Starship Krupa

Would really like to have a .BUN file of an offending project. That way those of us who would like to help can try it on our systems and see if we get similar results. If we don't, well, that narrows it down. For those saying that it's not all that long a delay, I'm thinking maybe you don't do a lot of comping? When in that process, I'm usually constantly starting and stopping the transport to make sure the edits line up, are inaudible, etc. Those "little" delays became really annoying, got me out of the creative flow. This is not "much ado about nothing." At the time it was happening, I had two other DAW guys looking over my shoulder, one a Pro Tools guy and the other Ableton Live. They both agreed it would drive them nuts to the point of making it unusable. I do encourage the OP to get with Windows 10 unless they know for sure that something critical to them is incompatible. Letting a system age like that is just inviting trouble.

I'd like cool new stuff to come at a faster rate, but I don't think Cakewalk is falling behind. The first couple of years were a "target-rich" environment, where they had a many-years-long list of deferred bug fixes, code optimizations, and feature additions that had already been put into the pipeline. I'll go with "working on something big." For instance, it's been made pretty clear to the devs that the best feature they could add to give the program better uptake with the dance music segment is a built-in sampler. That's a pretty big job. Or maybe it's something else like the vaunted "chord track," or one of the existing areas of the program known to need some love like Staff or Matrix. Or better UI scaling. Anyway, I think they harvested a lot of low-hanging fruit, and now it's going to be something with a longer initial development cycle.

Go here, and nominate your favorites: https://www.kvraudio.com/readers-choice-awards/2022/ As usual, they've ghettoized programs that are free licensed, but I "misunderstood the rules" and nominated Cakewalk in the categories I thought were appropriate. After all, it's been said many times that Cakewalk isn't really free because you have to register for a BandLab account to install and use it. 😄

Best place to ask that question and get answers is in the Q&A subforum. It can be done.

I totally misinterpreted your reply! Apologies. It didn't sound like you to say that about the last 5 years of development. 🤪

Wow, they sure are in mine. The customizable Smart Tool was huge. The modifier keys for dragging clip boundaries, huge. Ripple Edit indicator? Check. Nested folders? We like. Improvements to the audio engine and screen updates are pretty universal. Maybe you meant something else....but the thing is, a lot of times, the smaller fixes or feature additions are forgotten about because they're how the program should have worked in the first place. I forget that they were added because I find it hard to image the program being the old way. Maybe someday I'll catalog all of what I consider the "smaller" features that have been added since I started using Cakewalk, but that make it so much more pleasant and smooth to use....

Probably depends on whose piano roll and editing tools you like better.

Real talk: depending on how girly she is, one way to help her understand might be to gently offer that musical tools are similar to a woman's wardrobe: in need of updating from time to time. And just as difficult for the other gender to understand; I've been rocking plaid shirts and jeans for 45 years. When I started, it was "Laurel Canyon hippie rocker," then 10 years later it was punk (you get to keep the jeans longer because huge rips in them are part of the look), then 5 years after that the pinnacle of the Seattle look. If I want to switch to business casual, I grab the least faded jeans, switch to a button down and press it before I put it on. As Joe Jackson famously said "it's different for girls." The age old reply to "why do you need so many guitars?" "Same reason you need so many pairs of shoes, each one is different and used for different occasions." Just don't be a dick about it like you're throwing it back in her face. If she gets that it's a tool that you use in your (ahem, second) favorite pastime, well, the new version will let you do more and explore new things.

