Starship Krupa

Cool. Love to hear what you do with it. I love messing with arps for my 90's-inspired ambient stuff. If you check out "Sensation," on my Bandcamp page (link in sig), I used retriggered overlapping arps. I found an arp pattern in Hybrid 3 where if I slid the notes earlier by slightly differing amounts, I'd get cool-sounding (to me!) lags and variations. All variations are still following the project tempo, but they sound like they're dancing around each other. It adds a random element. I started out playing it myself on my keyboard, recorded it, then nudged the note starts around. Couple that with a sync'd delay....things get....interesting. It's a strange sensation. 😁

I noticed that about 30 seconds after starting it for the first time. Jam Master? Riff Builder? I guess I'll find out how to work it via YouTube!

Workspaces are benign until someone with Cakewalk's UI set up just the way they want says "hmm, Workspaces, I wonder what Basic looks li....oh sacred schnit, what happened to my Control Bar layout, my custom keystrokes, half of the menu items...." And then switches back to "none," which is the number of custom key bindings, window layouts, and control bar settings that survived the last time I did it. Fortunately, I'm pretty into rejiggering Cakewalk's UI, which has made me diligent about backing up my custom key bindings, color sets, themes, etc.

Vanishing key bindings is usually the fault of loading a Workspace that clears/overwrites them. I recently did this myself while browsing the workspaces that come with Cakewalk. Fortunately, I had a backup of my bindings. The other issue is the UI freezing up for several seconds when opening the Preferences pane for Keyboard Shortcuts. As yet unresolved, but it's harmless other than being annoying.

Right. I think the "presets" that exist in the arpeggiator's preset browser consist of the arpeggiator's current settings, including whichever pattern is currently active. Arpeggiator patterns come in .PTN files, 1 pattern to a file. There are .ZIP's on the Technetos site that include all 500 individual .PTN files. Cakewalk can open them via the Open Preset menu. Presets that use them can be saved and recalled, but you'd have to repeat that process 500 times to have them all available for future projects. I don't know about anyone else, but I might not want to see or hear another arpeggiator pattern after the first hundred or so. The files in Alesion ARP Presets.ZIP save us from having to go through that miserable process, as they're already in Cakewalk's preset format, therefore ready to go complete with all intended settings.

My hat is off to him. He's still contributing in the current day.

@Simeon Amburgey, joyful noise! I love wooden roller coasters. Which one is it? Smaller than Thunder Run. Looks like a park on the smaller side....but not Hoosier Hurricane or The Legend.....hmmm.

(Crossposted in the Deals subforum because there's not 100% overlap in readers) @scook (who else?) has unearthed a file that I've been searching for for literally years: The Alesion Arps . He's been kind enough to host it for download by the Cakewalk user community. The link is to the top level of Steve's page, because it has a bunch of other stuff that Cakewalk users should know about. It's the first link on the page. These were created in the late (lamented by many) Project5, by a user identified only as "b rock." The website goes into greater detail about the theory behind the creation (and possible application) of these patterns. They were apparently derived from the patterns built into an (unnamed) Alesis hardware synth. To install them for use with Cakewalk, place the Alesion ARP Presets folder from the .ZIP in your C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core\Arpeggiator Patterns\ folder. The next time you start Cakewalk and open the built-in arpeggiator's preset browser, you'll see the new folder, and within it will be 33 subfolders, each with 15 or more new arpeggiator patterns to use. Wish we could edit them, but for now we can at least double the number of ones available to us.

@scook (who else?) has unearthed a file that I've been searching for for literally years: The Alesion Arps . He's been kind enough to host it for download by the Cakewalk user community. The link is to the top level of Steve's page, because it has a bunch of other stuff that Cakewalk users should know about. It's the first link on the page. These were created in the late (lamented by many) Project5, by a user only identified as "b rock." The website goes into greater detail about the theory behind the creation (and possible application) of these patterns. They were apparently derived from the patterns built into a certain (unnamed) Alesis hardware synth. To install them for use with Cakewalk, place the Alesion ARP Presets folder from the .ZIP in your C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core\Arpeggiator Patterns\ folder. The next time you start Cakewalk and open the built-in arpeggiator's preset browser, you'll see the new folder, and within it will be 33 subfolders, each with 15 or more new arpeggiator patterns to use. Wish we could edit them, but for now we can at least double the number of ones available to us.

