Glenn Stanton

long ago, i bought a Fostex 4-track recorder (like their first model...) and of course after getting it all connected, and doing some day drinking, i figured i'd give it a work out. recording like 10 tracks w/ bouncing etc. so to say that the original version of this was "grunge" (before grunge was a popular thing), would be, erm, a disservice to grunge... but my brother found it and liked it and managed (for live purposes) to turn into something decent because he is an extraordinary keyboardist (although he liked my big piano slides and 8th note bopping - not sure why, maybe it's just rock and roll) so now fast forward 40 years... trying to keep the arrangement somewhat similar, basically just a fun bit of innuendo and steady beats... BPM 128 Key A c'mon and take me dancing darlin' underneath this pale moonlight the way you hold me and squeeze me i can feel the temperature rise us, baby i can see the fire in your eyes can you feel this heat between us? oh, this must be the fire yeah, this must be the fire c'mon and take my lovin' baby slowly dance me through the night the way you touch me and kiss me i can feel these flames ignite us, baby i can see the fire in your eyes can you feel this heat between us? oh, this must be the fire yeah, this must be the fire [solo] c'mon and take me dancing darlin' underneath this pale moonlight the way you touch me and kiss me i can feel these flames ignite us, baby i see the fire in your eyes can you feel this heat between us? this must be the fire oh, this must be the fire yeah! this must be the fire oh, let's take this higher c'mon and light my fire c'mon and feed the fire yeah, do you feel the fire fire! yeah! this must be the fire ----------------------------------- besides which, how many times can you yell fire in a dance club? LOL 🙂 instruments: drums, bass, acoustic guitar, 2x electric guitars, solo guitar, piano, e. piano, organ, synth (that sound like an excess reverb or thin organ for a pseudo pad on breaks), horns (2x trumpet, sax, trombone), lead vocal and 2x backing vocals. the horns are my new toy "session horns" and i haven't played much with them yet, but i found an interesting riff which i felt good about and used that during intros and on the end... the "burning with desire" thingie during the drums & bass break is something the backup vocals came up with... not part of the original... comments welcome.

there are a few possible explanations: 1) your monitoring - depending on the levels and software you're using on playback could result in different EQ / room response which changes your perception. good idea to make sure the calibration on levels is consistent as well as any EQ / effects / etc on playback. listening on a mono-like sound source (e.g. portable USB speaker) can alter the mix you hear vs your stereo mixing. 2) MP3 (if that's being exported and listened to) is a lossy algorithm which masks frequencies in order to reduce file size and less than 320K, it's gets exponentially worse... as a general note: i routinely check my monitor levels to be consistent across all apps and devices, ensure OS and other updates haven't switched on some effects or mystery EQ and enhancement settings, etc. then listen to the mix on several of them before exporting. fwiw - one of the reasons people still use NS-10 or other bandwidth restricted speakers is to get a separation from the LF and HF components of a mix to see if the midrange is OK. then use full range to tweak the LF and HF.

someone mentioned a PCI-e x16 riser card where you could install dual m.2 drives, so if looking to create RAID or simply expand storage maybe look for that as well...

yes, i have a couple of projects coming up which need steel drums, so i bought them. they sound so much better than the SF2 i have been using over the years, and the hand tapping articulation is excellent. so for $28... the soundpaint version (also 8Dio) seems like it uses the same samples base (12.3GB) but the options and articulations is fewer. $15.

it looks like you're using sends in lieu of directly routing things: 1) vocals being sent to master (track output) + vocal buss (send) -- maybe set the vocal output to the vocal buss, then route the vocal buss to the master buss. eliminate the vocal send. 2) same for any other tracks going to busses - drop the send, and use the direct output routing. 3) if using a buss for shared usage (like reverbs, delays, parallel compression etc) then a send from the track (or buss) is ok. 4) all outputs eventually make it to the master either via a buss or via a direct output. sends are generally not your main routing to the master (from my master i have sends to my monitoring and print busses but all things to the master are direct outputs). it's one of the fun things about having nearly infinite routing options 🙂

there are some SF2 steel drums, but finding good quality simulations are (as you note) not cheap. and the cloud drums (which are cool) are not steel drums. https://github.com/jlearman/jSteelDrum1 (decent) https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts?formats=sf2&tags=steel+drum (this is one i've used, it's ok) and one of the best ones: https://www.indigisounds.com/ (but $99...) 😞

i don't really use groove clipping very often any more but in the past, i would set my loop recording to record however many measures i wanted, and then perform against that loop until i had the timing and performance right. then select that loop and groove clip it, then tweak beats if needed. using the looping record and making the effect to get clean performance on the beats (etc), gave me pretty decent groove clip results. one option is to use a MIDI clip of the beat trigger a sampler which you carefully have collected the sounds from your kit. sitara etc. will do the trick when you need an audio sample from something you own (and cannot directly trigger it with MIDI or control voltage simulating the pad strike into the controller)

W11 Pro has a number of better configuration options including using policy settings and services etc. that said, i've been using W11 Home on a laptop now for about 6 months and once the A/V exceptions added, and a few services turned off, the performance has been excellent, and in few cases, i simply use airplane mode to shutoff networking if i find some project/plugins are sensitive to the network interrupts happening (very few) when i'm rendering.