I thought that might be what you meant, and I'm right there with you on that. Also agree about iZotope's suites. When I got my first precious license for Ozone Elements 7 (was that the first one with the Mastering Assistant?), it was humbling. Just running through the presets, they just slew my best efforts. Then I decided to go John Henry on it and worked on my chops and mastering chain until I liked my results better. Fortunately it worked out better for me than it did the legendary Mr. Henry. It seems to me, though, that as audio (and video) production software matures, these leaps forward are coming farther between. I used to work in the software industry, then IT, and I kind of got bored with computers about 20 years ago. That was the point at which they stopped doing new things that interested me. We had full screen first-person video games, we had DAW's that would do audio and MIDI (I had a paid SONAR license back then!), and we could edit videos. Word processing, spreadsheets, online communities, laser printers, color printers, all that stuff that revolutionized what people could do. Once those were all in place, I stopped getting excited about computers themselves and just went about using those tools. The big innovation is that the price of admission has dropped so steeply. Those were the things that interested me, and now I can have them literally for free. My last 2 DAW computers were ones that people gave me. They both still run Cakewalk with aplomb. I don't know that I'd want to try much video editing on the Core 2 Quad system, but it's now in the hands of a friend who will be recording with Cakewalk and a load of plug-ins that I handpicked to run well on it. It ran Vegas Pro 10 reasonably well, and again, I never scratched the surface with that version.

I neglected to mention earlier: the Meldaproduction MFreeFX Bundle* has (among 36 other excellent tools and processors) a very comprehensive loudness analyzer called MLoudnessAnalyzer. As far as limiters, my favorite safety limiter is KHS Limiter, from the (also freeware) Kilohearts Essentials Bundle. Barebones, lightweight, easy to configure. (*If you ever want to upgrade the Melda bundle to the pro versions (which gives you access to some nice-but-not-crucial features like the ability to customize the look of the plug-ins and internal upsampling), they put it on sale for 50% off a couple of times a year. You can combine that with the 10 euro bonus you get from signing up for their newsletter and also with their 20% first purchase discount (use my referral code, MELDA1923165) and bring the cost for the pro upgrade down around USD11.)

I agree in some cases, in others, less so. In the case of iZotope's suites, they're known for applying the latest analysis methods to automate as much of the process as they can. So if you want what they have to offer, part of the price you'll have to pay is resource management. Either get a system that's powerful enough to run what you want to run without a second thought or get good at managing what resources you do have, by freezing tracks, waiting until mastering time to use mastering FX, etc. Me, I don't really care much about iZotope Ozone. I didn't even install it on my new computer. It was great when I was newer at this, but it's been the case for a long time that I like how my mastering sounds better than what Ozone comes up with. I guess my philosophy is that, regardless of the generation of the software, if it's doing something computation-intensive, well, that's just the way it is. If I want to run it, I have to have a system capable of running it. When I start to scrutinize is with established types of software. There's no reason that I can think of for a basic compressor or EQ to push the limits of my hardware. Maybe that's part of what you mean by "generation?" Not so much "version" as "what it will do?" I learned early on to steer clear of Acustica. I was trying to run things from them that were just compressors and EQ's, and it was bogging my system. Sorry, Acustica, but there are plenty of great-sounding compressors and EQ's out there that barely touch my system resources. The reverbs that I consider to be the best-sounding I've heard (Exponential) have been around for a long time and are not too hard on resources. I only use one or two instances of reverb in my mixes anyway. I'd even go as far as to say that if the software is still being updated, and those updates are mostly maintenance updates, it's not unheard of for the latest versions (as opposed to generations, I guess) to be less resource-hungry, due to code optimization. Looking at Cakewalk itself here. Nothing has been added to Cakewalk in some time that would justify it becoming more resource-hungry in basic use, and indeed, it runs more efficiently than it did 4 years ago on the same systems. If some high-powered data-crunchy analyze-y functions were added to the program, I would expect greater resource usage when using those functions, but not at other times. It's good business for software companies to pay attention to system requirements. The more systems out there that are able to run a program, the more potential customers there are for it. Especially in a field like music that often attracts people with less disposable income. It used to be that we'd have to just suck it up whenever a new version of Windows (or Office or whatever) came out because it would usually require a fair horsepower upgrade, but when was the last time that was the case? Windows 11 supposedly leaves behind a lot of computers based on hardware, but my understanding is that it's not due to performance requirements, it's due to nervous-nellie security requirements. "Um....yeah, we're gonna need you to install those TPM modules. Great. Yeah." The computer industry has reached a point, both with software and hardware, where we can actually choose whether we want to upgrade. The audio software I have is already beyond my ability to fully learn before I finish my time here on this lovely planet. Unless there's some innovation that results in the audio sounding much better (something I never rule out), I'm okay for a while. Even though my interest in games has picked up in the past 6 months, the kind of games I'm interested in run like a bat on my aging computers. Slower-moving adventure-y things that don't require a fast frame rate to play.

