RexRed

Hello Cakewalk Peeps!

The final version of this song was just uploaded to the link above a few minutes ago.

I may go in and tweak a few things before it is published.

There is about a day window for changes to be made.

As for the suggestion of not using "fake guitars".

I have given that some thought and I am considering making some changes.

I cannot promise I will not use fake guitars in the future.

But, I am considering not using song loops that I build some of my songs on.

I have decided that it is time I make all of my own songs from scratch.

It is not because the song loops do not make good songs, but because the copyright holders have become more aggressive in the last few years.

They will take ALL monetization for your lyrics, vocals, melodies and instrumentation just because a minuscule song loop that you bought from them was used as an ingredient of the song.

I am a musician and it is time I make my OWN music.

If I were not an instrumentalist along with being a singer and lyricist I would reconsider using their song loops.

For now, "instrument samples" seem safe to use. But song loops are not worth the hassle. 

This song, "Beautiful Beautiful" has no song loops in it, only VST instruments (fake guitars) which are still "royalty free" once you buy the VST you own the music created by it (at least for now).

Let me know your thoughts.

Best

RexRed 💖

(I am not referring to samples like Splice.com I am referring to samples like song samples (about a minute long) and stems that you buy as a subscription.

There are always strings attached. Those strings are they take all of the income other than a single YouTube channel. The song becomes locked forever in their grasp because of a sample that you paid them for.)

7 hours ago, AndyB01 said:

I really like this - it has the feeling of an old English or Scottish lament - emphasised further by the solo strings (viola or violin 🤷). Your vocal control is immaculate and the performance is top notch.

Minor crit, I might have varied the guitar arpeggio a little, but this is just taste and fancy.

Great work 

Andy

I am hoping when I add solo instruments and a few other instruments that the guitar will be less noticeable. 👍

I will let you know when I have updated the song.

5 hours ago, Rikfr said:

Hi Rex, nice one, excellent vocals. I would loose the fake guitar. 😉

 

Rik

All of the instruments are "fake" other than my voice, even my voice is fake, it is not actually me singing "live" in a room, it is a recording of me. That is the nature of VST "instruments".

Unfortunately, I am not as good a guitarist as the fake VST guitar arpeggiator.

The cello is fake, the bass is fake, and the other instruments I will be adding are fake as well.

Hopefully they will augment one another and create the illusion of realism.

Maybe someday I will have Nashville instrumentalists to make my music for me. 😄

Still a work in progress,

suggestions welcome. 😁 

Thanks for listening! 💖💖💖

RexRed

Hey awesome Cakewalk peeps!

Here is my first song I have recorded after recovering from Covid.

I am better now, fully recovered and ready to make more music!

Comments and critiques welcome.

Love to you always and forever on! 💖💖💖

RexRed

I work in a program called Daz Studio and for many years I just used the program with stock settings. Recently I found a video that goes into the Nvidia control panel settings and give Daz Studio full access to many of the Windows system resources. There were actually about 20 or more parameters that needed to be changed to allow Daz Studio in particular to take full advantage of the graphics hardware. 

I am thinking that Cakewalk needs this too. Not only to give full access to the graphical interface in Cakewalk but also my RME Fireface UCX II would also benefit from going deep into the driver and maximizing priority settings for the many resources Cakewalk sound is utilizing in particular.

It would be nice if someone who knows a whole lot about this would make a video or PDF/HTML page, "Optimizing Cakewalk" so we can get the most out of using Cakewalk and so Windows would give full control to Cakewalk in regards to priority and utilizing full system resources. 

If there is already such a resource, please link to it in the replies.

 Thanks.

Hello awesome Cakewalk peeps!

New tune here, critiques welcome.

All the best to you!

RexRed 💖💖

New music awesome Cakewalk peeps!

Let me know if it needs something more or something taken away! 😁

All the best to you! 💝

RexRed

Wow, thanks peeps for the awesome feedback and compliments. This song, the lyrics seem to have deeper implications that spoke to a part of me that desires to reach back into antiquity and embody romance at its greatest pinnacle. Back when civilization was just beginning and when mythology was perhaps, actually true (for the most part).

Not all songs of mine do this to me. I like that it has generated some interest, it reflects the caliber of artists here on this forum, and that we may all share an ethereal philosophical connection that spans eons of time. Music inspires us.

