bitflipper

My best friend is a graduate of Frankfurt AHS, class of '69. We met the following year in Munich, where we formed a band comprised of 2 Yanks and 2 Krauts. We Yanks couldn't legally play out without work permits, so we mostly played American service clubs, high schools and AYA clubs. However, our local guys also got us cash-under-the-table gigs at German college parties. Those were some chaotic Animal House grade alcohol-fueled bashes. Forget the stereotypes of serious, humorless Germans - it ain't so. Polite and friendly, yes. Reserved, no. I graduated from Upper Heyford AHS, in Oxfordshire, England in 1969. There were 33 students in my graduating class, not quite enough to populate a rock 'n roll band, so I joined up with four Brits who became my best friends during my time in England. We played some wild gigs there. Again, forget the stereotypes of staid, well-mannered Brits. There were always brawls. Most important to 18-year-old me, though, were the liberated ladies. It was an eye opener, having come there from uptight conservative Nebraska.

Very complex. But Cakewalk has already done the calculations and the data exists in there. It has to be recalculated every time a plugin is inserted or removed/unloaded. They just need to bring those numbers out to a dialog. I'll bet Noel could do it in half an hour. It's not like he has anything else on his plate .

ProTools does, too. But that's because in the early days they made you manually calculate PDC with the less-expensive versions of their software. Back then it was one of the reasons we found SONAR more attractive than ProTools, because SONAR gave you a feature for free that PT charged extra for. I think it's a great idea to add a dialog that lists those values, so that users can quickly see which plugins are adding the most latency. Obviously, those numbers are already there internally for calculating PDC. I'd go one step further and provide a report that can be saved as a text or XML file, listing every track and plugin used in the project.

While we're on the topic of keyboard gymnastics and stuff to challenge your brain... This bassist might not be an Asian cutie, but sheesh, he's certainly in the same league musically. His fingers keep up even when my brain can't.

Absolutely. Although sometimes she takes off into realms my brain cannot keep up with. Here she is 20 years ago, when she was still mostly down here in the realm of mortals.

How about some Japanese speed metal? Not my normal genre of choice, but I'd pay to see these guys.

Agreed. But let's not forget that Sgt Pepper was partly inspired by and greatly influenced by Pet Sounds, according to Sir Paul himself.

Me, too. I was married to one for 40 years. I just didn't want to be the first to point out how cute these ladies are. I'm sure they'd rather be acknowledged as musicians first, which I do. Which I surely do. But a sexy musician is way more interesting than, say, a sexy movie actress, which may explain why Susan Tedeschi makes my pupils dilate.

Just discovered these gals, and it's surprisingly addictive stuff. Cheese und Krackers, that bass player! All this is live. Well-recorded but not subsequently sweetened. The drummer's got pipes, too. It's bugging me that I can't identify the bottom keyboard...

I had one of those too! I couldn't afford the full package, though, which included the cheapest POS MIDI keyboard ever made. Still, I was convinced that it was the future of electronic music. Fortunately, MIDI was becoming standard and it wasn't long before I had a proper synth (Jupiter 6) with a MIDI port on it. That's what I first recorded with in Cakewalk 1.0.

Maybe I just need to be logged in. I'll create an account. Rather than be frustrated, I watched something else: The Mavericks on Austin City Limits. That there was some good sh*t. Great band. I never got too excited about them in the past, but this show was mostly in Spanish, and strangely not understanding the lyrics makes the music more enjoyable. French Canadian prog does the same for me.

Synchronicity. Minutes before seeing this thread I received a text message from someone who doesn't normally text me, saying "you gotta see this Brian Wilson doc". I've only caught the preview so far, since I don't watch television, but I understand there is a free app that lets you watch PBS shows. Will check that out.

I once read a Gearslutz thread where some pissant refuted a Dave Smith comment by posting "who the hell knows or cares who Dave Smith is?". I stopped hanging out on that forum soon after. This is for anyone who still doesn't know who the hell Mr. Smith was.

Off-topic, but since this thread is being visited by currently-performing musicians I have a decision to make that you all might have opinions on. I've been considering buying some portable stage lights for those venues that don't have any lighting. Some of the places we play don't even have a stage; they just slide over a pool table or move around tables and chairs. Those also happen to be some of our favorite gigs. But I hesitate to buy lights because it'll increase setup/teardown time. I already have a couple RGB pars, a DMX controller and cables, but haven't used them in years because it's more stuff to set up in addition to my rig, the PA and monitors. Fortunately, everybody in this band pitches in with the lifting, which is why I'm considering this purchase at all. Here's what I'm looking at - a pair of these, one for each side of the stage (or wood pallets, plywood on milk crates, or flat spot in the back garden), They pack up assembled, so the manufacturer claims a 5-minute setup time. They are wirelessly controlled, eliminating the need to string DMX cables. However, they'd only be used once or twice a month and the cost is not insubstantial. Your thoughts?

