Jerry Gerber

12 minutes ago, jieva said:

Just installed 2020.08 and cant get snap to work at all in staff view

 

I hope you turned on the snap on the control bar..I just tried it and it's working properly.  Finally, after years of neglect the notation editor is repaired.

9 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Repeat of post 11 on page 1.

Go to back of the line and start over.

Uh-oh.  Someone ought to punish me.  I puntificated one too many times!

4 hours ago, Michael Vogel said:

Meng, who is Bandlab’s owner has stated several times that he has no intention of charging for the Cakewalk DAW. He has other significant music/audio related enterprises that do make him money. HIs family is particularly wealthy.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to  have the money to do what you want and still do something that is not directly profit related. Many have suggested ulterior motives or that there is some sinister intent yet to be revealed. It may just be that he’s a nice guy who has the “where with all” to do something benevolent for a community he too enjoys. I choose to believe the latter.

So far he’s been true to every single promise he made when the announcement was first made that Bandlab had bought the Sonar/Cakewalk Intellectual Property from Gibson and the DAW would continue to be developed and remain free to use via a licence. All things considered I think Noel and the team have done a great job balancing development of new features with bug fixes related to long standing problems.

I think its a remarkable feat actually - All credit to Meng for being able to direct what seems a unique venture in an industry that’s is typically money and image driven.

You can very easily save the Cakewalk by Bandlab installer.exe file. The program only needs reactivation every 6 months and this can now be done offline (I think).

Well, Michael, that really is good news, thank you for sharing that with me.  I know there are many people in this world who are motivated by other things than money and profit.   If what you say is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, that's great for all of us.  I too choose to write music that I want to write after spending 12 years writing soundtracks that paid very well.   I couldn't justify the reward (financial) for the musical and intellectual compromises I had to make.  So I understand very well when a person can, and does, decide to involve themselves in a labor of love.   

What drove me away from Sonar was one thing:  The snap function in the staff view.  Now that its been fixed, I have "fallen in love" with Cakewalk again.   My 1.5 years with Digital Performer made me realize how superior Cakewalk is in so many ways, and I've come to believe it is the most under-rated and under-recognized DAW on the market.   More power to Bandlab for keeping such a great DAW available not only for free, but still fixing bugs and adding features.   

Best,

Jerry

11 hours ago, msmcleod said:

@jsg - You shouldn't have to set a section type to rename or set color.  Are you sure you're not confusing the set color dialog with the edit section type dialog?

The edit section type dialog will not disappear until the fields are valid.  In fact, unless you're going to be using arranger templates there's absolutely no reason to set a section type at all.

To rename, select the section and press F2 or select rename from the context menu.

To set color, right click and select the color from the presets or click the ellipses to get the color dialog:



The color dialog is Microsoft's built-int color chooser dialog - it's part of the operating system. There shouldn't be anything buggy with it, otherwise it'd be affecting all applications.

Thanks msmcleod,

I'm just learning the Arranger section so it may be user-error.  I am figuring it out...

Jerry

8 hours ago, David Sprouse said:

I liked how you used dune as a rhythmic element.  Was that what sounded like a bug zapper?    you  use synths effectively in these contexts.  BTWthanks for including the score!

Thanks for listening David.  Yes, Dune is the only synth in this movement. 

Jerry

I'm finding that when I open Preferences-Themes, Cakewalk takes quite a while, about 30 seconds, to open the Themes dialogue box.  It's always been instantaneous in earlier versions I've used.

This only happens right after I open CW for the first time.  Any subsequent attempts to open Preferences-Themes is instantaneous, as expected.

11 hours ago, msmcleod said:

@Kevin Walsh - have you got an example project you could send me with these issues?

Also, it might be worth running dxdiag on your machine.  The arranger components use DirectX under the hood for drawing, so if there's a problem with your directx setup this could explain your issues.

I am having same issue, renaming doesn't work and the dialogue box gets stuck.   The dialogue box in the arranger track seems very buggy.  Cannot change colors.  I have to undo to get it to disappear.  Even when I minimize Cakewalk to write on this forum, the arranger dialogue box doesn't disappear.  Nuts! I was hoping to learn this new feature quickly but too many bugs to even try to use it...I have a fairly new machine with Intel graphics card.   DXdiag doesn't show any problems..

Section Type must be defined, I think that was the issue...

I'm having issues with the arranger track.   Maybe it's my error?   I cannot rename tracks and the arranger dialogue screen gets stuck.  The only way to remove it is to undo everything.   Am I missing something?  When I click on rename, nothing happens...

I think I have to choose a section type first, then it seems to be working..

