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Posts posted by Starship Krupa
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It's nice to think that they'd just sand the offending logo off and do something useful with them, but I don't think that's how it works.
Unless there's some mechanism for Customs and Border Protection to be an agency that sells things, and I doubt that there is, it's going to be disposal for these musical instruments.
I'm with those who say these no doubt playable instruments shouldn't have Gibson's trademarked logo on them at all.
First off, and I know that as an aficionado of oddball guitars I am probably not neurotypical regarding these matters, I would not wish to own or play a guitar with Gibson's or Fender's logo on the headstock that wasn't made and sold by Gibson or Fender. I don't understand the appeal.
I have a defiant punk attitude toward brand worship. And I've never wanted to play the same kind of guitar that everyone else is using. Give me something that's shaped like a 335 or a Strat but says Aria or Behringer on the headstock and I'm fine. Better still, give me something that's not shaped like a common guitar but plays and sounds great and I'm even happier. I felt this way almost from the start of my desire to play guitar back in the mid 70's. The axe I wanted was an Ovation Viper (which I eventually did own) or Fender Musicmaster (ditto). My first good instrument was a Hofner Club Bass like Tina Weymouth played in Talking Heads. The second was a (maligned at the time) non-reverse Gibson Firebird with (maligned at the time) P-90's. When I had to sell these instruments to get cash, I refrained from selling the Firebird to a guy who wanted to rip the P-90's out and put in humbuckers, as was the custom at the time.
Nobody cares about the logo on the headstock but some musicians and guitar aficionados. If I'm playing in front of people and get a good sound with my plywood Behringer, anyone who knows anything about guitars is going to think "wow, he's getting such a good sound from that cheapo Behringer." If I'm getting a just okay sound out of a copy guitar with a Gibson logo on it, is anyone going to look at it and think "sounds okay, but wowee a GIBSON?"
Moreover, the existence of counterfeit major brand guitars actually leads to guitar heads wondering if maybe you're playing a fake. Nobody is going to suspect that my beloved Peavey Foundation Bass is a fake because nobody would fake a Peavey. But they might squint at a sunburst Les Paul wondering if I'm actually playing a real one.
The only context I can think of where it might be appropriate would be in a tribute band where you don't want to risk taking your real sunburst Les Paul out of the house.
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50 minutes ago, HOOK said:
This? I couldn't work without it...🤣
I actually like the drum grid view. It's setting it up and keeping it set up that harshes my mellow. Thanks to the advice and encouragement given by some of the people in this topic, that seems to be more often now.
I've learned better when it requires a chicken sacrifice rather than a goat, etc.
I ain't hatin', I think it's a fine editing paradigm, one that not all other DAW's have. If the drum grid was poop, I'd forget about it and wouldn't whinge about how tricky it is to get it to work.
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On 11/29/2024 at 10:51 PM, Mr No Name said:
Checked my account and had 10 credits in there, so applied and paid £7, worth it I think. That was my black friday purchase.
Well done. Now the thing to do is to sit down with a project with some audio or sequenced notes and run through a few presets in each of the 38. I should have done this sooner than I did. Anyone who does this is guaranteed some "holy crap I didn't know it could do this" moments. And we should all get the most we can from our tools, right?
It's not a collection of simple "does what it says on the tin" FX as you might expect from something they let people use for free. As is customary with MeldaProduction, what you see on the front panel is the tip of an iceberg.
You have a "tuner" that is polyphonic and also a realtime pitch-to-MIDI converter. You have a spectrum analyzer that lets you call up analysis profiles from different genres to compare with your song's overall balance. You have an EQ that lets you apply each band's settings to harmonics of the center frequency (great for taming cymbal pings). You have a compressor that lets you create custom compression or expansion curves using spline curves.
They all share some features like the ability to analyze the level of incoming audio and adjust their output level to match it so that your ears are less likely to get fooled.
I don't usually talk about it much, but with the bundle upgrade, the audio processors let you combine parameters within each plug-in, so that for instance you can make a single control that adjusts both filter Q and frequency at the same time. And then automate it. That's what the "multiparameter" system is.
