Starship Krupa

I suspect development resources are devoted to Cherry Audio synths at the expense of Mixcraft.

Acoustica are very much a "sell no wine before its time" outfit.

Fascinating question. The scenario you lay out actually sounds appealing to me. I recently became aware of Snoezelen, and applying that kind of AI to your environment to enable highly personalized snoezelen rooms seems like a logical step (I want one NOW). My answer: what's left to value in human-created art at that point is the communication I mentioned earlier. Your scenario is one where music (and decor) serve the purpose of complementing or changing your mood. But it does nothing to give me a glimpse into another person's feelings or worldview. AI will have to go pretty far before it can come up with something like "Rhapsody in Blue" or "Subterranean Homesick Blues." As you said, AI could be fine for "wallpaper" music, but when it can come up with words and music that can make me cry like "Casimir Pulaski Day" or exhilarate me like "Teenage Riot," by that time the AI would have to be sentient. At which point, we're back around to music being created by a living, thinking creature.

Here is proof that this forum also needs an eyeroll reaction.

😁 Wellll, that's been up for debate for a long time, hasn't it? I already mentioned Andy and his soup cans, there's Marcel Duchamp's Fountain from 1917. That's the one where he bought a urinal and submitted it to an exhibition whose policy was to accept all works by their members. The moment you see it or think of it and ask "what the hell was he thinking, was he pulling a prank, making a statement, or being a dick?" then it's made you think about a lot of things that you don't normally think about. Further complicating things with Fountain was Alfred Stieglitz taking an excellently composed black and white photo of the urinal. If the urinal wasn't art, what about the photograph? Can of worms, ain't it? The source of art and how humans see it are only as important as we want to make them. I remember when The Monkees weren't a "real" rock 'n' roll band because they first met each other while trying out for roles playing musicians rather than by placing ads in the local underground weekly or however "real" bands were supposed to form. Now we appreciate the artistry involved, from the individual members as singers and players and from the writers and producers. The Monkees' music is great pop music, excellently written sung, played and produced. Whether they like the music or not, nobody cares about the backstory that once mattered so much that they made a whole movie about their being "manufactured." Here's what Wikipedia says about "art:" "Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas." So by that definition, an algorithm can't produce art....unless you consider the creation of the algorithm to be the qualifying "human activity." In my view (which has been and remains subject to change at any time), art is about one person or a group of people expressing something to other people that must be expressed in that way (the idea/feeling may be "the way the reflections of the lights on the puddles looks breaks my heart" or it may be "I wonder how people would react if I applied my fine art skills to painting a stack of food cans."). The big outstanding questions: who is the one doing the expressing? Who is a part of the group doing the expressing? What about art that someone does only to please themselves (plenty of that on my hard drive!)? Does it even matter at all (except for copyright enforcement)? Who gets to say whether it matters? I don't think these questions can even be answered definitively, only raised. I dunno, can we compare it to the advent of photography as an art form? It once was if you wanted a portrait of yourself for the office lobby, you sat down in front of a painter with training in that fine art. Then it became that all someone had to do was set up a tripod and push a button. Ah....but. The person pressing the button has to point the camera in just the right direction, get the lighting set, and very importantly, wait out the subject's changing facial expressions until just the moment that the person the photographer "sees" will be captured on film. Then they take multiples and choose the best one. When hip hop began to gain more widespread popularity, we as a society had to make decisions about ownership rights. My favorite argument on the producers' side said that collage was a well-established art form and that hip hop songs based on samples from a variety of sources were similar to that sonically. Someone has to first listen to all of those bits of music, then have the idea that they might go together to form something else, then actually put them together, and so forth. I guess we finally settled on the idea that if your collage contains so much of someone else's work, you must credit them, which seems fair enough. Maybe everything that's meant for human consumption needs some sort of human input and intervention in order to be useful. Even if it's only editorial. Someone has to listen to that algorithmically-created song and decide whether to keep it or to let the algorithm do another "take." The description you gave of someone telling Alexa what kind of chamber orchestra piece they wanted....it made me really curious to hear what the AI would make of that. I like melancholy chamber orchestra music. 😄 Very enjoyable discussion, BTW. Thanks for raising the questions.

I looked it up and it seems that they moved the copy/cut/paste commands to the bottom row and are labeling them with icons instead of words. Is that the case on your system. If so, that doesn't seems as bad as eliminating them entirely.

WTF indeed. You've got to be kidding me! I use context menu copy/cut/paste CONSTANTLY. Has Microsoft given some rationale for that? Why remove functionality?? Ah, the endless impulse to "fix" things that are so not broken. I'm not running Windows 11. Even my newest build (from Craig's List parts) doesn't meet the requirements to run it. Now I'm glad for that. By the time I get around to running Windows 11, context menu copy/cut/paste will have been restored, even if it's with a 3rd-party shell add-on.

