David Baay

See also View > Fit MIDI Content (or right-click > Fit Content or Ctrl+F)

On a synth that supports it, any value between 0 and 127 is technically "half-pedaling". Synths that don't support it will treat anything <64 as 0 (pedal up), and anything >= 64 as 127 (pedal down). But what I really wanted to say is that I strongly encourage every MIDI composer to acquire some kind of MIDI keyboard controller with pedal , modulation and pitch controls . Learning to play a keyboard in real time with even minimal facility will greatly simplify the process of creating MIDI, even if you have to do a bunch of editing to fix mistakes. You can even record notes and pedal (or other controller) events in separate passes if need be.

Looks like I neglected to mention; go to Views > Tempo to see and delete the extra tempos that got inserted by copy-pasting. Once you've deleted them, the intial tempo at 1:01:000 will persist through the whole song, and changing it will affect the whole song. Be aware, however, that clips longer than one beat may not follow tempo changes by default unless they're 'REX' or 'Groove' clips. The start time will follow the tempo change, but the clip will go out of sync with the project tempo as it plays. Most 3rd-party audio 'loops' will automatically follow tempo, but any 'normal' .WAV file you've imported or recorded yourself will not. There are many ways to get such a clip to follow tempo changes (and get it synced to the project tempo in the first place if it isn't already), but it takes a little knowledge to know which one is best for a given situation. I should also mention that while Cakewalk can to do pretty much anything when it comes to stretching and syncing audio and producing loop-based music, some other DAWs are better optimized for composing with loops and samples, and make it easier in various ways. Cakewalk has traditionally been aimed more at users who record live input in real time.

A well-appointed DAW with 30 years of development behind it is probably among the most complex, powerful and flexible pieces of software you will ever use, and there is no royal road to learning as they say. Combine the massive depth of the software with the huge variety of ways in which different types of users (e.g. songwriters, orchestral composers, performers, studio engineers, live sound engineers, sound designers, etc) prefer to work, and it should be clear that there aren't just two or three 'most likely' things to be done with two selected clips. Just look at the options available in the context (right-click) menu for a single clip to get an idea what I'm talking about. The level of simplicity you're seeking will require software that has a much higher level of intelligence. than anything currently available. In the mean time, you're the brains of the operation, and you'll just have to learn the tools as they're currently presented. Probably the best way to do that aside from doing a lot of reading, video-watching and experimenting is to describe in as much detail as possible what you're trying to accomplish in a given situation, and let the many knowledgeable forum members guide you.

Creating a project by New > Blank Project will leave snap settings wherever they were in the last project you had open, because Blank Project isn't a 'template' per se, and doesn't apply different settings. A tempo setting will pertain until another tempo change is encountered. There will initially be only the one initial tempo in a new, blank project, but if your copy-paste setting are including tempo changes, you'll have a redundant one inserted every time you copy-paste a clip , and that will prevent you from being able to change the whole project tempo just by changing the initial tempo. Use Paste Special > Advanced to un-check tempo and meter-key changes to prevent that. Using Paste Special permanently changes the paste options for all subsequent paste operations until you use Paste Special again to change them.

That's great. If she's half as tickled as I am about mine, I'm happy for her. There's nothing like having a long-deferred dream come true. Gotta thank my wife for this one. I let it go all those years partly because I didn't have the the proper space for one, partly because I liked the light touch, always-perfect tuning, portability and recordability of digitals, and partly because of a misconception about how much I would have to spend to get a decent grand. It was my wife who really wanted to hear me play a real piano, and who found the G3 for half the going rate (which is surprisingly reasonable already), and who cleared out a third of the living room to make way for it.

Thanks for the kind words, Kenny. Glad you liked it, and happy to see you still knocking around here, yourself. I plan to be posting some more stuff periodically so stay tuned, and if you hear something you can't resist soloing over, let me know. ;^) Dave

Thanks, Andy. An instrumental melody is more likely as I don't really write lyrics or sing much. My wife is always threatening promising to write lyrics to various of my compositions; I'll keep working on her.

Re-reading the original post, if you have an echo, then you must be hearing both direct and input-monitored sound. Is the direct sound just what bleeds through your headphones directly from the guitar, or are you somehow getting mix of direct-monitored signal from the interface, and input-monitored signal coming out of the DAW?