All the best to you! I hope to bring more of this kind of genre to light.  ✨🌞

Wondering if this song needs more.

Let me know your thoughts peeps. 😊

All the best to you!

❤️❤️❤️

I just uploaded the final version of this song.

I have a flamboyant style and I add the falsetto because, well, I am gay and  my songs I edit to gay romance films.

My fans expect the falsetto as a signature of pride and identity.

So it may seem out of place if you are expecting this to be in a "straight" romance. But, in a gay romance that falsetto fits perfectly right in

and signifies the spirit of the effort.

😊

This video will premiere tomorrow morning. 👍

Encouraging and uplifting message, great song Jack. 👍

New tune awesome Cakewalk peeps!

Let me know your thoughts!

Lots of love, best to you! 💗

RexRed

5 hours ago, jack c. said:

another wonderful job.merry christmas.jack c

Thank you Jack for the Merry Christmas and lovely compliment on my song! Best to you in the New Year! 🎄👍💗

This song was very difficult to make.

At one point I had nearly 50 tracks all going at the same time and I had to figure out which tracks play at what time.

It was a soup of sound with everything from the refrigerator in it.

I had to slim it down and my ears got tired and I almost gave up.

 The Oohs and Ahhs helped me to nail down the song.

I tried about 100 different pads in the song and hundreds of different congas and bongo samples till I found the right one.

I tried several basses and then settled on a bass  that I use in most of my songs.

The vocals were sung "very" close to the mic with no windscreen so it would be "intimate".

There are percussion sounds for bass and snare that took many tries to find the right samples.

The wind sound is an arctic wind (the best wind sound I think).

Even though the wind is from a cold place it sounds dry and warm.

The cello solo is a Stradivari cello. 

I hope this synopsis of the song is helpful.  😉

New song Cakewalk peeps!

Hope your Christmas and holidays (if you celebrate) were merry and your New Year is awesome!

Comments and critiques welcome.

Lots of love!

Rex 

Deep and thoughtful piece Jack! The stereo width is nice! Great work!  👍

Pure magic! A place of intrigue and ethereal wonderment. Very nicely done Supa!

Hey Jack, Jude and Supa, thanks for your really nice comments!

I really struggled with the music for this song. It sounded really good live, with just me playing the dobro alone.

But when I added other instruments suddenly I lost focus on the song. 

It took many tries just to bring it to the place where it is now.

It is a beautiful song and I spent days and nights trying to do it justice.

At one point I had drums playing and it lost all trace of what it seemed to really need.

I am not sure it is even there yet but it seems to sort of relay the feeling it may be meant to relay.

It needs to be done live with an audience and maybe a nice bluegrass band.

Something that seems a bit out of my reach musically maybe.

As for the story behind the romance in the song.

A bridge is a structure that others can benefit from to help them cross a stream as well after the builder is gone.

It is an unselfish act and maybe love is not the only reward.

Helping others. This may be why this song has an emotional pull for some. 💞

Latest tune awesome Cakewalk peeps!

Hope you enjoy this new song!

Suggestions and critiques welcome. 

Best to you!

💖💖💖

They will have to pry the cake from my cold dead hand, I will never switch. Gave Studio One a fair try, did not like it at all. Unintuitive interface, a major obstacle for me.

Looks like I will be one of the only die hard fans left doing Cakewalk videos on YT.

To me it is not really about making money (otherwise I would have used Mike's short video format) as I have never made a single dime from my Cakewalk YT channel, yet.

It is about sharing my musical journey with those who may find it helpful.

The few subscribers who do show up are awesome.

Getting Cakewalk users to my channel is like pulling teeth.

youtube search for @cbbtv 

I have had two Cakewalk channels on YouTube I closed the old one out 

That old channel I started over 6 years ago, I had to dedicate that channel to something else. I deleted the old videos.

One of my live videos is over 7 hours long...

Skip over the parts that don't interest you. hehe.

And I started off with Master Tracks midi on a Commodore 64 until I graduated to Cakewalk for MSDOS.

My own original Cakewalk songs got 2 million listens last month...

Studio One for Cakewalk users? No thanks, I'll pass...

One caution, my oldest videos on my channel are sort of obsolete because I use different apps and techniques and they have evolved over time.

I still occasionally use Dimension Pro. lol

Mike has a great Cakewalk YouTube channel that has helped me in many instances as well.   

