mark skinner

Brad , back up all your Sonar projects from your XP machine. They'll open up in CbB. I took a Bunch of old projects from an XP tower running Home studio 7 . Some of the guys playing on these projects are no loner around.. mark

Picked up my pc yesterday. He said they almost gave up thinking it was a motherboard problem , then found an intermittent short in the power switch. I'm back in business. The only thing I lost was my CbB activation. I had changed my cmos battery while troubleshooting , my 6 month refresh was surpassed by several years until I realized I hadn't reset my date and time. Thanks .. good for now. mark

@Miguel Carzola @PhonoBrainer @Bajan Blue Thanks for the feedback and suggestion. I'm also feeling the bass is a little lacking listening closer after your comments. I didn't notice it at all beforehand . Thanks for pointing it out. I'll try and address it when my pc gets out of the shop. I'm down for the count right now. It has been nice though just sitting down and playing without recording. Later .. mark

Back to the same problem , even after moving everything to a spare bedroom for a while. PC is going to the doctor Monday. Turns out it's 5 yrs. old instead of the 2.5 I said earlier. Time sure flies. It looked pretty dry between the heat sink and CPU , couldn't find any paste today. I'll pass that along to the Doc. I'm growing weary .. ms

Steve , Very cool and nicely mixed. There were some Really interesting changes here. Were there a few bpm changes or an audio illusion of getting faster in places? Loved the video and ending of the song. I Always like your vocal cover songs , but now you're taking it to a new level. It sounds finished to me. Great job .. mark

@noynekker @steve@baselines.com "Thanks" for the comments and support. I Really had a good time doing this one , even the tedious TTS brush stuff. Seems like the guitar just fell into place , that's pretty unusual for me. I usually just play what I can and try and make a melody out of it , but this time I could hear it before playing. Thanks .. mark

That was Awesome ! Very soothing and perfect vocals. I'm amazed at how well the vocals cut thru such a nice full mix. Everything is clear and I could hear all of the tasty quieter keyboard passages. Perfect collaboration . mark

I'm usually a couple of songs ahead of what I post , so I thought I'd post this instrumental before finishing up the current one I'm on I was playing around with some free midi instruments and came up with this. The cool and different thing for me was how I did the tablas. Just mouse clicking in piano roll listening to the different sounds , for some reason I turned on the built in CbB arpeggiator. I found I could drag some of the drum hits out several measures and some very short hits and come up with some interesting stuff. I put in some draw bar organ sections and built the tabla track Very quickly. Easy to manipulate in PRV "until" you do a bounce to clips. Then the screen becomes a confusing mess. I think this would work better with better VSTI percussion instruments. Anyway I hope you enjoy it . All suggestions are welcomed , I think I'm going to keep it. mark Link now reflects a remix with bass improvements. Thanks for the listen and help. mark

Rex , That was So Relaxing. Wonderful job on the vocals . I hope to hear more with your background singer. Those were beautiful harmony's. mark

Jack , I too had trouble understanding the lyrics. Boxy and maybe just too much processing on them But .. I think the song title alone is worth a Grammy ! mark

Bjorn , I agree with Tom , this one had me glued. The vocal bits keep pulling you back and really make you reflect . The seasons and years are Flying by now. It was Very well played and recorded . It left me feeling a little somber so I guess everything worked very well . Great job .. mark

Exactly right. This can be done Without the input echo on . When I said to use direct monitoring I meant on the interface itself . ms

The easiest way I've found around this is to have the track you are recording , output to your interface instead of master. You can then turn down the master (while recording) and still hear your signal . Direct monitor should be On if your interface has a switch. I've had to do this recording a low volume acoustic when going direct in. I can't jack up the input high enough because of the introduced noise. mark

I've done it with some success depending on the type of tracks. Slightly moving one track like Sidney suggested works if you get it right . Sometimes it sounds like it's sweeping from one side to the other. Different EQ on each track helps and sometimes delay on one helps. I've also had pretty good luck using Melodyne to "slightly" change the timing of All of the notes on one of the tracks(easy). How you use reverb will also effect the separation. A wide reverb on a left track that carries all the way over to the right side will hinder the separation. I think it's better to use a Send to a reverb bus so you can control the panning of the effect. It's always trial and error. Good luck mark

Lovely , I really liked the silky sounding low notes and the bite on the attacks. The entire chord structure was very relaxing. I think this is another stellar performance from You and your friends. Loved it .. mark

Treesha , Very nice ending. It felt Way more structured and good use of a fade. No feeling of left hanging at all. It really Completed the song making All of it better. Great improvement. mark

I needed my battery charger today, and it is definitely "Fried" and probably the culprit for my incoming voltage problem. New power supply is installed. Lesson learned. I managed to find a power supply (and only one) on E-bay instead of waiting on a slow boat. No power conditioner yet.. The first thing I noticed after installing was the increase in fan cooling. I think the CPU fan was overriding it . The old one was pulling air into the case , this one is blasting it out. I Really appreciate your help. I'll do a long test in the morning. Thanks .. mark

Thanks to All of You for all the great comments. It's Definitely staying an instrumental. To @PhonoBrainer I will admit that if I'm doing my own midi drums , I don't spend time on toms. That may be why I'm rarely happy with my drum tracks. Thanks .. mark

Fantastic ! This took me back to my Al Di Meola days but with a fresher sound. Loved it . mark

I've still got my old Tascam 8 track model (2x speed) and a suitcase full of cassettes. Someday I'll take it apart and see why the tape drive just clicks. ms

Freddy , Good one and Great advice in the lyrics. I really liked the phrase "too much time for thinking". Sometimes I think too much freedom (in your time) makes your reflective thinking time , a little less impactful . Enjoyed it .. mark

It's the difference between the quiet parts of a song and the louder parts of a song. Even if it's just short phrases. Like when a singer gets a little quiet on certain words or when a guitar backs off a little on notes during a run. Nothing should be distorted , even a guitar using distortion. It sounds strange , but I think there is a difference. If it's just loud everywhere and the waveform is real thick and Flat , it lacks dynamics in most cases . Some people like it , I'm not one of them. I think it is a real Plus to be able to achieve these levels cleanly but I wouldn't if I could. I have a volume knob and not afraid to use it. PS- I've asked for , and gotten help on Every song I've ever posted here and the other people responding to you have helped me greatly. mark

The graph is showing me it's having to squash it a good bit to bring up the overall volume. I'm only listening on a laptop so I'm not going to try to evaluate the fidelity of your mix or the reference track , neither one sounds bad on this system , but the reference track is pretty fatiguing at that level and has hardly any dynamics. Just loud start to finish. It's a lot harder to get a song sounding Good at -6 than it is at say -10/12. If this song is part of a project like a cd of your own , bear in mind you'll have to go thru this on Every song if your dead set on keeping everything at these levels . mark

Marcello , -6 db on the mix should be good . I normally export the mix out at -6 and import it into another project for mastering. Easy then to see the main waveform and clip it If I need to before hitting Ozone. The thing that's bothering me is when you said when you dragged the threshold down to raise the volume , that it's moving around when the drums and bass kick in. It should stay where you put it Unless you've still got the "learn" button on. That's why I jumped in late on this conversation. Sorry if I'm off base on this one. mark

First off Cool song and playing ! One thing to note is If you're using the "learn threshold" feature with true peak turned on and running it from the start to the very end of the song before turning learn off , If it sets the threshold at -2.7 for a -14 lufs song you don't have much headroom going in for mastering . Especially a Loud song. It's also helpful for me to keep "burn" and "stream" folders depending on what I want to do with finished songs. Enjoyed it .. mark