Glad I could help you sort it out. I knew about the issue because I had a project or two that exhibited it at one point. Well done to narrow it down to a plug-in; it took me a lonnnnng time to figure out that that was what was causing it. It didn't occur to me to hit the "FX" button. Since changing plug-in parameters will flip Cakewalk's "dirty" bit (the indicator that says a save-worthy change has been made), my guess is that somehow, these plug-ins are changing their own parameters and reporting that to Cakewalk. It would make sense with a plug-in that like an analyzer or dynamic EQ, constantly adapt to whatever signal is going through them. Reporting to the host that something has changed in the plug-in when it actually hasn't is what I would call a bug. The only events that should trigger that reporting are ones where the user is interacting with it by changing control states or values.

I have so many good plug-ins that I can adopt a policy where if a plug-in can't run well on my i7 6700 system, it's not the computer that's going to get replaced. I don't know if it's that I'm good at winnowing or what, but my i7 3770 system is adequate to the task of being my main DAW, and was so up until a couple of months ago. When I audition plug-ins, I look carefully at their performance, how well they use resources. The ones that use too much processing power don't make the team.

This issue is probably caused by having File/Advanced/Auto-save set to save after every X changes. What happens is that some plug-ins constantly report to Cakewalk that something has changed, even multiple times per second, so if you have Cakewalk set to auto-save after every 5 changes and this plug-in is reporting a change 5X per second, Cakewalk will save every second. I just made those numbers up to illustrate it, it seems that this Waves plug-in is reporting changes even more often. So as a workaround, you can turn off the auto-save every X changes on projects that use the plug-in, or, since it's a metering plug-in, bypass it when you're not reading the meter. Whatever, an analysis plug-in shouldn't be reporting ANY changes to Cakewalk, so if turning off save every X changes makes the problem go away, Waves need to be informed about it. I don't know if there's anything that can be done on Cakewalk's side; they're probably at the mercy of the plug-in reporting accurately that it has changed something.

Avid continues to innovate.

I think I owned for months before I really put it to the test and went "WHUUUTT??" Last couple of years I went on an acquisition rampage for basically anything that said "Glitchmachines" or "Unfiltered Audio" on it. All of those buffer-y glitch-y sound design-y delaythings. And somewhere in there I got a license for Objeq Delay for free, I think it was a PB buy anything get this deal. I only gave it a surface glance, nice to have another delay, not too sure how their acoustic modeling fits into a delay but whatever. Then, weeks or months later, I remembered that I had this thing and tried it on a source I was trying to warp in an interesting way. WHOA, who's that inside this plug-in? Turns out it does the crazy kind of thing that those other companies' monstrous buffy-glitchy plug-ins do, but gets more usable results more quickly. Not sure how to put it, but I find myself thinking that I'd like to put some mangle on a sound, the Glitchmachine or UfA effect will be "too much" whereas Objeq Delay definitely weirds it up, but in a more euphonic way. if that makes sense. Abacab probably knows what I mean. The other ones are definitely powerhouses of sound altering ability, but they're harder to control, and, especially, their presets sometimes result in sounds that have nothing at all to do with the source sound, they would sound the same no matter what you fed them. The presets in Objeq Delay are weird enough, but more instantly usable and attractive. For the kind of rhythmic complication that I like to add, the thing is so good at it that it can feel like cheating. Like, "I want to do something really interesting with this sound," then I throw on Obeq Delay, and seconds later, one of the presets with a touch, if any, adjustment is perfect for the song. What it does is so interesting that it feels like it should be harder to accomplish.

