jkoseattle

I have loaded a solo viola patch from EastWest Play. I switched to Close mic, made sure stereo double and reverb were off, and recorded a simple line. I am hearing a doubling of the note as if two violas were playing. If the note is long enough, one of those notes rings the full length and the other stops halfway through. I messed around with the legato and portamento scripts, which makes them sound wrong in different ways. I discovered that if one MIDI note starts before another ends, that causes this effect, but if one note ends before the next starts, the effect goes away. For this reason, the first note played never has this problem. I certainly don't want to have to mess with my performances in the PRV just to eliminate this doubling effect. I have submitted this question to two different EastWest forums and haven't gotten a single reply, which makes me think maybe it's a CbB thing. What am I doing wrong?

UPDATE: I the EastWest forums someone set us straight. In Preferences > MIDI, simply uncheck "Zero Controllers When Play Stops" and "MIDI Event Chase on Play" and CW will no longer require a CC reset every time.

22 hours ago, mdiemer said:

The way I do it is in Event List. Go to the very first note in the list, hit insert on your keyboard, which will create a duplicate of that note,  then change the type of event from note to controller. Put in 7 for volume, and set the value to 100. Then, with your cursor on that event, hit insert again, and this time change the CC7 to CC11. Put in 100 for the value.

The CC7 is for a starting value, or modwheel. some people use CC1 for this, it depends on the library. but I have found that 7 works in 90% of cases. The CC11 is for fine adjusting as needed on the fly.

Thanks! But that doesn't work. Under the Data column in Event list, it wants a number. When I record with the actual wheel, that column says "Modulation", which I can't enter by hand.

There HAS to be a more elegant way of doing this. Even if I got that method to work, it's the same as the keyswitch problem, where I can't start playback at the start of the measure because it's preceded by a needed wheel event. 

Long time CW user, but just bought a keyboard with a mod wheel and expression pedal. I understand that I can assign them to different effects/channels for each instrument, but I don't understand where/how I do that. The instruments are EastWest Play. Can someone point me to where I assign mod wheel and expression pedal settings?

@Rhenn - This gave me a lot to think about and try out. There doesn't seem to be an elegant solution for this though. Not only does unchecking all mic positions not prevent the instrument from taking a lot of loading time, once it's loaded with no mic positions, then turning one on doesn't work. I had to unload the whole instance and start over. So much for that.

I think rather than pre-load things, my approach is going to be to make liberal use of the Comments field for the instruments in the Play Browser, as one can filter on text in those comments. Then I can search on "MyClarinet" for example, read through the comments I've written for each, and hopefully be able to make a decent choice without having to audition a bunch of them. I tried this approach today starting with the dozen or so pianos I found in Composer Cloud. 

One other thing I don't understand, however. If I load multiple instruments into a single instance and assign different Midi channels to them, then when I bounce to audio, CbB just bounces everything in that instance to the single Synth track. This is true even if I set the instance to All Synth Outputs Stereo. I thought I have done this before with drums, how do I separate them out at bounce time?

Thanks for the great explanation. This is my thinking, tell me if it's possible or if I'm way off.

First, to answer you comments, I am thinking of the keyswitch master instruments for all the orchestral stuff, and having each section in its own instance, so for example, instance 1 would have an instance called "Winds", with Flute KS Master on channel 1 , Clarinet KS Master on channel 2 etc. Given the trade-offs people are pointing out in this thread, I think I might just as well stay with the KNOWN inconvenience of sing lots of keyswitches. Not a biggie.

For more unusual instruments, I'm going to play it by ear though for now. I've found that the orchestral instruments use keyswitches more heavily than everything else, so my methods may change when keyswitches aren't involved as much. 

Lastly, there are some instruments which will have multiple options, but I will probably only choose one. Piano, for example, CCX has at least half a dozen I love, but different pieces call for different pianos. What I'd love to do is put all the pianos I like on a single instance, assign them all to different midi channels, and then simply set my track's channel to the piano I wanted. My worry about that though is that CbB will still load every piano at startup. Is there a way to assign instruments to an instance and tell them not to load automatically, so that I can just load it if I need it? Another example of this would be with the rock instruments, guitar bass and drums.

So is it possible to load a bunch of stuff in a single instance but not have them load automatically?

Thank you for the great responses. I'm slowly putting this together.

So, up till now I have been creating a separate PLAY instance for every instrument I use in a piece, and that often includes a full orchestra. So my Synth Rack view has this long list of several dozen instruments. Now, in learning about ComposerCloud, I'm seeing I can put multiple instruments on a single instance of PLAY, and assign them to different Midi channels.

My apparent misconception has been that I would load multiple articulations of, say, violins, and then use some sort of Midi event to swap Midi channel mid-piece, which made me wonder how this would be different from using keyswitches. Now I realize that loading multiple instruments into a single instance is a resources issue, plus I would now have one set of mixing controls in the PLAY UI that would affect all instruments in that instance. Aha!

So, as Rhenn brought up, I guess it makes sense to put all related instruments on a single instance so that I can control it like a bus, and use the Master keyswitch instruments so that I can switch articulations on the fly. Yeah?