This. No offense intended to anyone reading this who does trailer music, but 99% of it is already indistinguishable cookie-cutter/paint by numbers wallpaper. Insert bass drop here, toss in a few braams. If it's a comedy or romantic movie, insert appropriate cliches. If a piece of music can be credibly replaced by something pooped out by a computer, then how good was it to begin with? Ah, but you see there? It still takes a human to say that a human made it! And at that point, ta-dah, it becomes art. We can thank Andy Warhol (and other pop artists) for bringing us an understanding of that. A soup can is just a soup can until you paint a realistic picture of them and stick it in a gallery. Then it forces whoever looks at it to think about it in a different way. To the extent that art is about communication, that is a person or group of people trying to communicate an idea or feeling, even if that feeling is "buy this thing" or "see this movie," AI is no threat. All it can do is poop out stuff. It still takes human interaction, even if it's just weeding out the stuff that doesn't serve the purpose. Generative/process music has been around a long time. In that case, the artist is the person(s) who created the process or algorithms or whatever it is that generates the finished piece. We offload things that are "grunt" work, and then it goes further. There's stuff built into good ol' Cakewalk that I'm sure that purists would have sneered at in times past. The Arpeggiator, the randomization elements in Step Sequencer (yes, the Step Sequencer has adjustable probability for each note), Snap to Scale, Drum Replacer, Quantize, Humanize. Each of those could provoke: "Learn to arpeggiate! Learn your scales and modes! Learn how to mic your drums and do takes until you play it correctly! Learn how to play to a click! If you have to 'Humanize' something, it wasn't "human" to begin with!" Each of us here has technology (FREE technology, check Peter's thread about free sample libraries and instruments) that allows us to create orchestral music without having to hire an orchestra or even write a note of sheet music. We string canned loops together and call it our own, even if every note was played by someone else. We've somehow managed to handle the copyright issues there. Ain't nothing new under the sun.

5 years ago there was a backlog of more serious bugs, by which I mean crashers and the like. Those were mostly addressed in the first 6 months of BandLab ("in the first month of BandLab, the bakers gave to me: one Ripple Button, PRV note durations, and a promise of future stabiliteeee.") What remained/remains are the ones where some feature or other just doesn't function as intended, and I consider those to be annoyances because they can usually be worked around. Things like automation node placement not obeying snap settings. Annoying, but if you let your cursor snap over, the node will land on grid. Still, needs to be fixed. Those are the sort of bugs that remain.

Cool! I hope so. Sometimes all it takes is another pair of (virtual) eyes and a good question to prime the troubleshooting pump, right? I do install the Logitech software for my beloved multi-button mice, for the reason that it allows me to program the side buttons as Ctrl and Alt. Very handy for copying, splitting, and zooming in Cakewalk. So far, no issues except that Logitech seems to want to make it harder and harder to program a button for double-clicking. Odd, because for me, that's the most useful mapping. Middle button=double click.

What I meant was that the physical iLok will survive system rebuilds and the issue of hardware changes causing the system to be considered “offline” by iLok. It’s only if you want protection against the loss or destruction of the iLok dongle, that’s when you get the ZDT.

They may not want to be seen as endorsing the products mentioned in the topics. All good, as Peter said, if you find it useful and know of a permanent freebies that deserve attention, bumpit. I think at this point you can Google Cakewalk freeware and those topics will show up On the first page, which is great.

Unfortunately not true; neither the Freeware FX nor the Freeware Instruments threads have ever been stickied. It's not that tough for me to keep them bumped, but it does sometimes lead to silly "where can I get freeware instruments and FX to go with Cakewalk" or "why don't we have one of these for instruments/fx (depending on which one has scrolled too far)" questions. I've asked the forum powers that be twice to sticky them, the first time I was told that they didn't want to start the forum off with too many stickies, then the second time got no reply, so I just dropped it. If you do contact TPTB, maybe put in a good word for those threads; they deserve it, IMO. I've found some key plug-ins there, like Soundpaint. And any products listed there are at least supposed to be vetted to work with Cakewalk. The fantasy when I started them was that someone could be able to put together a decent DAW system with top quality software all for free, a fantasy that has come true in the years since the forum went on line.

