Larry Jones

EA?

If that's the obstacle to a successful Update, shouldn't it be included as the first part of the Update?

Here's a kooky story for you, @John Vere: A few days ago -- probably after the same Windows Update that caused your problem -- my DAW wouldn't load Windows. I restarted it to no avail. Total black screen all the way through the boot process. I recalled reading somewhere that if you interrupt the boot process by shutting off the machine three consecutive times before it completes, it will go into the BIOS. I tried that, and nothing. I left it running with the black screen up. A half hour later I glanced over at it and it was restarting on its own! I'm sorry I can't give the exact details of what happened next, but the "error" message said something to the effect of "This Windows Update failed (and it was probably your fault) so we have rolled back the Update and restarted your PC. We'll try the update again in 30 days, after we have figured out what went wrong." The machine started up, loaded Windows, and everything is working. If I had not walked away from it while it was on, if I had decided to try and "fix" it myself, I would never have known an update could do that.

This is almost for sure what's happening. @RICHARD HUTCHINS If you want to add cymbal crashes of long duration, I suggest you use a new instance of AD2. The drums in the main instance will always chop off your crashes.

Original post or original poster. The first post in a thread, or the person who posted it. This is not Cakewalk specific. I charge extra for consulting on general internet shorthand. 🙃 At this point I think you have enough information to accomplish what you want to do. I suggest you make a safety copy of your project and try out some of the advice you've gotten. You'll find a way, and you'll learn more from doing than you will by reading. Good luck!

This is in direct response to the original question on that thread. The numbers are meant to work for the OP. Later in the thread it's explained how this method works, what the numbers mean and how you could change them to suit your specific situation. It does work, BTW.

There's a thread here on the legacy SONAR forum that discusses how to do this. This is the specific reply, but there is more information if you keep reading. The stretching algorithms in Cakewalk have been improved since that particular discussion took place, and in my opinion your results (audio quality) will be acceptable, maybe undetectable. Before you start, look in Preferences and set to the highest quality,and keep in mind that until you render your modified tracks you'll be hearing only a preview. The final render will be higher quality. I hope this helps. I know what it's like to get far down the road and for whatever reason decide that the tempo is wrong. Maybe along the way you've added instruments or changed the lyrics or something that makes the original tempo not work. And you might still be working on the track, so you don't want to mix it down and change tempos on the stereo mixdown. There is another method of changing the tempo of an entire multitrack project, but I rarely use it and can't put my finger on it right now. I'll follow this thread to see how you're doing. I saved the technique somewhere and I'll look for it. EDIT: OK, I found the other method. It's in Craig Anderton's Sound on Sound column from December 2018. The column contains more info than you need, but the tempo change stuff is there, too. One caveat: When he says "slip-stretch" in Step 1, he means "slip-edit." Good luck! And thanks, @Craig Anderton!

Sorry, Erik, I didn't realize I was in the Feedback forum. I stumbled on your excellent rant by accident when I searched for "Studio One 5." I crossgraded to S1-3 back when it looked like Cakewalk was gone forever, and Presonus offered a great deal. I'm sure I wasn't the only one, but before I really got into S1, Cakewalk was revived and I haven't used it much since then. I have upgraded to version 4 and now I see they have another great deal on version 5, so I thought I'd see if there were any CbB users with something to say on the subject. I definitely had more fun reading your post above, though. All that said, I can imagine the bakers' responses to someone who wants better drum map implementation: We only have time and resources to do the things that most of our users want. You can program MIDI drums in the plugin GUI, so you don't need an effective drum map. It would require reprogramming the entire Piano Roll View. [Insert other arcane technical objection(s) here.] I love CbB and will always be grateful to Bandlab for saving it and employing the bakers to improve it. But once bitten, twice shy, and I'm keeping Studio One installed and updated, just in case.

Always enjoy reading about your Adventures in Drum Maps, @Starship Krupa I keep thinking I should learn how they work and how to create them, but I've seen (at least) two posts from you on the subject, and then I think better of it. Have you tried to hound the bakers about this situation? The rest of us would be grateful if you could talk them into producing a workable solution.

Should be noted the MIDI note is not actually colored like that. The colors represent functional areas.

John was trying to help. No need to be rude.

@John Maar - Ha! I've had the Dim Pro Expansion Packs installed for years, but I never noticed the Virtual B3, since there is a whole "Organ" section listed in the presets. As a non-keyboard player, my organ needs are meager, and these sounds are more than adequate for me. Thanks for the tip!

@David McMillen - Since you say you're a newbie, I highly recommend you start with SI-Drums, which comes with CbB (separate I think, but free). Mess around with it to get an idea of how MIDI drums work. When you're ready you can buy or try some of the drum programs mentioned by the others in this thread. Be aware that MIDI drums consist of two major parts: the drums themselves (samples), and the MIDI "instructions" which tell the samples what, when and how to play. The MIDI parts can be store-bought loops, or you can create them with a keyboard MIDI controller. Most MIDI drum packages come with both drums and loops, and if you don't understand drum maps, use them together instead of purchasing separately. Good luck!