New song awesome Cakewalk peeps!

Comments are welcome!

Thanks for the listens!

Rex

Thanks for the compliments and helpful suggestions peeps! And Andy, the guitar picking is from the Native Instruments VST called Picked Nylon. It does in this instance sound like a piano, another stringed instrtument.

 I prefer a nylon guitar most often over a steel string acoustic, the tone is softer and often fits with my voice better.

Your comments are truly nice and kind, all the best with the holidays coming up!

You will probably hear from me before New Year, lots of music to make in December!

💖🎄💝

On 11/15/2023 at 9:01 AM, Glenn Stanton said:

'crunch' 'crunch' <popcorn eating sounds> 'crunch' eagerly awaiting the penile shot to see which one is bigger 'crunch' 'crunch' <more popcorn eating sounds> 🙂 

You think that Mark's drivel was a "great idea"?

I know who my friends are.

A lot of petty people who "think that they think that they think" error piled on top of error. Rather than to "know that they know that they know". The very rudiments of the scientific approach.

I have come here with serious minded, critically studied and detailed rational regarding the issues I have experienced first hand with Cakewalk and Melodyne integration. 

I am met with armatures and trolls who have one skill only, insults, and they are bad at that too.

I am done here with this issue, I have relayed the message. I see no need to reason with ignorant people.

The popcorn eating kangaroo court here at this forum makes this an unwelcome place for intelligent peopled to converse...

1) Deleted takes do not delete in Melodyne and 2) Cakewalk takes do not mute themselves in Melodyne, period.

Please fix it Cakewalk.

New song for you awesome Cakewalk music creators! 

It constantly occurs to my mind how really terriffic Cakewalk works.

It rarely ever crashes and I like how I can depend on it doing what it is supposed to do. 

This was not always the case, but I was working with a much slower computer and I can for the most part

say that the problems I did have were due to my PC not being capable to handle mixing and mastering simultaneously. 

Any DAW would buckle under such a load.

Cakewalk reigns supreme!

Best to you and hope your season is full of great celebration and truly good times!

RexRed 

On 11/13/2023 at 5:51 PM, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

It's a poor workflow. You are doing a post production during the actual recording. 

I'm not sure what you mean when you say " Melodyne corrupted line "  ?

I have no problem insulting anyone if it makes them get it right. It's a crutch if you're using it on every line just after you've recorded it. No legit singer would want to work like that, it's an art and a craft to coax the best performance from a vocalist.  Maybe call up a local pro studio and ask them if you can sit in and observe a session so you can see what a proper workflow looks like when working with singers.  

You just completely contradicted yourself, saying doing post production during the actual recording is a poor workflow and then saying you will insult people so they get it right.

Well, going back and retracking a line is "getting it right" even if it is in the post production, post mastering post any other process in its journey to the fans. Especially if you just sung the line 10 minutes ago, put Melodyne on it and Melodyne corrupted a syllable. You sing over the take and sing over it and over and over till you "get it right" and move to the next issue. You certainly shouldn't  say, "Well, I am at the post production phase so leave the line sounding like crap."

Then it is you who deserves the insult, till you get it right.

Melodyne is known for corrupting lines so the workflow is go back and redo that line. And Melodyne does not necessarily corrupt lines because they are out of tune, Sometimes it will corrupt a line simply for elongating it even in the slightest to align it in time.  Melodyne corrupts lines because it cannot reprocess certain sibilants well. Just like Alexa sometimes has no clue what you are saying even though you say it ten times as clearly as humanly possible. 

The proprietary digital resampling happening under the hood with ARA2 is still a mystery, how much is it down-sampling the audio? This process in itself can corrupt certain sibilants. The bottom line is when a sibilant gets corrupted, a trained ear can instantly detect that kind of distortion. My music gets 2.6 million listens a month and over 100 million listens in total and I make it completely myself except for a few samples here and there. You are talking to a pro studio with over 40 years of recording under my belt since all the way back to Cakewalk for MSDOS.

So I have been told to go take voice lessons and consult a "pro studio" just for asking that Melodyne integration into Cakewalk get fixed... 

And the simple logic, in order to make Bruce Springsteen's voice higher and faster, the tape would have to be sped up. Even if it was slowed down prior, it was sped up to gain the effect.