Is this correct?

Hi fellow Cakewalk musicians,

I had planned on spending the year writing vocal music.  I started the year writing two pieces, and then the pandemic hit.  Since it's impossible to bring singers into the studio to record (I'm in California which is currently seeing large increases in cases and deaths) and I'm not keen on trying to set things up remotely,  I just canned the idea and started a new instrumental piece that doesn't need players or singers. 

Scored for VSL Orchestral Cube and Dune (softsynth).  I hope you enjoy listening!

PLAY

1 hour ago, scook said:

%appdata%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Lenses

Thanks!

Hi,

Does anybody know which folder Cakewalk stores the workspace files?

Thanks,

Jerry

1 hour ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

You do realise that by uninstalling Sonar you've lost all your previously paid for plugins (paid as part of the program)

Not sure what you mean.   I just opened up Z3TA-2 and Breverb and they work fine.   I paid for those separate from Sonar. As far as the other plugins that come with Sonar I am still using the Sonitus plugins.  After completely uninstalling Sonar, and reinstalling Cakewalk, the Sonitus plugins are also working fine.

12 minutes ago, scook said:

This is why I wrote

This will work fine unless you need to (re)run some of the Platinum installers.

Some of the Platinum installer series only run if Platinum is found in the registry.

 

The act of uninstalling and re-installing CbB restores the shared files removed by uninstalling SONAR such as library.db.

I think Cakewalk, particularly the new version about to be released that fixed the long-overdue problem with snap in the staff view (which I've tested and works great), will be sufficient and I won't need to use Sonar.  After Gibson destroyed Sonar, I backed up all of my Sonar installation files, put them on a CD and put them in a safety deposit box in the bank.  But now, I doubt I'll need them.

By the way, I don't quite get how Bandlab is giving a $400 program away for free.  I could understand it if they were just making it available, but the fact that they are fixing bugs and adding new features makes me wonder.  Nobody gives away such sophisticated software for free, well, almost nobody.  Do you think they'll start charging for it soon (which if OK with me) or is there some catch somewhere?  I do notice that the end-user doesn't really have a copy of Cakewalk, there's no .exe file to hold onto. 

Best,

Jerry

1 hour ago, scook said:

SONAR and CbB share many files.

There used to be a warning when updating SONAR that uninstalling a previous version would damage the updated version.

The impact of uninstalling SONAR after installing CbB is the same.

In the case of SONAR Platinum, Bandlab recommends installing SONAR Platinum in full, then installing CbB and leaving both DAWs on the PC.

Uninstalling SONAR has removed  files used by CbB.

At a minimum, you need to uninstall CbB and re-install it.

The best solution is uninstall CbB, install SONAR Platinum then re-install CbB.

 

Any custom category assignments are gone unless you have a backup of %appdata%\Cakewalk\Library\Library.db

Re-installing restores the default database.

I fixed it, but a little differently.  I like to keep my DAW lean and thin.  Any program or files I don't use eventually get removed.   So I uninstalled Cakewalk (current version), uninstalled Sonar and reinstalled Cakewalk.  Everything is working fine.   Sonar doesn't need to be installed, but if shared files are removed that causes the issue. By reinstalling Cakewalk, all the shared files are restored. 

Thanks Scook..

Hi,

Tonight I installed Cakewalk, everything's working fine.  I then proceeded to uninstall Sonar Platinum, and now when I open Cakewalk, I get two messages:

1.  Database Error--Database connection failed.  Assigned plugin categories and names will be unavailable.

2.  Database Update Failed--The database update utility failed to run.  Please verify that Cakewalk is installed correctly.

What shall I do?

Thanks,

Jerry

Problem solved.  I downloaded the latest version of Cakewalk and now it's fine.

I was using the last version of Sonar, I know, I'm a real holdout.  Until this sync issue, I was having no issues at all with Sonar, so I didn't bother to upgrade.

Jerry

25 minutes ago, Max Arwood said:

Don't have Dune.  I just listened to the Dune demo - Wow!  That synth sure has some sounds in it.   If it were me I would insert another dune and split the tracks and try to render 1/2 at a time. Or if it plays right when you listen you could send to an aux track.  They are like a bus but have a record button. That way you could play/listen to the track and just record the synths sounds to the Aux track. (Like freeze but slower.) Then you could archive Dune to regain you CPU power.

I just wanted to say I have listened to you work for many years, but lately you have upped things a notch.  I really like your new stuff. So many things going on they really keep my attention so I can focused on the whole song and all the little pieces of the puzzle keep me listening to the end!