I can definitely understand wanting to find a new tool, but QUICK in that kind of situation. Not a Sonar user at that point, but when I read the bad news I had a "great disturbance in the Force" moment of empathy with the userbase. You know how much I participate here (including upstairs), a DAW isn't just the program, it comes with a community of users, a history, a culture. That was Ed? Beyondcakewalk.com? I just tried going there and I guess he finally let the domain registration lapse.

15 minutes of asking themselves some basic questions and then writing down the answers. 1. What do most of the people who run our program want to do? 2. What is the most direct, practical path a program like ours can take to allow them to do it and get on with their lives? My guess is that 90% (or greater) of the time someone runs Melodyne because they've heard one or more clinkers and want to identify and re-pitch them so that they will be in tune with the rest of the song. To that end it should analyze the track, give you a display of the notes it identifies and a visual indication of which ones have landed on an A440 12-tone scale and how far off any of them might be. Then it should put you right into dragging the notes onto that 12-tone scale, with the snap set to snap TO the scale. OPTIONALLY, you could choose a more restrictive scale like major or minor, and a tuning other than A440. Or adjust the snap strength or switch the snap into "by" mode or whatever. The software should be able to do all of that in less time than it took me to type it, but for whatever reason, well, when you start up Melodyne Essentials, it's like trying to pet a sting ray that's been having a bad day. And someone gave it Ritalin to try to mellow it out. Maybe you thought that because you owned the "essentials" version that you'd be getting a simplified version that would just do stuff like the above? Ha HAAAA, you've got to be kidding. No, what you get looks exactly like the full version except that the features that you don't get don't work, but you won't learn this until after you try them. They're all still there cluttering up the UI and menu system. I have a vague memory of running it and it starting up in snap "by" mode and spending the better part of an hour trying to drag one bum note onto the scale grid and being confounded when it would not stay put. It never occurred to me that it would start in snap "by" mode (and with the snap sensitivity set to CROWBAR) because who would ever, ever want that, and if even if they sometimes did, it's preposterous to consider that the program would start up with that as the default behavior. The thought was so ridiculous that my brain rebelled against hosting it, even provisionally. (For those of you in the "but I always want to nudge an out-of-tune-note by a rigid semitone so that it's still out-of-tune except now it's precisely a semitone flatter or sharper than what it was" camp, be quiet. If you say anything I will immediately think less of you, and I suspect I'd not be alone in that. Protect your reputation and play along) I do like the visual metaphor they use, where syllables are golden turds connected by arteries. And you can click on one of the turds, sorry "blobs" and it will sustain the sound while you're dragging it, that's swell indeed. Why must that simple brilliant thing be wrapped in so many metres of WTF? If Synchro Arts has managed to come up with something with a more transparent workflow (I see that it at least retains the turds 'n' arteries visual metaphor), I think that Celemony do have a lunch that's there for the eating. I won't truly be happy until Meldaproduction puts it in their FreeFX bundle.

BTW, Objeq Delay is one of my most very favorite FX and if I didn't already have a license for it, $10 would be nothing to get my hands on what it does.

