enough! So I have a track where the vocals are clipping, and to get the fader out of the red I need to bring the gain right down.( see screenshot) Then of course I can hardly hear the vocals anymore. I know I did everything wrong when I recorded this last year as I was very much a complete novice. Am I right in thinking a solution would be to bring down the gain on the vox to stop the clipping, and then route the rest of the tracks to a bus so that I can bring all the other volumes down? So the end result would be that relatively the vox would be back up in the eventual mix? Or does this sound like one of my many bonkers solutions? I so need a recording contract and an engineer. ( And a Lear Jet please 😉)

I looked at this in light of htese answers and comments, I think its to do with using punch in with "overwrite" instead of " sound on sound". Tried the latter and it works fine. No good for vocals but for piano its a decent workaround.

Aha! Through the fog of my ignorance a light is appearing! Okay thanks to all, I'll go away and try these things, its also useful to learn some new stuff at the same time as fixing problems.

Okay, that's something new for me to be honest. What do you mean " without the midi data"? I usually right click and choose the default options when I duplicate a track.

Hmmm, in the end I gave up and just drew the notes in, but the problem hasn't gone away. It just seems to select a chunk and stop anything recording. Its not me coming in late thats for sure. And it only started messing me around yesterday! I'll just keep looking at what I ve done wrong, but the problem is time! You can spend hours sorting stuff out, and I simply don't have the time. If I find a fix I will post. I know this will happen again, probably with vocals and then I will HAVE to fix it.

Okay noted. I struggle with MIDI to be honest, still cant quite see it for what it is, and I just seem to assume its me playing the piano! But I'll look at these suggestions tomorrow, thanks for replying.

Hi all, its been a while since I posted a problem, so I must be making progress! Anyhows, I've done a screenshot which might help, but basically I am trying to drop a piece of bass guitar into the track, to correct some duff notes. I highlight the section, click on Punch in, and set record to overwrite, done this hundreds of times. But Cakewalk just records the last bit of the highlighted section and there is a blank missing bit before this, even though it is all highlighted. The screenshot shows it better. I am baffled, as its never done this before. Ideas anyone?

Good to know others who, unlike me know what they are doing have the odd glitch which defies explanation! If my learning curve was any steeper it would be be a circle!

Okay, think I've sussed it. For some odd reason the track was in Stereo. Changed it to mono " convert to mono" and now I can hear the vocals. The track looked a bit odd, and now I know why. Such a silly novice thing to miss, I don't think any of the experienced users will say " wow Rich that's a useful thread" but still, just wanted to post to say I am on the right path to sorting it. Just need to find out what went wrong when I saved it as I am pretty sure this wasn't an inadvertent stereo track. Thanks to those who replied, as usual v grateful.

I KNEW it! 😉

Yes tried a few things, nothing works. I'm sure there's a bank of code in CW designed to annoy me every few days! If I could see the source code it would say " open array" IF Richie is annoyed, then " do again in a few days"

Hi all, I am going back through my songs armed with a lot more knowledge about Cakewalk ( thanks mainly to this forum) . Its a bit scary how bad all of the mixes were but I was a complete novice then. I opened an old song, which seemed to be saved as a cakewalk bundle. However I've lost the vocal track. No sound but I can see the waveform clearly. Obviously something stupid done or not done on my part? Have I lost this? Everything else plays back fine. Rich PS So pleased I didn't quite make it to the final three choices of engineer for the new Adele album. 😔

Here is my workaround until I suss out what is going wrong; used automation to drop the levels, it works but doesnt tell me what went wrong, not an elegant solution but...

Its doing crazy things now. I had the bright idea of dropping a different pattern in to the "gap". Then I could ( in theory) highlight and delete the midi instructions in the piano roll, and it should just be left as a blank. As if! All that happens is the new pattern is dragged and dropped to the space and hey presto the complete drum track is replaced with the new pattern from start of song to finish. It would be funny if it wasn't so time consuming. Wish I was in a band and in a studio like the good old days...