Unmodified copies of a clip, whether linked or not, will always reference a single copy of the source file, whether it's the original file in a loop collection, or a single copy saved in the project audio folder the first time it's imported. Don't worry, be happy, make music. ;^)

Make sure you don't have any plugins in your project that use look-ahead buffers that induce Plugin Delay Compensation. If such a plugin is on a track or bus that's not in the chain of the track you're recording, you can use PDC [bypass] button in the Mix module to bypass the delay on an input-monitored track that you're recording, but if it's on that track you'll just have to remove it. Common offenders that you may or may not have, depending on how you got CbB are Cakewalk's Linear Phase EQ and Multiband Compressor and Transient Shaper. Convolution reverbs and many guitar FX processors will also induce PDC. in general plugins that need PDC should not be used until tracking is complete and you've moved on to mixing and mastering.

Thanks, Michael. Yeah, I usually don't compress solo piano much, especially if it's a 'sensitive' piece like this. Sometimes I'll knock down the highest MIDI velocities to make a little headroom, and then I'll push the whole thing no more than 3dB into a limiter, and that's it.

So true. When listening to good ones years later I often think, 'Where'd that come from?' The muse wrote it, not me.

Thanks, gents. Glad you enjoyed it.

Mmmm... very tasty fusion indeed. Love it!

Sweet... a Kenny Wilson twofer! Listening to this, methinks another collab might be in order. I have a virtually endless supply of solo piano grooves like this from which you can choose. ;^) Cheers, Dave

Strangely satisfying. I like it!

Nice one, Kenny. The most fun you can have on an elevator with your clothes on. ;^) Glad this happened to be on the 'front page' when I checked in today. Your friend, Dave

Well done, Larry. No excuses necessary. A thoroughly excellent effort, and enjoyable listen. Chapeux!

Hi All, Long time, no visit. I acquired a Yamaha G3 grand piano last year, and have not spent much time with the DAW since. Just having way too much fun playing, and marveling at the expressiveness and presence of this amazing instrument after playing digitals for 30 years! I've not yet endeavored to record the Yamaha (it's downstairs, far from my desktop DAW), so what I'm sharing here was recorded from a Roland RD-700NX. I mostly did this just to capture the MIDI before I forget how to play it as sometimes happens when I improvise something and then don't get back to it for a while. Like most of my stuff, this will probably evolve over time to have a distinct intro, more variations in chord voicing and rhythm, and maybe a proper'bridge' section, but I think it stands up pretty well as is. Double points if you can hear the MIDI editing 'cheat'. ;^) Cheers, Dave

FWIW, I've seen the 'playback won't stop' issue off and on for years with different interfaces (currently MOTU 2408). It's pretty rare (like maybe once every 50-100 sessions) so not a huge problem, and may be project-specific. If Stop at Project End is enabled, it will eventually stop at that point, but I usually have that option disabled, and SONAR/CbB has to be killed because all other options to stop playback fail, including toggling the audio engine off or hitting the panic button . MOTU and my previous interace are PCIe-based, so turning off the interface was not an option, though that might work with a USB/FW interface to kill the audio clock.

Was it in a dedicated project folder, and is that folder gone? Were alternate/progressive versions of the project file saved with different names over time? Does the project show up in your recent projects list? Ulitmately, I think this must be a an O/S file system issue if not user error. CbB pretty much never deletes anything without the user taking pains to make it happen.

I think the idea is that you start loop recording and layering MIDI parts - especially drums, but it could be horn section arrangements or something else - and as you listen to a part being replayed, you decide to delete/add/move a hit before continuing on to record other kit pieces. And you want to do this without stopping the transport so you can hear the results of your edits on the next iteration and add additional parts from your keyboard/controller at any time because you're still recording. The PRV doesn't allow this workflow because it only shows a preview of notes being recorded, and you don't have access to edit them until you stop the transport. Personally I would almost never choose to work this way because the autistic part of my brain gets overwhelemed with the constant noise of playback and can't think straight. ;^) But I understand how a lot of people would want to be able to do this,

Ah, "edit while recording"... that's a different animal. Yes, not possible in PRV currently.

Hey Craig, I think you must be thinking of loop-recording audio...? Sound on Sound recording works great for loop-recording MIDI drum parts. Personally I usually restart the tranport in between takes, but you don't have to.