I've wondered this myself, and I do think there are situations where it happens. First, there are just people for whom the $119 difference doesn't mean much in terms of impacting their finances. Or someone's trying to deliver a big project on a deadline, they decide (maybe are told) that the thing they really need to bring it home is this or that bit of software? And they don't stay "on top" of the deals the way that we do? Dedicated followers of this forum know that chasing audio software deals is far from "free," in that it takes an investment in time and attention. I had a friend who was working on a project at my place several years ago, and he determined that an effect I sorely lacked in my collection was a good Leslie speaker emulation. This was several years ago, when both the freeware FX scene and my dollar investment in plug-in licenses were much smaller. He was going to buy me one, and I'm sure he wouldn't have agonized over trying to find one on sale. I can't remember how that worked out, I remember that we didn't wind up buying a Leslie emulation. Someone putting together a "turnkey" DAW system for a client might not pay much attention to shaving dollars off the cost of plug-ins. The kind of people that things like the Plugin Alliance subscription plans and Waves Update and Meldaproduction CompleteFX bundle are made for, maybe? Where the fees for a single project more than cover the cost of a couple of plug-ins. I get the idea that most of us who follow this forum closely are more toward the "hobby studio" side? Things that I buy to do hobbies are different from things I buy to do my job, although I have enough of a frugal nature that I grub for the best deals possible on everything I buy. For me, it's a fun game where the object is "get the highest quality/utility tools for the least amount of money." It's a subset of the larger hobby. Not everyone's like that. Some people don't consider spending an hour researching how to get something for $10 instead of $40 to be time well spent. I find it enjoyable, but some people think it's a chore and would rather be doing something else with that hour. Or they're too busy, maybe getting paid for their time. And then....there are people who just don't know better. We all know that if we want something, where to check to make sure we get the best possible price. Most people aren't as savvy. Once a week or so I check in at the Cakewalk Reddit and answer a few incredibly basic tech questions about Cakewalk for people who somehow weren't aware that there's this whole forum with years of solved problems in it. This despite the fact that in the program's main menu, under Help, there's a direct link to the forum. Every couple of weeks, someone will post in the Instruments and Effects subforum asking if anyone can suggest a freeware this or that to use with Cakewalk. Of course we already have a thread each for freeware instruments and effects in that subforum, dozens of pages of information.

The UI looks a bit less baffling, which would, indeed, make it better for me at least. My time spent with Melodyne has a really unfavorable ratio of "time spent figuring out how to bludgeon the software into doing what I want (usually nudging a note or two into pitch)" to "actually doing what I want to do with the software." Usually it takes me the better part of an hour to do the first and then minutes to do the second. My experiences with using it have been so unpleasant that I don't use it enough to get good at it, and I have to climb Mt. Learningcurve every time. A lot of that time is "elbowing my way past features that aren't available in my version." I enjoy it more when I imagine that it's displaying the entrails of the person responsible for its menu system.