thanks for the script! 🙂 i was being snarky though... i'll definitely try it out

hey! can you write a CAL script which removes HiHat note which is parallel to a Snare note to help thin down the drum MIDI 🙂

i got a positive grid Spark mini for a birthday present and it included the license for Prime OEM. of course this is a limited version. i don't see any option to view plugin details so i'll assume it's only in the Pro version. and for $399 i can upgrade to the Pro version 🙂 or use the limited time Pro demo... or use my paid version of Plugin Doctor...

what's weird is i know some folks have heinous problems with iLok. for me, after nearly 20 years? the only problem i had was a number of years ago having a nearby lightning strike fry my iLok. lost a few licenses but managed to recover after much finagling with the vendors (and i could re-register on iLok). but the iLok (for me at least) has been some of the least troubling aspects in modern computing and licensing... but it's been indispensable for traveling and switching between systems. same for the Waves key (and i recommend a super premium USB key if you do that)...

EZK2 is working fine in my Cakewalk by Bandlab. latest version. W11.

yep, this ^^^^ my desktop was stable for 5 years before i bought the Abbey Road Chambers plugin. put it into a known working project. boom. stuttering, clicks, performance meters in the red... didn't think for a second it was my stable system since when i unloaded the plugin and used the Abbey Road Plate reverb, it was all fine. tried again on another project same issue... 🙂 so, in general, if my system is stable, and i introduce a new or updated plugin and suddenly things are not right - i pretty much always assume its the plugin. so far, out of 100 tries: bad plugins: 0, stable system 100. 😉

HA HA HA! yeah i'm going to reinstall an older OS and DAW in order to work around the bad plugin coding the company did... i would use the word f*cktards but that's not fair to the really nice f*cktards in the world. so. after buying their whole suite, basically i've mothballed them and in projects i had in progress, i replaced them with virtually no audible differences. so SoundToys will no longer be a part of my projects going forward.

yeah ASIO4ALL is valid, but only as a last resort. if the device company doesn't build or support an ASIO driver, or it's an older one no longer supported in the OS of choice, or the application you want to run has problems with buffer boundaries and cannot use regular ASIO or WASAPI drivers, then ASIO4ALL may be the answer.

just need better authentication protocols - like email verification of new accounts, delays on time joined before posting (like 2 hours to "process new account" and limited to 2 threads (people asking for legit help won't need more) and limit # threads other than their own for 2 days that they can reply to etc, so to clean up means only deleting a couple of their threads rather than lots of cleanup. accounts not posting in over say 90 days have similar restrictions until those 2 days pass to avoid people setting up accounts which are later used to attack from.

thanks for this tip! i probably never encountered this since when i'm done with something like MIDI or Melodyne edits, and groove-looping etc, i always close the window before going on to the next thing (mostly same for effects windows as well). just habit after 20 years...

when i need to be surgical on an audio clip, i just use the right tools like audio file editors (SoundForge, Acoustica, RX, etc etc) and leave the DAW stuff for the, er, DAW stuff... nice that the paid $$$ version of Adobe Premiere Pro does that, but why not just use tools meant for the job?

and since that day is when Hades freezes over, my suggestion is for VST which don't support it (and anytime soon unless the developers have it in their roadmap), is to leverage things like templates, FX groupings (Waves, Cakewalk etc), and preset naming to enable rapid work. at the end of the day, if you're using something consistently in every project, just add it to your template and be done. oh, and nag the developers of your VST to get with the program, the, ah, erm, default program... 😉

ah, good old hard coding makes the world go 'round (and 'round and 'round until you're dizzy and fall dead) 😉

the "default" preset - actually a fair amount of my plugins have a "set as default" for presets and even the Pro Channel as a "set as default" option. and if you name your presets with ## <PRESETNAME> you can force sorting on the presets so even if there is not "default" find your own default in the list is super easy and fast - 000 DEFEAULT is at the top of my list even if i have a "set as default" option -- why? -- because after i select another to see if i like it better (and perhaps a better request is all VST have A/B option) i can rapidly switch back to my default...

i save presets all the time. not sure why it seems to be a struggle. in fact it's a good habit to save a preset once you find a setting you like for a given FX or instrument. i only have maybe 3 or 4 FX and VI which don't support saving them. and within a project, and whatever your last settings were when you saved it, generally, will be there when you re-open it. of course for safety's sake, making copious notes about the project (prefer in a text file and/or modern note taking app which may allow screenshots) is future proofing (and in some cases, mandated by clients and professionals downstream of your work).

did you have ripple edit on or off during the cut/delete operations? Cakewalk - Cakewalk Documentation - Ripple editing https://legacy.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Arranging.33.html

you could plug the audio out on the keyboard in your IO unit, or, you could, with the right drivers for your keyboard, use a USB connection (sometimes it's audio, sometimes MIDI, sometimes both options). depends on your keyboard. and that choice will depend on your skills and expected use - piano -- people who play piano often like weighted keys, organ and synths, often prefer semi-weight or synth weight keys. MIDI controller vs keyboard w/ audio which has a number of sounds etc. and lastly -- budget for said device.