I did not. Thanks for pointing it out! Steve is the Keeper of Lore and I usually make every effort to absorb what he says.

Yes, indeed, as I said in my original post: Patterns. Patterns are what I want to be able to create, alter, save, share, etc. Presets, which are the various settings of the arpeggiator including whatever pattern you have selected, work fine. They are as straightforward as you found them to be. Nobody answered because the answer to my questions is "no." We can't create our own custom patterns unless we have access to an old copy of Project 5. And nobody has a copy of the file Alesion ARP Presets.zip. Not even the Wayback Machine.

I'll PM you the details.

If flat is what you want, check out the custom themes linked to in my sig. The new Transport module I'm working on now is inspired by the flat Studio One transport controls. Generally, if there's a way to remove 3-d shadows and gradients, I'm working on it. I also came up with what I think is a cool way to handle rollovers.

Will check it out. I am going through a similar thinning of synths I never get around to using in favor of focusing on the ones I use most. The big 4 are xPand!2, Hybrid 3, Vacuum Pro, and A|A|S Player with a couple dozen soundpacks. The sound design plugins I'm referring to are the Unfiltered Audio, Glitchmachines et al sound warp FX. The kHs freebie bundle went from handy to essential with the recent addition of a bunch of those. Their tapestop and reverser are fine examples of those FX. The pitch shifter is as good as any I've heard.

Srsly, if this were 1974 that guy would have a nationally syndicated FM radio show.

Then there's using or borrowing a Mac:

Give 'em a shot. One of the things I do is make the button images larger where I can. A large number of the stock themes' buttons don't use the full image. They leave background and transparency around the edges.

Somehow they associated Cameron with bass notes? 😄

For those who snagged this, how much different it from the green version? Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor is one of the FX that survived my recent thinning.

Well, to be clear, when I said "all" and mentioned those manufacturers, I didn't mean that I've Pokemon'd all FX from each of them. I have the 3 processor Lindell channel strip thingie and elysia master and mpressor. Expo Nimbus and R4. I have the Melda FreeFX, Essentials, and MixingFX bundles. I have 9 T-Racks I got as freebies. I also kept Trackspacer, because nothing does Trackspacer better than Trackspacer. I'm still thinning out the collection. Yesterday I waved goodbye to Slice and Carve EQ's. They're great, but other FX in my collection are just as great and don't have the drab UI. We all have our zone when it comes to collecting/hoarding/utilizing. My plug-in browser isn't a museum, but I do find attractive (elysia, TRacks) and elegantly high tech (Melda, Unfiltered) GUI's inspiring. If something looks cool, it makes me want to learn how to work it. On the other side, with the kHs freebie package, they're so stripped down that they are great to grab when I want the simplest possible thing. The limiter is great to use on a track where I'm auditioning presets that might suddenly blast. They're like little one-trick stompboxes. When is enough "enough." At one end, there are people who probably don't even know or care that there are processors other than the ones that came with their DAW. At the other end is...Bapu. Who wouldn't love to have Ed's collection of audio software? No limits. My issue with my DAWs' built-in FX is that they're usually tied to the one DAW in one way or other. The Sonitus FX, while sounding great and having good high tech (but tiny and pale), UI's, are DXi. Only Cakewalk can host them. Studio One's are DAW-locked, as are most of Mixcraft's. Same with Live. If I'm developing skills using a given set of plug-ins, I want those skills to carry over from DAW to DAW. The MFreeFX bundle is a good virtual "ones that came with the DAW" collection (and then some) for people who want to stay in the "only what I actually need" zone. I'm still a magpie for sound design FX. I also kept most of my restoration/turd polisher FX. Whenever I jam with people, my iPhone is sitting on the table recording it. I also take outdoor videos and use in-camera audio.