Max Arwood

Thanks Max.  I've never seen this problem before and have recorded with Dune many times.   I prefer to render the entire sequence at once, but I may try your suggestions if I cannot resolve this.  I wrote the company that makes Dune, maybe they'll have an idea.  I also tried inserting a brand-new Dune track and I copied and pasted all the MIDI data to the new track, but this doesn't resolve it, I thought maybe the track might have gotten corrupted, but that's not the case.

I also tried restarting the DAW but this doesn't work either.  I'm stumped, at least so far.  Dune seems to missing the tempo change entirely, and then it tries to catch up a few beats later, but of course this doesn't work because it's already out of sync with the rhythms of the other instruments and the tempo of the sequence..

Yeah, Dune has been my favorite synth for years.  It has incredible sounds and is fairly easy to program from scratch.  Thanks for the comments about my music, glad you enjoy listening.

Jerry

Hello,

I have 36 MIDI tracks and 1 softsynth (Dune 3, a VST plugin).   When I playback the sequence everything is perfectly in sync, even with lots of meter and tempo changes.

But when I render the sequence to audio and play back the audio file, there's a certain point (at measure 95) where the softsynth begins out of sync.  I've tried recording right from that point in time, but the problem still happens.  Here's what I've tried:

1.  Turning off delay compensation on the plugin (no go)

2.  Moving a cc7 240 ticks earlier than the note that has the problem (no go)

3.  Moving a tempo change, which occurs right at measure 95 back to m94 beat 4 clock 240.   (no go).

Anybody know what might be causing this?  I've not seen it happen in all the years I've been working with softsynths that are synced to tempo..

Thanks for any help!

Jerry

https://enchantmentathamilton.org/20200601ForTheLongestTime.mp4  

10 hours ago, bjornpdx said:

Quite an impressive piece Jerry. So I'm wondering how you go about creating something like this. It just seems free form to me, like it's not written beforehand but written as you go along, one section suggesting the next but directed by your mood minute by minute.

Hi Bjorn,

When I set out to compose a piece, I have a few parameters.  Is this going to be a standalone piece, or is it going to be of a larger piece, i.e. a symphonic movement, a piece in a set of songs, or a set of piano works? 

Then I decide, very roughly, approximate length.   When I begin composing, I start with either a motive or melodic phrase, a chord or chord progression, a rhythmic pattern, or even just an instrument or two.  There's no one way to begin a piece.  After I've written maybe 25-50 measures, (if it's going to be a longer piece)  then I evaluate whether the piece is going to "fly",  meaning I commit to writing it till the end, or I abandon the idea and begin something else.  I'd say about 25% of the time I abandon the idea. 

I am a strong believer that form and structure evolve directly from content.  I haven't analyzed what the form of this particular piece is, I compose intuitively and build up structures based on what I've already written.  form follows content.  I strive to ensure that the "seams", or the "joints" are not audible.  The  goal is to create a piece which has autonomy, a sense of inevitability and structural cohesion.   I have to understand emotionally and intellectually what I write.  If there's any confusion at all as to what I mean, I rewrite, rewrite and rewrite.  Sometimes I'll write a section and think, "no, I don't want the piece to go in that direction", and I delete that section and begin again from that point forward.  That happens a lot.  

A composer has to be two things:   He has to be his own fiercest critic and his most passionate supporter.  You can't just be one or the other, it must be both!

Thanks for listening Bjorn!

Jerry

One thing I've noticed with the upcoming new version:

Even when the global snap is turned OFF, the snap function still seems to work in the staff view  Hmm?  Is that by design?

14 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

In case you hadn't noticed, you  no longer must hold the Ctrl key to get your fully-active right-click context menu.

It's not just the snap feature that's been amended per your requests....

Speak up, they need to know that it's now really working the way you all wanted it to.😊

Yep, I noticed that too.  As soon as the new version is finalized I'm going to download it onto the DAW.  I'm hoping it will be as stable as the final version of Sonar has been on my Windows 10 machine. (even though the lack of snap in the staff view drives me nuts).

16 hours ago, mark skinner said:

J , I can't believe the Balance you achieved in this. I just listened again thru my boze cans.  The clarity , tone and depth was incredible...    mark

Why, thank you very much Mark.  I am glad you appreciated my piece!   All done in Sonar (before it was Cakewalk).

Best,

Jerry

2 hours ago, InstrEd said:

Oh my goodness. You have a lot of catching up to do Jerry

I hope the newest version will be to your liking and you will pump out some more orchestration works for us to listen to.

I'm working on the ending of the 1st movement of a new symphony, hope to have it done by the end of August...