@Blogospherianman @twelvetone; @reginaldStjohn @tonemangler Thanks guys. I'm still struggling with this bass track. Every time I listen I hear another timing problem. I used Melodyne to quantize the whole track (in bite-size sections), and that worked OK in a general way, but it left some sloppiness. So I went back to transient-stretching with Audiosnap and I'm in the process of manually tightening it up. If it weren't for Covid we'd just get together and do it over until we got it right, and in the end it would be better than what we're gonna end up with this way. But that's life and death in the new millennium.

I found some anomalies in Melodyne's behavior, too, but it definitely works better for this that Audiosnap. Thanks!

@tonemangler: Thanks for that. I had high hopes for Audiosnap, and I completely forgot about Melodyne. I feel like Audiosnap would have worked for me if I could occasionally add my own transient marker. But when I came to a spot where the timing was off and there was no marker, it seemed there was nothing I could do.

I've got a bass guitar track that is not rhythmically solid. He is playing eight to the bar at 155bpm. A very high percentage of the notes are off by a tiny amount, but the MIDI drums are, of course, bang on, so the incorrect timing on the bass is noticeable. I've never used Audiosnap, but this is a long-distance collaboration and I don't know if I can get the guy to play his part again. I have tried many settings -- threshold, resolution, stretch method, manual editing, quantize (note durations, audio snap beats, etc) different amounts of "swing" and have come pretty close to "fixing" this track, but something always goes wrong, Like there is an extra transient detected that I can't get rid of, or a transient is missing. When I play back sections where these things occur it sounds worse than when I started. Note that if I could get this working I wouldn't mind editing the whole three minutes manually, nor would I mind if the track ends up "perfect," i.e. mechanical sounding. The song won't suffer. Is there a clear tutorial somewhere on how to do this? It seems to me that anyone who's tried to edit a track for timing must have run into the same glitches. I have been at this for a few hours now, and I would welcome any tips or ideas.

Weird that it would do this, but in your case it's the proverbial gift horse. Don't look it in the mouth.

One of my first jobs in audio was an 8-hour voice session, recording to mono 1/4-inch tape, in Japanese, a language I don't speak or understand. Luckily the producer told me where the outtakes were, where to cut, and so on. But over many years of voiceover recording to tape I learned a few things, and if I had to do it again I'd probably mimic the same methods I used in the old days. Make sure the narrator understands the importance of working the microphone. Most of the time, she needs to place herself in the same spot exactly, all the time, to keep the sound consistent throughout the recording. Have a printed script for you that's the same as the narrator's. Have a code word for when a word or phrase needs to be re-done. The word in common use when I was doing it was "pickup." The narrator would stop, say "pickup," then countdown "3 - 2 - 1 ..." then start again. When this would happen I'd make a note (on paper or directly onto my script) of where it took place in hours, minutes and seconds. I would never stop the tape, because that would break the spell. These notes would be (sort of) accurate when it came time to edit. With a DAW, your notes could be frame accurate if you wanted them to be. You could even just press "M" when a pickup occurs and type in what happened while the narrator continues reading. Record a minute of silence in the room with the mic on and nobody around. You can insert this silence here and there when the editing creates an unnatural-sounding pause. I've only ever used four DAWs, but I haven't seen one with the clip-based timelines or other VO-specific functions you're looking for. Still, I applaud your efforts to make a modern workflow for the new millennium 😀. Best of luck!

Do you mean you want to buy Microsoft Windows 7? Or are you looking for a version of Cakewalk by Bandlab that will run on Windows 7? SONAR is gone, but CbB is completely free and only comes in one version. Download Bandlab Assistant and use it to get CbB. It will probably run on Windows 7-64, but if it doesn't you have nothing to lose. (Cuz it's FREE!)

Don't forget to set your grid to whole measures, so you don't accidentally select an unwanted duration.

I've only scored one 30 minute film in Cakewalk, but I can confirm all your problems and frustrations. I tried converting to a couple of different video formats (in Vegas) and ended up creating an .avi file. This worked, but of course it had to be converted back to a .mov at the end. I think any DAW worth the name has to be able to do film scoring. But having a video track that won't accept modern formats doesn't make sense to me.

Ya got me there. I don't think I've ever had to do that, but I'm gonna guess if you open the take lanes under your MIDI track you'll figure it out.

The only sure-fire way I have found is to switch the cursor to the "Select" tool and drag it across the track, making sure you've selected everything that's showing (everything you want, that is). Then Bounce to Clips. Every other selection method sometimes fails. Of course, you'll forget to switch back to the Smart Tool when you're done, but that will be made apparent soon enough. 🙃