You won't: just make sure to deauthorize your licenses via iLok Manager while your old system is still accessible and they'll be instantly available on the new system. The only time there's a hassle with iLok and/or Waves is when your licenses are machine-authorized and then that machine becomes inaccessible. This can happen even if the system doesn't even go offline, sometimes all you have to do to trigger it is install a new drive, and that can somehow break iLok and/or Waves' system fingerprint. I had this happen on my secondary (portable) system several months back. Had to use my Waves get-out-of-jail-free card and then contact the manufacturers of the iLok machine-authorized plug-ins for license resets. I tried doing the license resets through iLok Manager; all it does is send the emails for you, to whatever email address the manufacturer has registered with iLok. In the case of AIR and SONIVOX, I eventually had to contact them myself via their web support form, which added an extra 24 hours to the recovery process. I will say this: if you have more than a handful of iLok-licensed products, and being without any of them for 24 hours would cause a hardship, just pry open your wallet and get a physical iLok. Figure the cost spread out across however many iLok'd plug-ins you have and it's a bargain. If all your iLok'd licenses are for AIR and SONIVOX, you can even get a cheap original iLok that will work with those. I have one in the bottom of a drawer in my studio room. The only plug-ins I have that do require an iLok 2 are of course the ones that are most important to me, my Exponential reverbs. 🙄 (I mean, really, there's some kind of tech built into the newer dongle that their plug-ins can't do without?) Moving your Waves licenses to a removable drive is a great use for an old 64 Meg thumb drive or SD card.

It's great! Yeah, upbeat funky vibe. Something about the vocal production and the bass tone reminds me of Eddy Grant. Even people on here who aren't much into EDM, I'm sure they'll appreciate the performances, mixing, and cool production flourishes. And of course, because we're plug-in hags, wanna know what goodies you used. As for FX, there's a nice sparkle on there, and of course we need to know what VSTi's were not harmed in the making of this tune.

Ha! I just recommended that in the Feedback Loop. Inspired by this thread.

Hmm. Not yet. They're catching up, though. The language translation sometimes makes things a little odd, and I prefer CM's British cultural focus (with the interviews with the classic 80's synth pop pioneers), but as far as technique articles, they're doing fine.

There is one reaction I think is missing from the forum, which is "love." There really oughta be an extra level of "like." Someone posts about a good freeware VSTi, that's a "like" (or thanks, depending). Someone gets their music on the radio, we get an update with a long-requested feature, that's a "love." The blue heart icon is already used for "like," how about a red one for "love?"

Congratulations! And for heaven's sake, post a link to where we can listen to the song. I guarantee everyone in this thread is dying to hear it. You can't be shy any more, it's been on the radio! Not a popular genre? We're musicians, we can hear the quality in any kind of music. And I'll chime in with saying that the times I heard my band on the radio (or being played by the DJ in my favorite bar) were very special ones. And I hope to do it again, as indie rocker turned electronica guy. Soma.FM here we come (I hope).

I'm very moved by this. I'm facing some pretty difficult challenges in my life right now and it's really great to hear. However, I have to say, I saw it more as my asking a favor of Peter than offering to do one for him. The track is a well put-together take on "Strawberry Fields," and he actually has a cool-sounding raw rock 'n' roll singing voice that I envy. Some EQ carving and creative compression to give it space and make it pop in the mix (and maybe some trippy reverse reverb and automatic doubling to give it an update to that late 60's Beatle/Martin feel) and I suspected he wouldn't be so down on his singing ability. Lennon's vocal performance on the original isn't exactly virtuoso, he's sort of "talking in tune." I haven't mixed someone else's material in years. I enjoy mixing as much (sometimes more) as I do composing, playing and recording, and I haven't done a rock song of my own in years. I offered because I liked the material. So there. ❤

How could I forget Orchestools? ROMplers and Sampletank instruments based on the VSCO2 libraries. Strings, Brass, Woodwinds and more. Made with love by @ilir bajri.

I have never seen anything like that. The worst issue I've had with cursors in Cakewalk is how often a cursor will "stick" in one mode. All I can offer is a few troubleshooting suggestions that you may already have tried. Try setting custom cursors in Windows, or if you have already done this, go back to the standard Windows set. Completely uninstall all Kensington (or any other) mouse/trackball control software and let Windows use your pointing device as a class-compliant device with the Microsoft driver. Sometimes mouse software gets cute with adding its own cursor set, and that may have somehow gotten corrupted. Other than that, wow, mystery.

Is it the Windows system error beep or is it coming from Cakewalk? Does it still happen if you mute your hardware outputs (over at the right hand side of Console View)?

Sigh. Yeah, the biggest drawback to having only their soundpacks. As synth presets often do, they have tons of baked-in reverb so that they sound amazing right out of the box. I usually turn off an instrument's own reverb in favor of using one of the top notch reverbs I already have, such as Exponential Nimbus (or Stratus) or MTurboreverble. If A|A|S allowed only that, I'd have all I need, but I'm sure A|A|S know that it's an incentive for people to grab their full products.

This is a great list. I'll add Soundpaint's Free Angels and ASMR. If you're doing ambient drone, these plus the 1928 Steinway will give you some amazing sounds. Also, the Meldaproduction MSoundFactory Player has the excellent Monastery Grand piano. For anyone who wasn't aware, there's a (curated) topic on this forum for favorite freeware instruments in general: