abacab

The free Audacity can record desktop audio as "what you hear". All you need to do is use Windows WASAPI with it, and select "loopback" as your recording device. https://support.audacityteam.org/basics/recording-desktop-audio It can easily export MP3 as well. https://support.audacityteam.org/basics/saving-and-exporting-projects

Studio One Prime is now only available in the Studio One 6 Professional demo available from your PreSonus account. Don't understand why PreSonus stopped promoting it with a separate download. It is not explained on the website. 🙄 https://my.presonus.com/login (the Pro demo reverts to Prime, or you can revert to Prime at any time) https://shop.presonus.com/Studio-One-Prime-Add-Ons (includes compressor) https://www.presonus.com/products/Studio-One/compare-versions (lists Prime features vs. the other editions)

As far as hardware goes, BandLab sells a lot of guitars...

I can drag MIDI into a track and it will play, as long as the track is routed to an instrument.

Speaking of "out-there", have you checked out DS Audio Tantra 2 yet? An awesome sound design-y plugin. It's definitely all about altering your sound, but mostly in a more controlled musical way than Glitchmachines. Better UI as well! And the "dice" feature is the bees knees. Generates random patches. On sale right now at Plugin Alliance for $29. https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/ds_tantra_2.html Add movement, dimension and rhythm to any track Tantra 2 is a rhythmic multi-effects plugin that creates mesmerizing rhythmic sequences from any source material, no matter how flat or dry. Take lifeless basic synth sound, a deep and evolving pad, or even an arpeggiated sequence and instantly reshape it, making it sparkle and come to life with just a few clicks. Includes 8 Flexible multi-stage modulators Create rhythmic modulations using 8 powerful effect stages including filter, distortion, delay, lo-fi, glitch, and more. Tantra 2 includes two layers of each main effect, allowing you to make independent sub-patterns in your rhythms. A master reverb and equalizer/exciter at the output stage help you finalize your sound.

Further down the rabbit hole we dive... Speaking of Rick Derringer, I just ran across this performance. Bonus: Ringo Starr on drums! Edgar is also there on the keys, but no solos this time. This is my favorite song by Rick... Man, that dude has some chops!!! Wait for his solo around the 4:00 minute mark...

Well 14.0.4 has expired... buckle up!!! 😂

https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/05/08/the-story-of-edgar-winters-frankenstein/ “The original riff for that (came) back when I was playing with Johnny (Winter). As a matter of fact, we played it at Woodstock. And that’s a little known fact. I had written that riff basically thinking (how) I wanted an instrumental that I could use as a showcase. I thought of myself as an instrumentalist, though not as a singer at all. I wrote the riff just thinking of that particular blues trio. Now what would be a cool, really powerful riff that I could use as a basis for a song? (Sings opening riff.) I said, ‘That sounds really powerful and sort of bluesy.’ And I was playing Hammond B-3 and alto sax. And I also played drums as a kid. Played all of those instruments in various bands that Johnny and I had together. And I said, ‘Well, I’ll just use this instrumental as sort of a platform. And I’ll play a little organ and play some sax.’ And then we had two sets of drums onstage. And I did a dual drum solo with Johnny’s drummer, Red Turner, and we played that song all over the world and then completely forgot about it. I didn’t think of it for years. Then, with the advent of the synthesizer … I had just seen the synthesizer in various music stores. Manny’s in New York was the most popular music store. And I’ll never forget walking through the store and looking at these new synthesizers. Basically, there were Moogs and ARPs back then. And the Moog was a built-in unit with the keyboards being a part of the control unit itself. But the ARP-2600 had a separate keyboard, a remote keyboard that was attached to the brain or the guts of the instrument with an umbilical-type cable. I looked at the keyboard and I said, ‘Wow, that looks pretty light. It looks like you could put a strap on that thing like a guitar.’ That’s exactly what I proceeded to do. The rest, as they say, is history."

https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2023/04/16/ai-music-copyright/ "As AI music generators get more sophisticated, the issue of copyright ownership is becoming increasingly complex. With AI tools becoming capable of creating entire songs without human input, questions arise about who owns the rights to these creations and how they should be licensed and monetized."

Kymera is for your "horror" toolkit. Not my cup of tea, but I have several others that I do like, Atma, Huracan, UDW, and Orakle. I just wish that Mntra would implement a better preset browsing and tagging system. If you have several of their libraries it is a challenge to locate a sound that you want, other than by browsing and auditioning the presets. They are a mixed bag of interesting sounds, so it's not easy to guess what you will get when opening a preset. It's like having a big library of special effects with generic names... the Character and Preset name fields are not always that helpful, but you can search on a part of a preset name if you know what you are looking for, but only after you have selected an instrument library in the browser. The search bar does not access multiple libraries at the same time. I guess what I'm saying is that they need something like an NI Komplete Kontrol browser (or chatGPT) to assist with locating a target sound.

