Sridhar Raghavan

User 905133 You should look ay Synth One on iPad (if you happen to have one) and how it supports Scala and Tunings (not limited to 12 notes to an octave). Very innovative. To your question about switching scales, usually it will be via unused controller and/or RPN/NRPN or command Sequences. On both my keyboards, I can do them only via direct UI and not via MIDI. This is not a technical issue, they just decided it was not a priority. But they do provide so many other vendor-specific MIDI commands for selecting style, pads, picking variations, fills, fade-ins. fade-outs etc.... I may open a topic on this if it is not clear to me, how to compose/send those. I do have the Scale Editor and plenty of Scala files -- have used them with Ableton or Close in the past, and now usable on Synth One. They are useful as a good documentation for various Tunings/Scales.

Colin Thanks for your note and the pointer to Dim Pro. I went through the manual(s) and also explored with the UI, and can confirm what you said. Cakewalk lives only in Equal-Tempered Pitches/Notes and, Scales means only presence and absence of notes, and that too without any further distinctions about Ascending and Descending. Therefore, the VSTs have to support those Alternate Pitches. Would not fault this approach, though I would have loved to see deliberate conscious support. So this just brings to the fore my need to locate [free, affordable] VSTs/Plugin that can augment Cakewalk for Alternate Tunings. Cakewalk Scale Manager entries are a bit misleading, with Title likes Exotic Scales, Hindu I, Hindu II, Indian I, Indian II etc. all of which are nothing but presence/absence of notes, and in this regard no different from any other scales (except for the names). Pitches do not play a part. I am attaching a PDF in the way of introduction. I will respond to lapasoa and User 905133, as well as to other points in the above replies, separately and soon. SriIndianScales.pdf

Cakewalk Team I started with Cakewalk ~10 days ago and so did a first pass through the full ~1950 pages of reference documentation. Very Well done, nice work. Not only as a reference to all the features and capabilities, but also for including valuable tips/guidance for usage. Already feeling very much at home with the product, especially due to the tremendous fast help received from the forum leaders/members. Kudos!!

All I am starting this topic after a search for this topic in the forum. There are some topics that touch on this, but they are more or less tangential for my understanding needs. I do have keyboards [Technics KN1400, Korg PA600] which support many tuning systems: notably Pythagorean, Custom Pitches. I have been using it for a long time. GeoShred on iPad, Synth One are recent ones I use, which have done a fantastic job with world scale and flexible pitches/frequencies. If you direct your midi out to these target synths, the Music is played with whatever tuning you have set there. For Indian and other World Music -- it is extremely important, specially for me, to play/hear music in Natural (a term to distinguish) rather than in Tempered pitches. I can share more thoughts on the Pros/Cons of these , but will keep out of scope of this topic. I do have, and I am familiar with VSTs from DSK, Native Instruments and Swar Systems and to the extent to which they support custom pitches for Indian/World Music. We could have more discussion on those in their intersection with Cakewalk on separate threads. Let me quickly clarify the term "Custom Pitches". In simple terms, it means specifying adjustments in cents for each of the 12 notes in a Tempered Scale. I am deliberately avoiding the use of the term "Scale" as it is often used in the way of presence/absence of notes, with no implications to Pitch Frequencies, a major issue for me. In Indian Music, Scale includes Pitches as well as Ascending/Descending Swaras/Notes and much more. My main quest is: a) What VSTs that come with Cake Walk (and or free ones which can be downloaded and added to the environment) support custom pitches using any mechanisms - Scala files, would be ideal. b) To what extent Cakewalk is "Custom Pitches Aware" in any/broad sense ? This is a general question which I will deliberately leave it fuzzy, to allow/permit free/full interpretation. I would also not know what all things to ask here. In the context of Keyboards, such a question would include things such as: do custom Pitches propagate to Styles/Accompaniments, Transposes, Dum Kits etc., are they saved and remembered when reloaded etc. Thanks in advance and look forward to a good compilation of thoughts.

Colin very nice to see your note. Kudos for the great PDF you and Denizens have compiled/ created. One thing I was thinking about is combining the information you have in your PDF with some screen shots to help users to identify elements DIRECTLY. The gist/basic idea is: A user can select one of the screen shots (each shot is a UI view of Cakewalk). Given the now-you-see-now-you-do-not-see nature of the UI design, for arguably very good reasons, we may need a set of Screen Shots rather than just one. Click on an area of interest, and get the Navigation Path for the Themes Editor. Ideally using some arms length copy-paste, it would be nice to position to that element(s) in the Themes Editor. Though I see a FIND in its UI, under Color, I do not know how and whether it works. Similar to REGEDIT of windows. But Themes Editor does not seem to support entering or searching for a path. This will enable embolden users to manage their Cakewalk UI (at least the display/appearance) for easing their interactions, especially for folks with some vision challenges. I was hoping that the .STH file might be XML, as that would make creating such things easier. But I noted that it is some closed/binary format - nothing negative, but understandable given the long evolution of Cakewalk.