Some of them will now also let you modulate any parameter(s) you want. If the upgraded plug-in has that feature, you can choose any parameter (or multiparameter) and control it with an LFO, triggered ADSR, MIDI CC, or follower, where the parameter will change in response to input level. There's built-in oversampling, with separate settings for playback and render. Very importantly for those who think the stock UI's are frumpy, you can change theme (text, control style) and color. I switch to Argon theme and have my own custom color set that I exported and apply to all of the plug-ins. The Online Preset Exchange will let you download presets that other users have created. Unfortunately, a lot of rubbish presets got uploaded years ago when they were trying to encourage use of the feature, but (especially with MAnalyzer, MLoudnessAnalyzer, MRhythmizer and the synths) there are some gems. I think the Preset Exchange is an overlooked feature with a lot of unused potential.
Upgraded or not, all of them are able to process in LR mode, MS mode, and left or right or mid or side only (and separately). So anything that affects stereo imaging can be switched so that whatever differences were being induced between left and right would now be differences between mid and side. This can make for some....interesting psychoacoustic effects and is one of my favorite tricks.
Late in the v. 16 release cycle, they quietly introduced "machine learning" which means that you can choose a parameter (or multiple parameters, or combined parameters) and have the plug-in analyze the file and somehow adjust the parameter(s) based on what's in the file. I don't understand how this works at all, but welcome to the land of MeldaProduction, where there are always features that you ignore because you don't understand what they do or how to use them. There are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, years in a life, etc. and at least for now I will opt out of figuring out how my flanger settings might benefit from "machine learning." But it's there if I ever get bored with everything else and want to mess with it.🙄
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You might look into BandLab. The platform is built for that sort of thing.
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On 11/25/2024 at 10:04 AM, jkoseattle said:
especially in the last year or so, I've been drawn to ambient electronic music, the likes of Biosphere and Stars of the Lid and that sort of thing. I don't like beats, I'm only interested in the atmospheric ambient stuff.
Nice! There's a geek-out brewing here.😊 I'm into that kinda stuff, too. Not yet familiar with Biosphere and Stars of the Lid, but am checking them out now. It's a genre that's deliberately less about personae, so it can be hard to keep track of individual artists. I have a Google Keep page open all the time on my computers so that I can write down the names of songs and artists.
Where are you listening to it? I have some favorite labels and streaming stations. 9128.live is the streaming station for A Strangely Isolated Place Records and always has good stuff. Soma.fm's Deep Space One, Synphaera, and n5MD channels are good for inspiration. Also Drone Zone for the hardcore stuff.
I like some pulse and glitch thrown in, but sometimes, full on drone is my jam.
There are some instruments, freeware even, that I think will get you started.
My first piece of advice is to go immediately to Soundpaint and download their sampler/player and all of the free libraries. Adastra Ambiences and Free ASMR are particularly good, but all of them are useful. The engineers and sound designers are fans of ambient drone and their products are great for producers of such. Even if I hadn't gotten them for free, I'd consider their stuff to be the absolute top of the heap. I did purchase a library.
IMO, you could get going and do some great stuff with just what Soundpaint offers for free, but of course, there's plenty more out there.
Somerville Sounds Prototypes are great, especially Antiquarian Echoes.
For Kontakt (and Kontakt Player), there are gems in Fracture Sounds Blueprint Collection. Specifically Gentle Strings and Feedback Guitar, but listen to them all, they're free.
Westwood Instruments Roots Series has some goodies, I especially like Untold Strings.
Quiet Music have some freebies I've found useful.
Sample Science have a lot of stuff, I'd say their best freebie for ambient is Abstract Crystal Pads.
Elektronik Soundlabs has the classic Atmos 2. Don't know why it's no longer on their website, but they have other things like Padscape Lite and Arctic Dreams Lite.
Last but in no way least, A|A|S Swatches includes over 750 sounds, many of them pads and atmospheres from their Chromaphone, Ultra Analog VA-3, and String Studio VS-3 synths. These are some of the classiest sounds around.
For processing and rolling your own, there are plenty of FX that you can use to take your favorite sounds and warp/mold them into ambient instruments. As @rsinger said, long delay as used by, Eno and Fripp, who picked it up from Terry Riley, was one of the starting points. Long delay with just a tiny modulation of the delay time is one of my favorite tricks, and one you can do with the Sonitus delay, or really, almost any delay.