FYI: the update is not optional if you want to use Waves Central. As soon as you launch Waves Central, it auto-updates...

I recall that the freebies had updated versions a while back. Downloaded them directly from the Glitchmachines website.

That was a freebie from the Focusrite Plug-in Collective from Jan-Mar 2022. Parallel compression and saturation... "The plugin hosts three parallel busses internally: Dry is your original signal, Spank is heavily compressed duplicate, and Heat is a heavily saturated duplicate of the original audio signal. Combine all three signals to squeeze every drop of sonic juice out of your track."

Hey , wait a minute! What about Epic Synth Solos? For example, "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter? FYI: ARP 2600 with remote keyboard.

I think that brings up an important point: many modern plugins are no longer "simple", for example with complex virtual instruments, that usually require many additional support files and/or sample content to be installed elsewhere from the plugin path itself. A simple copy of a few files might still be true for a simple effect plugin, such as an EQ or compressor, or even a simple synth with just a .dll file. If that's a requirement, then stick with the devs that still support such minimal installs. But for better or worse, it appears that the industry trend has been moving in the other direction for years now...

Funny you should mention that! I was just realizing yesterday that I had not opened up a single Waves plugin since getting them working again in the latest Waves Central!

Dive deep into Native Access Learn about the inner workings of Native Access as our Product Manager chronicles its startup journey in the latest DevTalks session. Ask him anything! DevTalks: Native Access Startup Journey and Next steps https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/12231/devtalks-native-access-startup-journey-and-next-steps/p1 "Hi everyone. As promised, here is our quarterly update of Q1 and what’s coming in the next quarter. I’ll start with a topic deep dive, and go into what we’ve done and will do next afterwards. I’m eager to hear feedback on this format." ...

"Let It Be" or "Let It Be... Naked"? John had Phil Spector bling up the original tracks because John thought it was a piece of s*hit. Years later Paul re-mixed it without Phil's additions. Clearly a difference of opinion of "finished" there...

As a long-time user who paid for Sonar Platinum (lifetime), and years of Sonar prior to that, I can still access all of my legacy plugins in Cakewalk by BandLab. But as mentioned, it is up to BandLab if they are ever going to release the plugins again. Meng, the BandLab CEO, stated during the forum Q&A in 2018 that he was mainly interested in providing a quality DAW for free to his existing and growing BandLab user base. That is his main business model. So he gave Cakewalk by BandLab to the world for free. When he responded to forum questions about the plugins at the time, it was a qualified "maybe". Since then, nothing... My impression is that Meng really had no interest in getting into the plugin business. Since it has been 5 years since then, I feel that if BandLab were going to do that, it would have happened by now. Those old plugins are 5 years older now than they were then, plus the developers that wrote the code are probably long gone, and it would require a lot of resources and time to bring them up to date now. If you think about today's business model for selling enough plugins to finance that effort, it's pretty grim. Just look at all of the current plugins selling for $29 or less (e.g., Waves, Plugin Alliance, etc). Doubt that the plugin market outside of a few old-timers are really interested in that legacy Cakewalk stuff anyhow. Most of them probably already own them already.

I have noticed that by default Reaper can recognize native DX plugins without any wrapper. Other hosts are likely not as accommodating...

Still a work in progress, I'm afraid...

It's been years since I had my hands on a MAC, and I seem to recall that application installs/uninstalls were much more straightforward than with Windows...

No worries! Cakewalk has a global user base, so not everyone is a native English speaker, and sometimes we have to ask for clarifications. Not to be rude or anything, but just to ensure we better understand the specific question so answers are relevant to the OP.

Continuing down the rabbit hole... AP & Reuters are on my regular news rotation (no cost) when I just want to know what's going on, and I don't care to have someone tell me what/how to think. I value quality journalism, so I also subscribe to the digital edition (online) of my local newspaper. Plus I can access it from an app on my mobile. Not cheap, but they dig into the news spectrum quite a bit (local, regional, national, global, & special topics) and they provide a lot of excellent local and regional coverage (the stuff that may actually affect me the most). I do miss the days when most of the big city newspapers could be read online for free, but those folks have to eat too, so I understand that good journalism is not free...

Remember when? The Sonitus:FX plugin files on my system are creation dated in Feb 2018, so I suspect that they were provided with one of the first releases of Cakewalk by BandLab.