Thanks John, you laid it out clearly. I was hoping to do some test to assess the delay. And this will come handy. You may have more ideas about using some plain DELAY Effect (or physical shifting of an audio track, as needed) to compensate for the lags and get things musically aligned. Would love to hear your thoughts on that.

MSMCLEOD, JOHN Very good points and caveats. Truly appreciate these forewarnings. I have experienced some of these issues with Native Instruments -- which seems to take over the audio devices in exclusive mode - such that I cannot even play YouTube when NI is open!! I will revisit that front soon, as I am hoping to leverage those assets/instruments with Cakewalk. Would love to have your wisdom related to that as well. I just did my first test of recording Audio while playing the MIDI tracks. Worked very well. Adding a screen shot below. I then played all the tracks. Midi tracks to my Korg Keyboard; Audio Tracks to Big Monitor Speakers. Plays nicely. I could not see any lags or sync-offs, at least not yet. Will do some more tests. I can also play the Audio via my Korg Keyboard - which I do all the time, but did not at this time. Yeti also gives me an Audio Output Jack where I can plug in my headphones. I have used this also many times. Works nicely. For this I need to direct my laptop audio output to Realtek (and not the big Monitor). So did not check that at this time. Feels like I can really start recording Audio and Midi together on Cakewalk. Really excited. I think I may have ramped up to a reasonable initial plateau to be productive as well as explore/harness more/advanced features. Nice to see integrated Notes for jotting down all the key details related to a project - rather in some external place. regards

Startship Krupa /Erik Thanks for your tips. I imported Midnight Blue, Racing Green and one other and started modifying Midnight Blue, to gain some understanding of the theming work. Thanks to you and Colleagues (Colin?) for writing an excellent PDF on Theming.. It is coming very handy for knowing what is what -- though I am still not able to reliably figure out everything. I feel like I am making very good progress. I am attaching a Screen Shot below of my Experimental Work in Progress Theme. I have added some annotations on it as well - and you can easily know where there are typos. Progressively I should be able to get things to what suits me best. My main initial goal is to get all the TEXTS - white bold. Looks like Font and Size of Texts cannot be changed. Also many things are Graphics - it has pros/cons. Ability to work with the Themes and Seeing its Effect on Cakewalk is nice, though Cakewalk seems to hold the *.sth file (do not know why) that prevents saving that Theme in the Editor. Wish Cakewalk Theme Panel had a Refresh button, to pull in any changes made. Just a bit of annoyance when you are trying so many items - though functionality complete.

John Vere thanks for the quick pointers to your Videos. I will certainly watch them soon. Thanks also for the insight about USB versus Using via Mixers/Audio Interfaces. I wanted to see how well USB/Yeti Mics works, and use them accordingly.. I have an 8 Microphone mixer [and several quality XLR Microphones, Condenser and others ] which is my staple for all Family Music Recordings and House Concerts. It is 10+ years old but works very well for my needs. But it is heavy and has large foot print. Importantly has only Audio Line Out, to be fed to Laptop via Line In. Unfortunately most of the Laptops have gotten rid of Line-Ins or just give only Combo in mono mode [not sure at what impedance] . Even my High End Gaming Laptop has the same issue. I am hoping to get a multichannel USB (3.0 ) Audio Interface. Will look at your videos for insights into them.

SCOOK Right on the money!! Thanks for the fast response. That worked perfect. I unchecked all devices and then enabled Yeti and recorded. Just one observation, with Yeti enabled, I am not able to enable the Realtek and Stereo Mix. I guess/hope that disabling Yeti will allow me to enable them - and get back to that. I am sure you will have more insights about this.

Just wanted to add the following to get some obvious things out of the way. Audacity was not running when I am on Band labs. I closed and opened Band labs. I am on Windows 10, with latest free version of Band Labs.