Try taking some of your sustained orchestral sounds like strings, wind, and brass ensembles and running them through Valhalla Supermassive.
Unplug.Red's CRMBL is a favorite free pitch shifting delay.
Glitchmachines' Fracture and Hysteresis are great for adding some texture.
Of course, this is just what you can get for free, my favorite plug-in houses for oddball FX are Glitchmachines, Unfiltered Audio, and Freakshow Industries. I have licenses for most of their products.
That should be enough to get you started.
When creating ambient music, I find that timbre is a hugely important element for carrying the feelings and intent. I call up a favorite instrument, usually one of the ones on this list, then start browsing patches and seeing if a timbre inspires something. Let my fingers wander. There's as much "discovery" in it, if not more, than there is "creation," if you get me. Rather than hearing a sound in my head and using my musical tools to bring it to life, I find myself listening for what the timbre has to say and then directing or molding it.
Other times, I'll come up with some changes on piano and then go in search of the perfect timbre for them.
It's so much fun, like playing in the sandbox was when I was a kiddo.
Please let me know what you think of my suggestions.
Also, maybe we could take this to the Production Techniques forum now that you have more tools?
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On 11/22/2024 at 1:45 AM, PJH said:
the difficult to see vertical grid lines which cannot be altered
This, along with smaller font sizes for text in multiple places, is my number one gripe about Sonar. Close behind is the invisibility of the Aim Assist line in PRV in the light schemes.
I like the new look, now when I open Cakewalk by BandLab, even with one of my own custom themes, it looks clunky by comparison. I spent many hours creating Cakewalk themes and I'm fine with no longer being able to use them. Sonar just looks so much slicker.
But those damn measure and beat lines! It was great when we had control over them via the custom colors preference. Mine were very contrast-y, red on a dark background. Now I can barely distinguish them, I have to use the Aim Assist line and the ruler to try to line things up, and sometimes I miss by whatever the smallest snap size is and don't realize it until playback reveals that it's not in time. So trying to line it up visually has failed in that case and I have to rely on another sense.
I've asked, begged even. I don't understand why the feature was removed and I don't understand why it still hasn't been restored. I don't recall that people ever got into trouble due to changing the color of their grid lines.
Thanks for speaking up about it.
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On 11/22/2024 at 7:21 PM, Amberwolf said:
I was using a 42" but the power supply blew up inside it so until I figure out what the parts used to be and replace them, or hack a different PSU in there, I'm stuck with the smaller harder-to-read one
www.badcaps.net
If it was built in the mid-to-late 00's it probably finally succumbed to what I call "cap cooties." Back then there was a manufacturing debacle that resulted in many millions of electrolytic capacitors being manufactured with a bad formula. Supposedly one company's formula for dielectric goop was stolen and widely distributed, but it was the wrong formula. Whether this one company deliberately put the bad formula out there knowing that their competitors would copy it remains unknown.
But the result was that a lot of devices were made with electrolytic caps that will fail within a few short years. I've lost count of the number of devices I've repaired just by replacing electrolytic caps from this era. Multiple large TV's and monitors bought for peanuts on CL because they would only power up intermittently, network switches, a PreSonus Firebox, even a few Fender Hot Rod Deluxes.
It's always in the power supply, because those are the caps that take the worst beating. But chances are you can either replace half a dozen electrolytics on the PS board with Mouser or eBay caps, or find a rebuilt board on eBay and get decades more use out of your 42" monitor.
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On 11/21/2024 at 12:01 AM, Jerry Gerber said:
Thanks Starship Krupa for steering me in the right direction.
I knew it had to be something to do with caching or pre-loading!
Thanks for posting the solution once you figured it out.
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On 11/22/2024 at 5:50 AM, Andi Rock said:
I want to add modules there and be able to expand them or see them somehow.
Works in NuSonar on my system. You have to click on the ProChannel button up at the top of the Inspector to see it:
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2 hours ago, JnTuneTech said:
it sounds like you are both referring to the PRV display when the MIDI track's output selection is using a mapped instrument definition, and one that has the programming note @Starship Krupa mentioned to force display of the notes as percussion.