Good to see you around, Larry! Sheesh, yeah, he had nothing better to do than attack the credibility of someone who was trying to help people with RA-100's, and that's sad. He could have chosen to examine the schematic and figure out whether it was possible for the protection circuitry to affect the audio; after all, it only "requires a basic understanding of discrete transistor circuits." That would have contributed to the topic. But it's not about contributing anything useful, it's just trying to take someone else down a peg. You notice that he bragged about how his output protection circuit worked for decades? Well, duh, I mean, that circuit is only in there to protect your power output stage in case of abuse, like shorting the speaker wires and turning it up. The best protection is not abusing your amp in the first place. Turn the power off before you repatch. If you repatch and no sound comes out, don't turn up the volume in the hope that sound will come out if you just dime it. 😄 I suspected that I would attract a pedantic hater or two, due to the fact that it was my first ever post in the forum, and that's a flag for certain types to go on the attack. Since I hadn't previously "proven" myself, I'd naturally get a "who the hell are you?" So I was ready for him. The best torture you can deliver upon someone who's trying to pick a fight is to not take their bait. I appreciate that you found it "relentless." 😂 "Oh good sir, I bow before your greater knowledge and will keep you talking until you yourself reveal that you're full of crap." It was Socrates' favorite ploy, and it pissed off the powers that be so much that they had him put to death. His final jab was to say "a life unexamined is not worth living" and slam the cup of hemlock. It's not about "belief," either, at least on my part. I'm very skeptical about things like this, and I would love to believe that all solid state power amps are created equal. To learn otherwise complicates things that I would rather not have complicated. I'd rather handwave any possible differences between hardware as inaudible, but my ears betray me, even at age 61. Who wants to be concerned that their audio gear isn't giving them the best performance that they are capable of hearing? I just want it all to work. As for measurable results, at least in this case, I could probably find them if I knew what to look for. There's this school of thought in audio circles, it's the other side of audiophile lunacy coin. It says, like this guy did, that if you can't measure it, you can't hear it. Which assumes that when measuring something, you know what to look for, that your measuring equipment isn't pulling a Heisenberg on the unit under test, etc. There are all sorts of things that can happen in an amp that can't be measured by putting a sine wave or square wave into it and examining the difference between what's going in and what's coming out. It also tends to assume that any amp that was designed by someone who worked at a company and was mass-produced is somehow automatically properly-designed, and designed to be neutral. Having worked in the electronics industry, I have no idea where this trust comes from, but whatever, it's a trust that I definitely do not have. Here are the published specs for the RA-100: THD: 0.05% THD @ 1kHz (8 ohms), 0.19% THD @ 1kHz (4 ohms) Frequency Response: ±1dB 20Hz - 20kHz Noise: 100dB below full output Damping Factor: 200 @ 8 ohms You can get that by, as I said, running a sine through it and comparing the results. It says nothing about intermodulation distortion, group delay, phase distortion, slew rate, transient response, crosstalk, any number of factors that have been scientifically proven to be audible. We test amplifiers with simple sine waves and square waves, but we listen to them with incredibly complex material with a wide dynamic range. A sine wave tells you nothing about how well the amp will respond to something like a cymbal crash, except that it will be able to deliver the highest audible frequencies. That information could be smeared like crazy if the amp has phasing or intermodulation distortion issues. If it has group delay issues, the different frequencies could arrive at slightly different times, all in various states of in or out of phase. 55 years ago, people still believed that it was impossible to hear the difference between tube amplifiers and solid state amplifiers, that if anything, solid state amplifiers should sound "better" because they had greater frequency response and less measurable distortion. People who claimed otherwise were accused of magical thinking. And as we know, "magic" is sometimes "science" that hasn't been explained yet. Now we know why tube amplifiers, for instruments as well as hi-fi, can sound objectively better depending on the application. Part of why we know this is that so many people preferred the sound of tube amps that we got busy and figured out why that is. I've previously experienced this with computer audio interfaces. I happily used a pair of Presonus Firepods for about 8 years until one fateful day I found a Presonus Studio 2|4 on Craig's List for $30. The idea for getting such a small interface was to have something to use with my portable devices. I hooked it up to my main DAW system to test it and....OMG. The stereo image sounded like it extended about 2' past the outer edges of my monitors, sounds in the middle had better Y-axis image, I could hear all these little sonic details in the background.... So I went online and did a deep dive into how this could be possible. It was just playback, which should have sounded identical; the big difference in audio interfaces is the input preamp circuitry....right? Because everyone "knows" that all that DAC's do is convert those ones and zeroes into audio, and since the THD is negligible and the frequency response extends beyond what dogs can hear, any differences are due to placebo effect from my having a shiny new toy. Well, a Gearspace thread from around 2010 from a Presonus representative mentioned that the Firestudio, which had just come out and was the successor to the Firepod, would sound way better mostly due to the introduction of "JetPLL" to the clocking system. Which led to my discovery of this paper from the inventor of JetPLL, which has been standard in prosumer interfaces since it was introduced around 2010. Turns out that people can hear differences in jitter, it's measurable and audible. Here's Presonus' ad copy regarding the Firestudio's introduction of JetPLL: "JetPLL™ ensures the highest converter performance possible, resulting in better stereo separation and clearer more transparent audio." Which is exactly what I was hearing, before I saw their ad copy. I even found an old page on Presonus' site offering factory trade-in credit on Firestudios for owners of Firepods. I guess they didn't want them out there. Anyway, it was so audible to me that I unplugged the Firepods and went in search of an 8-input Firewire interface from the JetPLL era. Found a new-in-box Sapphire Pro 40, and sure enough, its playback sounds great. Now I'm sure that prior to 2010, all manufacturers claimed that their interfaces played back audio perfectly, and had the test results to show it. So if that were the case, why does every mass-produced interface made since then include a JetPLL chip? It's not as if manufacturers go in search of licensed technology to add manufacturing cost to their products. Turns out that a stable clock is critical to a DAC's audio performance and that clock stability took a huge leap in the late 00's. I don't like to play this card online for various reasons, but I've been a professional instrument amp repair guy for 15 years. Had to retire from it due to health reasons. I've designed and built guitar amps, both for my own use and on contract for other companies. One of my products was very favorably reviewed in Guitar Player magazine. Before I had my own company, I worked in the engineering departments at a variety of audio companies, including Orban Associates and Nady Systems. In my early Silicon Valley days, I laid out integrated circuits using the old amberlith-and-xacto-knife method. I am not a newbie hobbyist at electronics. One of the reasons it's not good to play that card with someone like that poor fellow is that they'd only come back at you with "well if you have all that experience then you must know...." It would just be playing their one-upmanship game. I don't need to flash my cred. If you were in my area, I could hook up both my modded and unmodded RA-100's and you would find the difference stunning. You'd have no trouble with a blind A-B test.