Rhenn: If you are using elements patches instead of Master (keyswitch) patches, what happens when you're working on something and you realize that the patch you have sounds wrong because the articulation is wrong? Like say you have a smooth legato string thing, and there comes a point where you decide you need them to move fast. Do you then have to add another track for the fast passage? Why wouldn't you just load the keyswitchable patch in the first place? I don't get that.

Though I've been a Cakewalk user for decades, I must admit I've never really understood most of the Midi Channel/bank/input/output stuff. I click around on settings until things work. I just bought EastWest ComposerCloud and now I am determined to figure this out.

I have had a single orchestral EastWest library for years, so I'm familiar with Play. In Play, I have always just selected the Master instrument which includes lots of keyswitches to change articulations for the instrument. This was convenient, but keyswitches in general present all kinds of other problems. I have learned I can load multiple "Elements" instruments onto a track and assign each to a different Midi Channel. OK, so 1) Why do I want to do this when I can just use keyswitches to change to whatever articulation I want in the moment, and 2) If I load, say, legato strings into Channel 1 and then pizz into Channel 2, the Track Inspector still wants me to dedicate a track to a specific channel, so I don't understand how I can switch channels during playback. Even though two patches are loaded into the instrument the track is using, I can only assign that track to a single channel anyway.  Or am I misunderstanding some basic concept?

How is this supposed to be done?

Thanks so much everyone for the help! ChernobylStudios, that was a really nice time-consuming screenshot, special thanks.

Everything you have shown there was correct. I tried a new project and still things weren't working right. I finally DISABLED the PRV snap settings on the upper right and everything is now working as expected. I think the answer is that I never understood what those Snap settings on the upper right were for. The View menu and the snap module in the toolbar seems to do everything I need, so what's that one in the upper right for?

All of a sudden the Snap settings in PRV won't change. I have tried turning Snap on and off, changing the note value, clicking TO and BY, but no matter what I do, it's stuck on 1/8 and BY. What's worse is that my grid resolution is set to follow snap settings, and it won't change when I change Snap settings either. I've tried restarting CW and even rebooting the PC. Anyone know how to fix this?

In PRV is there a way to keep the Auto Focus button always on? I keep enabling it then a few minutes later it's off again. I'm not sure what I'm doing to disable it, but I always want it enabled.

I would delete the post if I could. figured it out! There was no Midi channel assigned. Simple as that.

I am re-working some music I did in 1994 on Cakewalk for DOS. The file format is .WRK and of course it's all Midi. Happily, I can open it in CbB and the tracks are faithfully rendered. Most of them play back (on my default output which is my electronic piano) with nothing of me required. Freaky. 

However, some tracks won't play back no matter what I do.  The I/O appears to be the same as the other tracks, nothing is muted, but they won't play back. I can see the gauge bouncing during playback so it thinks it's playing.  

I tried recording new content in that same track. The new content records and plays back, but the old notes still won't.

I also tried copying those notes to one of the tracks that plays, but they won't play on that track either. The velocity is normal on them. It seems to be those particular midi events that won't play. A couple other tracks in this project have the same issue. 

Incidentally, when I open the project, I get a dialog telling me the file contains exclusive Midi data designed to be sent automatically to my Midi gear, and asks me if I want to send it now. I say No because the gear I'm using now is completely different of course, so I worry that sys info would just mess up my current equipment. But I'm adding that info in here in case it's relevant.

I don't care what it sounds like really, it's fine if it just plays to my piano like the other tracks in the project. I'm simply using it as a reference for re-composing the piece. But I want to hear it somehow. Ideas?

I thought this would be a simple one, but I'm surprised that I'm having trouble finding anything on this.

How do I change parameters in Strum Session using the Midi keyboard? I read through the manual and found I can right click on something and select "Learn Midi Assignment", but it doesn't appear to do anything, plus I'm happy with whatever defaults it wants to assign to things rather than setting every control manually. What am I missing here?

I have updated to the newest CbB, restarted the computer, this bug won't go away. After working in Track View for a few minutes, all of a sudden I can't move the mouse cursor above or below the region containing the shuttle and measure numbers. I have to hit the windows key or Alt-Tab to activate an entirely different application to get full motion of the mouse cursor back. At the same time, if I change the now marker when paused, when I playback it stars playing where the Now marker was before I moved it.  I don't know what i'm doing to make this happen. 

Restart fixed it.

Genuinely not visible, nd shuttle not moving. I have to stop playback (and not auto-rewind) to see where the now time now is. Works fine in PRV though.

Somehow I managed to make the vertical bar under the shuttle showing Now Time to disappear from Track view. Also, the shuttle at the top doesn't move during playback. How can I get that back?

I found te answer. For anyone else who runs into this, the feature is called Ripple Editing, and you can enable/disable it under the Options menu in Track View.

Long time Sonar user. Just installed CbB, seems mostly exactly the same as Sonar Platinum. Anyway, I don't know how I did this, but now I can't move clips independently of other tracks. I will select a clip in Track 1 and try to slide it over, and the clips in all the other tracks move along with it. I tried finding some flag to disable, but couldn't. I tried to simply copy and paste the clip instead, but pasting it inserts a hole in every other track. It appears that it's trying to be helpful by making sure all my clips stay in sync with each other, but I don't want it to be so helpful.  I just decided I want the harmonica solo to appear at the end of verse 1 instead of verse 2. So I'm trying to move the harmonica solo clip earlier in the song. What do I need to switch so it won't do this?