Yes, he/I did mention that, but at the time, I hadn't tried it in years because I don't use external drum modules. And it doesn't seem I can get it to work with soft synths.
I since sorted it out and can use that display if I want, but since I can only get it to work when mapped to an external port, it's not really useful.
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On 10/26/2024 at 4:40 PM, Starship Krupa said:
my favorite visual drum editing view in Cakewalk-land is the diamonds one I can only get if I map to an external MIDI port.
Hmm. I haven't tried to do this in years, and now I can't remember exactly what steps I did that ended up with the colored diamonds.
I'm sure I saw a third drum editing display type, it wasn't the rectangular blocks of the standard PRV or the squares-with-velocity tails of the Drum Pane. And I recall that it only showed up when I had the MIDI channel output set to 10.
Can't find anything about it in the Reference Guide except a passing reference to specifying that an instrument is a drum instrument in the instrument definitions maker. I stumbled upon it by accident while flailing, but since it didn't output to a virtual drum synth, it wasn't something I could use.
@Base 57, am I misremembering this? Isn't there a third display for drum editing? And I don't mean in Staff View. It was very crisp and used (green, I think) diamonds to represent drum hits.
Was it something my mind conjured up out of frustration?
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2 hours ago, Sal Sorice said:
Hope you find a good home for it! I've not played any high-end digital pianos - have an Arturia Keylab 88 mkII whose action is OK - but it pales in comparison to my Steinway Model B.
My Whitney pales in comparison to your Steinway B. Most of the pianos that have ever existed pale in comparison to your Steinway B.
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6 hours ago, craigb said:
Oh, and I would check schools and churches to get rid of that baby grand! 😉
I have asked around plenty, including a couple of nightclubs. Despite the Great Bay Area Exodus of Creative People, I still have a small network of musicians and tossed it out there. It would probably cost over a couple of hundy to move it. The harp and pinblock are in such good condition, I know the poor thing has decades of useful playing life in it.
The issue is that digital pianos have gotten so good and so inexpensive. A piano teacher can bring a piano into a student's home that has great action and that never goes out of tune. They can also turn the volume down so as not to annoy the other occupants of the house.
I feel like I'm trying to give away a slide rule. Or heck, even a pocket calculator. You might be required to use a dedicated calculator when taking an examination, but other than that, why would anyone own one?
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I still have the made in Jasper, IN Whitney by Kimball baby grand I picked up on Craig's List for the cost of moving it.
I've been trying to give it away for quite some time now because I'm planning on moving in the next year or so.
Nobody on Craig's List or Freecycle wants a free baby grand piano and I refuse to send it to the dump. I can do a lot of things, but I can't send a piano to the dump. It's in the classic state of "in great shape, just needs to be tuned."
BTW, mechanical pianos do of course have "latency," we just compensate for it. I mean, unless sound comes out of yours the instant your finger touches a key....
The time between when you first start pressing the key and when the hammer strikes the string is latency. It's just that humans are so good at compensating for that sort of thing. Same with kick drum pedals.
Really, the time between when your brain tells your hand or foot to move and the time you hear the sound always has to be compensated for, whatever the instrument. But somehow, after a couple of tries, the brain starts getting it right, even when controlling 4 limbs plus voice. Amazing, really.
Start a metronome and your nervous system has to relay the sound of it to your brain, which then has to tell your hand what to do to produce a sound on your instrument, with your hand starting a good way away from the instrument itself. I start most drum strokes at least 12" from the drum head, yet I can land them right on the beat, doing rolls across the toms and hitting every one in time (or close enough that it sounds like it). All the calculation needed to do a roll across the toms and then a cymbal crash, all in divisions of a second, landing really close to the division. A 16th note hi hat pattern at 120 BPM happens at what, 1/8 of a second intervals? 125mS? Excuse my math being off. But whatever it is, a drummer can do that and also throw in snare hits with the right hand and kick pedal with the right foot and maybe some hi hat pedal accenting with the left foot. Yikes.