Connect a USB Microphone January 29, 2022 16:20 Rather than using an Audio Interface with a dynamic or condenser microphone, a USB microphone is a simple way to start recording with better sound quality than using the mic/headphone connection on your machine. Most USB microphones are plug and play, so you should be up and running in no time! To connect a USB microphone to Cakewalk by BandLab: Connect your device to your machine prior to starting Cakewalk by BandLab Launch Cakewalk by BandLab Go to Edit > Preferences, or press P when the Start Screen is closed to open the Preferences menu Under Audio > Playback and Recording, set your Driver Mode to WASAPI Shared (Windows 10), or WDM/KS (Windows 7 or 😎 Under Audio > Devices, make sure your device is selected as an Input device. If you’re using the headphone output, also check the Output category. Click Apply and OK to save your changes! The above text is from the Documentation. What I am facing? I am able to record/play with my Yeti Mic with Audacity and other apps. But I am not able to get it to work in Band labs. I cannot select it. Sorry, If I missed a topic that addresses this specific issue. Below are three screen shots showing the configurations. Hope some one can help to nail the issue and get beyond it. Thanks in Advance.

Wll_Kaydo I completely disagree, but I am always open to persuasion. I am just observing that : a) The Split Tracks produced by the CAL does not play the Original Music b) The Original is Destroyed by the CAL in the Process. These are basic common sense violations. Neither should happen except in special situations. Therefore I declared that the CAL is erroneous. I corrected these in my CAL. I can easily reconcile with such errors in designs & implementations, for various pragmatic reasons. But the arguments you advance in its defense, has no merits unfortunately. Here, in this case, as well as generally. Allow me to wear a different hat for a moment to state the following: Every tool advocates certain paradigms, often new, innovative and a departure from the state of practice in small or big ways.. These make it worthwhile for users to embrace it, even if it means changing their habitual methods and approaches, even fundamentally. But it is dysfunctional to use that as a driving principle to bless/perpetuate flaws/errors which have nothing to do with the anchoring paradigms themselves.

I edited the original post to include a link to the other thread. Will_Kaydo you can read everything in that post. Sorry for pointing you to that instead of giving you a pointed answer here. I will be just repeating things from there. br

Johnny Tsao Thanks for the wonderful idea, using only Cakewalk features to get the conversion done. Truly appreciate your taking the time to create this elaborate note with screen shots and detailed explanations. I will try this, especially, whether Midi IN/Out on each track is set correctly for recoding and playback. If you or I can create a CAL file for this, so everything happens transparently with a single command - nothing like it. But based on what I am finding CAL is not supported, though it ought to be fully resuscitated (prioritized over other feature additions), and many commands do not work and/or simply not there. regards

I am putting this topic here, as the contents are buried in a thread related to this topic, elsewhere. I corrected a few issues on this CAL for my needs, which should be of relevance to anyone interested in using it. I am attaching the updated CAL file, so Cakewalk Team can correct that CAL or include my CAL with the install library. Please feel free to clean/tweak the code and, the file and other names, to your Engineering Standards. regards SriTrackSplit1.cal

David Baay That link points to this, and this page is not reachable or does not exist anymore. Have you or anyone got the mentioned CALS? I will post a note in the original thread as well. http://www.collusioninc.org.uk/index.php?page=sonarstuff

Will_Kaydo, David Baay Thanks for the tips. Regarding what things are overlapping - I will post a screen shot and/or picture/video asap.

Starship Krupa thanks for the clarifications. I will go ahead with it today. What is TYLIP - I am hearing it for the first time! I was also hoping to get your tips for the Timeline Cursor and Popup Icons/ToolTips crowding issues. Happy to hear the update on your Vision Issues and Welcome. I am sure these Themes and Notes will benefit many others.

All I am attaching an MP3 file of the music that goes with the above. It is playing of the original and split tracks all together and everything is order. Hope you enjoy the Indian Music as well - it is an Improv Kalpana in raga Anandha Bhairavi (Carnatic). I have to thank all of you here, for helping me with the initial ramp of Cakewalk and over time progressively complete the migration. regards Sri. SriCakewalk.mp3

RBH I modified the original script in some simple ways to get the Post Split tracks playing exactly the same as the Original Recording. I also changed from Cut/Paste to Copy/Paste -- so the original track is intact. I will attach the Script below. I have been looking for the Cal command sequence for what I can do interactively on the UI: select a track by its track number set the Midi IN to my Korg Keyboard and IN channel to a specific Channel set the MIDI out to my Keyboard and OUT Channel to a specific Channel. Arm it for recording. I have gone through the CAL Reference/Guide and Examples but just cannot find the commands for these. I have tried few of them but they do not work. Or I am unable to recognize them. Given that CAL is not supported and not able to determine what works and what does not, makes it very difficult to say the least. So I ended up creating 16 tracks brute force and saved them as a Starting Point. Gets me going ... but missing the power of a good working Cal Script to do things efficiently and reliably without embracing laborious tedium. I hope others find the Script Useful. Sri, Attachments: Screen Shot of Splitting; SriSplit1.cal the script file; EmptyKorg1.zip containing the base project with 16 tracks with proper setting of Midi IN/out - I will try to make this into a Template when I figure out how. SriTrackSplit1.cal EmptyKorg1.zip