A recent favorite freebie of mine is Monster Drum. It's sampled, with 20 different kits, from acoustic to electronic.

There's an extensive list of free instruments on this forum. One free virtual drum box that I like that hasn't made it to the list yet is Monster Drum. W.A. Production and the BandLab Assistant are good sources of free loops.

There's a website dedicated to documenting these: https://www.kissthisguy.com/ Legend has it that Jimi Hendrix made a joke out of it and would go over and give Noel Redding a peck on the cheek after delivering the "kiss this guy" line. As a lyricist who labors at least as much over the words as I do the music....I know intellectually that most people pay much less, and in some cases, no, attention to lyrical content, but I pretend otherwise. I guess I write lyrics for myself and for the minority of listeners who, like myself, pay a GREAT amount of attention to lyrics. The words of some of my favorite lyricists have been life-changing, life-saving (and as a depression sufferer, I will say that that is closer to literal than you might think), and have helped form my outlook on life. My childhood was during the 70's singer-songwriter boom, and the words of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot ("If You Could Read My Mind" good lord), Carole King, and others gave me insight into adult feelings and relationships, things to watch for as I got older. It still weirds me out that people treat "Fire and Rain" as this campfire singalong thing when it's about his friend dying from a heroin overdose, the breakup of his band due to drug abuse, and his own recovery from addiction. The "Suzanne" in the song was a junkie girl who he met in rehab at the Austen Riggs psychiatric hospital. When he sings "the plans they made put an end to you," that "end" was Suzanne dying from a heroin overdose. Taylor couldn't even do the song live for years because it broke him down emotionally. Even as a pre-teen, the line "I always thought that I'd see you again" haunted me, realizing that in life, there might be people I'd lose permanently. And sure enough, unfortunately not uncommon in the music scene, it proved prophetic in adulthood. And it comforts me to know that I'm not alone in losing people I love to addiction. It helps me deal with the loss. Going through breakups? "If You Could Read My Mind," "Too Late Baby." Yikes. Cathartic. And, uh, Joni, thanks for giving me insight into the minds of commitment-phobic narcissistic women. Brilliant artist, wouldn't want to date her. 😂 And I encourage music fans who have a hard time making out the lyrics of their favorite songs to look them up and find out what they really say. I say this because it's been so rewarding for me. You can find out that REM's "The One I Love" isn't a love song, it's a vicious middle finger to an ex.: "another prop has occupied my time" are not words of love. People play "Every Breath You Take" at their weddings, completely oblivious to the fact that it's a threatening statement to an ex-lover informing them that he's going to stalk them. I guess brides just focus on the "I'll be watching you" line and think how sweet it is that he's pledging that he'll be watching them forever. The aforementioned Tom Petty was a brilliant lyricist, he's worth checking out in this way. Anyway, having said that, I freakin' love Mondegreens and have plenty of my own, some of which I like better than the actual lyrics. 10CC's "I'm Not In Love" (which, BTW is kind of the opposite of the REM song) in the break where the studio receptionist says "be quiet, big boys don't cry, big boys don't cry..." I was convinced that she was saying "break boys, take five." Y'know, talking to the band, telling them to take a break. 🤷‍♂️ Depeche Mode's "Policy of Truth," despite being a favorite song, I still hear it as "all upon a sea of truth."