All because we can predict the future, at least to that degree.😄
Latency to us usually means "a lag between the time a key on my controller hits bottom and the time I hear a sound made by my synth," but there's a lot that happens before that.
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So, initial impressions of Tactic 2 based solely on browsing my way through the presets.
I have to say, I think I like the original Tactic presets better than the ones that come with Tactic 2.
They seem to be really into showing off how it now has reverb, delay, chorus, and filter effects modules that can be placed in buses in addition to the more glitch processing oriented options in the sequencer. They may be trying to do something for dub style processing. Every one of the presets I've checked so far uses at least two of these new bus effects.
Tactic 2 can do anything Tactic can do, obviously, because it's basically Tactic plus an fx bus with half a dozen modules. But since they have more to show off, it seems like the presets do that at the expense of the craziness that they got up to when limited to reverse and pan and so forth. The Tactic presets use panning a lot more, sounds ping-pong and pan around all over the place. The Tactic 2 presets keep things more down the center, with the sides filled in with the new modulation bus FX.
I guess what I'm saying is that if, like me, you sleep better at night knowing that you have the Glitchmachines collection, which will do more to warp sounds than you could ever possibly come up with ways to use, you should (and doubtlessly will) drop a couple of tenners to update two of their top of the line products. But with Glitchmachines, do not abandon the previous versions. You had one Tactic, which was the most amazing glitch breakdown in a box the world has seen, and now you have another Tactic, which is similar, and with more sounds. But you still have Tactic. It's like getting an artist's next album. No doubt there are people who cherish Hysteresis' original even weirder control layout. This isn't Ozone 10 and Ozone 11 we're talking about.
Preset quality is an important consideration because Glitchmachines' products rely heavily on presets to show the user what can be done. It's so difficult to work out how to get deliberate results with them. They're kind of unfathomable, which is a big part of their charm. I suspect that most users feel that they'll never get to the bottom of what they can do even with their simplest products, and that is a GOOD thing.
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6 hours ago, audioschmaudio said:
And it's so funny because the original post's title contained zero information what the deal was about.
Sure, that was part of the joke/teasing. But the original post title turned out to be useful, because it made me search for a sale on Glitchmachines trying to be a smartalec. And then I found out that my favorite Glitchmachines instrument, Tactic, was now at version 2 and I bought it.
I'll get Quadrant 2 as well. From the look of things, Glitchmachines found a reverb algorithm they liked and added it to some of their plug-ins. Reverb isn't usually a part of glitch processing, you're trying to make it sound artificial, not natural, but putting the glitching after the reverb....we'll see.
Plugin Boutique, Glitchmachines, Glitchedtones, and anyone who got good software from all of the sales posted can thank @laglag. A coupon deal turned into a coupon deal, two seasonal sales and a version update alert.
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My recommended purchases are the MFreeFX bundle pro upgrade, which is 61% off at $20, and the MEssentialsFX bundle, which is going for$118.
First time buyers may use someone's referral code to get 20% off their purchase, as well as getting a $10 credit for signing up for their newsletter.
If you're a first-time buyer who's been waiting for one of these sales to upgrade your FreeFX bundle, you'll end up getting it for about $8 if you apply your newsletter sign-up credit and use someone's referral code. IMO, the upgraded FreeFX bundle is the best deal in the plug-in business even when it's not discounted. The plug-ins included are better than many companies' top of the line equivalents, and usually include features that you won't find in any competing product, like the harmonics feature in MEQualizer. The dynamics display on MCompressor is my favorite of any compressor, including MeldaProduction's other compressors.
Also, if you already have some of their stuff, especially if you got them at deeper than 50% discount, log in to your account and check bundle prices. Before I got my MComplete license, I don't think there was ever a bundle sale that came up where I wasn't surprised at how low my upgrade prices were.
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It appears to be the season of it.
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22 hours ago, aleo said:
I'm grateful to Starship Krupa for bringing the Drum Map feature to everyone's attention in the Forum. I hadn't worked with Drum Maps for more than a year, but I remember the fun I had working with it back when I was using SONAR X3, and I began to get some new ideas for using percussion in some of the compositions I've been working on. That's why I think it's important for the powers that be in Cakewalk to make some improvements here. If the feature is fun to use and fairly easy to learn it will attract more users and new customers.