Thanks, but I wasn't in the service. To be honest, part of the reason I was living in Europe was to avoid being in the service. I was not a draft dodger; I registered for the draft on my 18th birthday like a good little citizen. Turns out that although they didn't bother drafting Americans who were living outside the US, they had no problem tossing them in jail for failing to get on the list. I did my part for military morale, though, entertaining the army at the EM, NCO and Officers' clubs, as well as hooking soldiers up with hashish. What can I say? I am a patriot.

Lugging gear in the rain and snow. Risking your life driving home with the drunks at 2:00 AM. Showing up at the venue with a 6-piece band and discovering a stage sized for a singer-songwriter with a drum machine. Meeting your FOH guy who introduces himself as a future metal star temporarily doing sound for free beer, just until he's discovered. Stairs. I don't hate anything about playing music, though. I'd play House of the Rising Sun one more time even without that $5 tip.

I think about this every time I see a classic band who've had to play the same songs over and over for 40-50 years. Especially the one-hit wonders. Even though the audience eats those oldies up, it's gotta be a chore. And they're really not allowed to take too many liberties with arrangements, lest the audience turn on them. My own philosophy is that you're an entertainer, period. Your one job is to entertain. Whatever makes the audience happy should make you happy too. If you don't feel that way, stay in the garage and entertain yourself. That said, the list of songs I won't play is too long to enumerate here.

I saw Deep Purple in Frankfurt in 1972! They performed the entire DP In Rock album, which I hadn't actually heard yet at the time. Blew me away, needless to say. Went and bought the record the following week. It was a Saturday night, which I remember because we'd gone to see ELP the night before, at their very first European gig, and only their second public performance since forming. Both concerts were at modest venues, no opening acts, no fancy lighting or fog machines, just straight up music. Cost of admission was ridiculous, something like 5 DM apiece (about $1.25 at the time). What a weekend that was! And I remember it vividly, despite having prepared for the show via some delicious gooey black Afghan for Deep Purple and more sensible Turkish plate for ELP.

For me it was a Jupiter 6. It cost more than my first band van. Still does today at current prices. I sold it along with a Juno 106, a Yamaha TG-33, Roland drum machine and a Pioneer reel-to-reel for $1,000 in the 90's. I can live with that today because I still remember the grins on the faces of the four young fellows, an aspiring band, who hauled it all away.

Yay! Feels good, don't it?

Those kinds of hangs are normally hardware or driver related. It happens when a process is waiting for something to happen, e.g. waiting for the MIDI interface to reply "got it!". After awhile, if that thing doesn't happen within a reasonable amount of time, you get a timeout. That means that either the software has decided that the driver isn't going to respond or the driver has decided that the hardware isn't going to respond. Either way, it's actually a useful safety mechanism because it avoids the kind of hangs where the process (or even the whole system) becomes unresponsive and you have to reboot. That doesn't necessarily mean your MIDI interface is at fault. You can get the same symptom from a weak spot on a conventional disk drive (this doesn't apply to your SSDs, though; it's just an example of how other hardware components can be at fault.) It could even be a faulty USB cable or USB port, assuming your interface is connected via USB (a long shot, though, since you don't seem to be having other USB-related problems such as dropped notes when recording MIDI). Sorry this is vague. It's just that there are many potential suspects. First thing I'd do is see if there is any relationship between the hangs and what's going on in the project. Does it happen with an empty project, where you just open CW and then close it? If not, see if it happens with just non-Kontakt instruments, or with just audio and no MIDI tracks (just import an audio file from another project to test). Try with a normal project but close CW without playing it back first, then try again closing after a full playback. Try it with a fully-rendered project (you can just freeze everything) and see if it makes a difference whether VIs are loaded or not. The idea is to look for any repeatable correlation, e.g. it hangs after I do this, but not if I do that. If there are no correlations to be found, start looking beyond Cakewalk. I'd test immediately after a Windows restart (not shutdown), and with/without first running other audio software. Some process unrelated to CW (but using shared resources) could be causing the problem. I assume you're not running antivirus software on your DAW, or if you do that you've whitelisted all folders having to do with audio work (sample libraries, plugins, the entire \program files\cakewalk tree).

It's completely normal that whenever you learn something informally there will be annoying gaps in your knowledge. I'd been using MIDI for years before finding out about SysEx dumps and suddenly realizing what I could do with them. Discovering hidden features of a synth via NRPNs. The revelation that MIDI plugins existed. MIDI over a UART and 5-pin DIN made perfect sense, while MIDI over USB made no sense at all, and I'm still not entirely sure why it even works. Finding out that I could record CC events on a separate track from the notes was an epiphany. Finding out that I could program lighting with MIDI, ditto. Being a technologist and a software guy, you might do well to attack MIDI like you've probably approached other technologies: from the bottom up. Just the opposite of how subjects are usually presented in books and academic settings. Download some formal specifications for the MIDI standard and MIDI file formats. Lots of good information at The MIDI Association's website.

Better than thinking about the vintage gear that you bought new but then sold for cheap because you thought its value was dropping because it was getting old.

Everyone who uses MIDI in any capacity owes a debt to Dave Smith.