This is certainly proof: They get it. Plug-ins as Pokemon cards. I'm subject to this too. Maybe it's a "spectrum" thing? This. When it comes to mixing FX, I agree. There are new ones that feature "AI," ones that analyze a track and put an instant results whammy on it, but for compressors, limiters, clippers, transient shapers, de-essers, EQ's, console emulators, saturators, delays, modulation FX, analyzers....they've been done to death. Everything in this area that comes out touts "analog mojo" or another faithful emulation of an old piece of hardware. I'm not down on people who get stoked about these types of FX. If someone wants every possible flavor at their fingertips and can remember how to use them, that's beyond my capabilities. If you read my post from when I built my new DAW system....I got rid of hundreds of mixing plug-ins. Keepers: all my Meldaproduction stuff, the kHs freebie snap-ins, elysia and Lindell, some other PA odds and ends, some bx stuff, all T-Racks, all iZotope Exponential Audio reverbs. Still a pretty deep bench. The only new FX that pique my interest at this point are the wacko sound design-y ones like Unfiltered Audio, Glitchmachines, Freakshow Industries, Valhalla, Venom and Sphere from W.A. Rhythmic filters and glitchers like Stutter Edit. Objeq Delay, Sigmund. Also spatial FX. I want to do 3-D sounds a la Telefon Tel Aviv and Tipper. Now when I open Cakewalk's plug-in browser, it's a relief not to see all the mixing FX that didn't make the cut. I felt some weird responsibility to "give them a chance." Maybe it'll be magic on some track. No, it's just another damn EQ, it cuts and boosts frequencies. I'll try to get good at using the handful I kept. My poor brain can't keep track of too many mixing FX. That said, if you're into sound design and can dig a modular workflow, BYOME and TRIAD by Unfiltered Audio are must-haves at $25. G8 is also the best gate on the market, although the version you get in the CM bundle has about 90% of the functionality of the PA version. There's nothing in the current PA catalog I'll want until the next Unfiltered Audio thingamabob.

I was an AMD fan waaaaay back in the 386-class years, when the 386DX offered about twice the performance at 2/3 the cost of the equivalent Intel (of which there really was none). They made Intel realize that they couldn't sit on their asse(t)s, that they had a lunch that could be eaten if they didn't watch it. Then ATI were really quick with optimizing their video drivers for DirectX when Windows 95 came out. I was doing system builds as an IT person at the time, so that was very important. I had to transition a multimedia software company (Macromedia, now Adobe) full of legacy Windows for Workgroups 3.11 systems to Windows 95. If the system had an ATI card, I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that the user would get a pleasing performance boost. I spec'd all new systems with ATI cards. More recently, though, with DAW work, and being more engaged than the average user (beta tester for multiple DAW's), I've noticed that most developers' personal and build systems are Intel Inside. I was also having issues with excessive latency that vanished when I swapped my AMD video card for an nVidia. nVidia seems to be on top of the content creation market, with their Studio drivers and NVEC. As recently as 5 years ago, I couldn't find information on 2D performance about any video card. nVidia get big props for paying attention to that segment of their market. Gamers aren't the entire market. I'm sure the aforementioned devs have AMD systems for testing, but that's different from a daily driver. So my armchair impression (as incorrect and outdated as it may be) jibes with the one attributed to @Jim Roseberry. AMD if you want a ferocious gaming rig at a good price, Intel (and for me, nVidia) if you're optimizing for DAW and NLE work. However, I see that Jim's "Red Dragon DAW" model has an Ryzen 9 5900x under the hood. Maybe since I cited him, he'll weigh in on this thread(ripper).

Sounds like a thing I'd like to be able to use. I wonder if it belongs to Roland. Looking at the product history, it seems to have dropped out around the Gibson acquisition?

Like most commands, especially menu commands like this, it can.

You're buying future capacity and the freedom to throw anything musical at it you can imagine without a second thought of whether it can handle it. I get this. I started playing drums a dozen years ago, started with a dumpster rescue Taiwanese kit. After I decided that I was serious about sticking with it (no pun), I started checking Craig's List for vintage pro-level kits. I wound up getting a 1970 Slingerland set. I wasn't "enough drummer" to "need" such a drum kit, but once I got it, any concern that the instrument might ever hold me back was out of the picture. I have a kit just like the ones Gene Krupa and Shelley Manne and Nigel Olsson played. It can do more than I will ever be capable of asking of it. I'll never have a nagging feeling that maybe I need a better drum kit. If I can't get a sound that I love out of these tubs, it is only due to limitations on my part, not theirs. That's a good feeling. I've dug some Celtic music in the past. One evening a long long time ago I was honored to have a beer with Alain Stivell after a brilliant concert in Santa Barbara. I was friends with a dj who was friends with the promoter.