This.
One of the reasons that I keep bashing my poor head against this is that when I can get it to work, the Drum Pane is great to work with. I prefer a view and workflow that's designed to work with percussion, showing "hits" rather than rectangles of varying length.
The way that you can rearrange where the instruments are vertically just by dragging and dropping is handy (I like to group kick, snare and hats together), being able to mute or solo individual instruments is useful, the way the notes/hits show the velocity right on them is very useful, and easier to see than the plain piano roll.
I know the general consensus is that it's easier to just use an instrument definition, and when I talk about the feature, I usually only talk about having the note names on the left, but the Drum Pane has more to offer than just note names. About the only thing I'd change would be the bland grey-on-grey text and background of the note list. Something easier to read.
I also like the "external hardware on channel 10" version and wish that it were easier to access.
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On 11/15/2024 at 12:19 AM, Ben Henderson said:
The only thing I haven't tried is to remove the networking/internet. But I need that active, it's required for my needs.
Try it anyway. Just try it, you don't have to leave it that way.
If you turn off your network card and find that the problem goes away, then you know exactly what you need to fix: your network card (or some service that's using it).
I'm very much one to leave the network on while I'm DAW'ing, but I had a situation once where the network card WAS the problem. I saw it on LatencyMon and traced it back to having installed Intel's (newer) network card driver on my Dell. I rolled it back to Dell's driver and my latency issues went away. Latest is usually greatest when it comes to driver versions, but not always. Sometimes, especially in tightly integrated systems like Dell's, the computer vendor's driver, even if it's a rev or two older than the chip vendor's driver, will work better.
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If RC-20 is included, this would be a great time to pick it up. If you are trying to get a sample to sound old and lo-fi, RC-20 is the shortest route.
I thought that I could do what it does by using an effect chain, and I probably can, but RC-20 is purpose built for it and takes a minute or so to dial in.
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One of the periodic blowouts from one of my favorite plug-in houses. I'm upgrading Tactic to Tactic 2 and Quadrant to Quadrant 2.
If you're a fan of their work, the version 2's are usually worthy upgrades, especially at $10.
I find using their products to be a good exercise in letting go of the desire to understand and control every aspect of sound creation. They don't just reward experimentation, they demand it.
For those like me who get their products confused with each other, Tactic is sort of the drum machine (that's how I use it anyway, it's my breakdown-in-a-box) and Quadrant is the one with the virtual patch cables and 50 different modules you can arrange into any order in 12 slots.
I have every plug-in in their line-up except for Subvert, the "distortion," because my computers threatened to quit if I installed another distortion plug-in. I negotiated a special dispensation for bundles, but I don't want to anger them.
With these, I can take any sound and warp it entirely beyond recognition, and with some of the FX' presets, you don't even have to run sound into them, they oscillate enough on their own.
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On 11/15/2024 at 8:53 AM, David Baay said:
I think '"Add Drum Map" would be more accurate.
"Add Drum Map" or "Use Drum Map," either of them would be way better than "New Drum Map."
If needing to look in an entirely different area of the program (Inspector or Console) doesn't stop the inexperienced user, then "I don't want to make a new drum map, I want to use an existing one" is waiting for them to trip over (in two senses of the word).
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The Ed Straker-mobile was NOT a "bad" 70's sci-fi vehicle. It was the perfect ride for a long country drive accompanied by Nick Drake's sister.
To make sure this stays off-topic, here's a great Peter Cook and Dudley Moore parody for Gerry Anderson fans:
What's your favorite song of all time & why?
in The Coffee House
Posted
Whoa, hadn't listened to that one in decades, forgot how great it was. Thanks for mentioning it.
Caribou came out at the height of my appreciation for Elton John.
50 years ago, the hidden-in-plain-sight clue of "grow up straight and true blue" sailed right over my head. Adds more poignancy and clarity to the mystery of what triggered the tragedy. Now the picture it paints of this kid maybe just trying to have a beer in peace at a blue collar bar and maybe getting shoved around for his mannerisms....the story is more complete.