I am finding it quite difficult to clearly see the Loop Region End Handles for acting on them. Too many Things and Icons popping up around cursor... I am sure they would and supposed to help, but they seem to be occluding things behind them. I am sure there would be tricks/tips for managing them. So I can turn things on/off and make the Loop Region (yellow handles) or selection region (blue colored) clearly visible for action. Related to this, is there a Nudge Function for moving the Selection Line left/right with keyboard arrow keys? I found that there is Process-> Nudge -> .... but it does not show any keyboard shortcuts. I am quite pleased that I can set the Left or Right loop edge to NOW using the UI on the top Area. That is coming handy given the problem I described above. Thanks in advance Sri.

Mike would love to get it. I am just starting with Cakewalk/Cal and need to change one of the scripts -- Split Channel to Tracks. It is part of the install. Specifically, assign Midi IN and Midi OUT on the Split tracks to the Midi Channel events came from. May be you can do this is in your SLEEP!! and give me the updates to the Script. It may take some time for me to get the names of the objects and functions correctly. There is also an unwanted Shift in the Tracks -- for example post split, Tracks are playing one Mid Channel than what they should. I think this should be easy to change in the code. Does Message function work? Where does the Output Display - is it fleeting and fast to see or it does not display at all. What is the equivalent function for simple Print/Log? Thanks in advance Sri.

Erik/Starship Krupa Thanks for the clarifications. Just to anchor my understanding further, to avoid errors.. Where do the name clashes come from? From the name of the CLR files or from the actual color names/references/contents contained within them? I assume your STH files are referring to those references and not tied to CLR file names. So I am a bit smarter about the filenames and color names and prevent name clashes and over writes. So for this appetite for clarification details. Thanks in advance Sri. P.S. Appreciate sharing of your Vision issues. Sincerely wish you a complete arrest and reversal of the conditions.

This is just thinking out aloud -- to get the Split t Channels working correctly. Currently post split has a few issues. So I took a look at the Cal file. I am observing a few things: a) Cal Code split the Track based on Channels. But it is not updating the Midi In/Out Configurations. I do not see that on the UI nor on the code below. May be the author did not consider that as a requirement. b) There may be a bit of Channel numbering 0-15 or 1-16 issue here. Usually Drum is 9 and Percussion 10 (in 1-16 numbering). So there may be a skew relative what the code considers as Drum channel - 10. I need to check. This may be causing a skew of the channels - and causing split tracks not playing exactly as the original non-split track. I will have pin this down to fix this. c) A CAL expert or the original author might be able to do this in a Jiffy. Hope to hear from them. d) What is generated for the last Track also seems quite odd. e) I know I have configured on my Keyboard, channel 15 and 16 as Global and Control Channels respectively. I do not see anything in the code related to handling these. Though not sure that there should be any. Hope some one can point me where on the Cakewalk UI is the menu items for Transposing - a selected Midi Track or all the Tracks together. Thanks in advance for any insights/tips you may have. Sri. ======== the cal code for reference ============= ; Split Channel to Tracks.cal ; ; This takes the current track and splits it by channel into 16 other tracks. ; It is up to the user to: ; - position the cursor on the desired track to be split ; - make sure only that track is selected ; - set From and Thru to cover whatever portion of it they wish split ; (do (include "need20.cal") ; Require version 2.0 or higher of CAL (int nTrk 1) (getInt nTrk "First destination track?" 1 256) (-- nTrk) ; CAL uses 0..255 (int nChannel 0) (while (< nChannel 16) (do ; Provide some progress information on the message line (message "Channel " (+ 1 nChannel) " --> Track " (+ 1 nTrk)) ; Set the event filter 0 to include everything (ResetFilter 0 1) ; Restrict item 10, Channel, to be in the range nChannel..nChannel (SetFilterRange 0 10 TRUE nChannel nChannel) ; Now use that to cut the events meeting the criteria (EditCut From Thru TRUE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE) ; Paste them to the destination track, nTrk (EditPasteToTrack From TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE nTrk) ; Give track an informative name (TrackName (format "Split Chan " (+ 1 nChannel)) nTrk) ; Set the forced channel, although that's redundant because all the events ; in the track have that channel (TrackChannel nChannel nTrk) ; Un-mute the track (TrackActive TRUE nTrk) (++ nChannel) (++ nTrk) ) ) )