RexRed

I have not heard any clicking but it is possible. When I punch in for a vocal segment, sometimes my mechanical keyboard can make a click in the mic/recording. I actually did not listen to my vocal alone in this song (I usually do) so a click or two could have snuck in. When I revisit the song, I will do that, listen to my vocal and see if I missed some clicks. I did hear a couple breaths that could have been tamed a bit more. 😁 Thanks for the heads up FreeEarCandy! 👍

I totally agree about adding some acoustic hooks, I need that in a lot of my songs. Many years ago I used to do a that a lot more but got out of the habit. Lately I have been thinking a lot about the guitar hooks I used to add to my songs. It is like getting back on a bicycle after many years of not riding one. This song would really benefit from them I think. I just need to do it I guess. Since a lot of my songs need it, it may have to wait until my next song and maybe someday I may come back and revisit this song. I too am wondering about betraying the simplicity but I really do not know without trying. Thank you David for reestablishing this thought that I have also been considering, it makes that more important to get these subtle embellishments back into my songs. I believe that also adds to the replayability factor. There is more to the song so listeners will tire of the song later, rather than sooner. All the best and thanks again for the very helpful input. 👍

Hello Bjorn! I love country music very much, as well as rock music. I fit somewhere in the middle and this is why I have chosen "folk rock" as my genre, even though I can at times stray across both gambits. I usually aim for "acoustic" sounding music. I find nylon guitars seem to epitomize the feeling I am looking for. But a nice piano song can be a sweet change as well. I have tried to make it in music but the powers that be seem disinterested so I just plug along merrily making new songs and gradually building a fanbase of awesome people as yourself. It has always been about the music and I LOVE Cakewalk... Cakewalk has enabled me to get the music that I feel inside, out of me and to the world. Cakewalk is a thing that dreams are made of... Musician dreams... Thanks for listening! 💕

Since I removed the dubbed voices I assume that what you are hearing is the slight sweep of my chorusing effect. I will look more at that and see if I can tone it down more or disable it. Thanks for the comment Andy!

There are nefarious means with which to acquire the old Cakewalk versions which I do not subscribe to. I purchased lifetime updates and bought many versions of Cakewalk all the way back to Cakewalk for MSDOS. It is a word to the wise that some VST instruments go under and become no longer available. This is why cloud based backups are not always foolproof. I would think Gibson would want to profit from the products that remained in their possession after the Cakewalk acquisition. But they simple let them fall to the wayside for whatever reasons. Speaking of VSTs that go under, the same thing happened to Emu... Emu/Creative Labs/Sound Blaster Creative Labs shed their professional wing of their company, they had Emu audio interface cards https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/EmulatorX--e-mu-emulator-by The entire legacy of Emu synthesis is now a thing of the past. Emulator X3 cannot be purchased. But, not exactly... After a time these products lose their patents. And the time is not like 90 years as it is for songs. It is only a couple decades. So different companies revive these products after the patents run out. It may only be a matter of a few years and Dimension pro will be revived as a revamped product by some company that specializes in reviving old synths. When you have invested in tons of "sound packs" and a synth goes under, sometimes you are left without a working product when you need to change computer systems. Dimension Pro can still be found online but the means with which to find it are not necessarily, "legal". I paid for my version(s) of Dimension Pro several times over as well as buying Rapture too. I might add that there are other offerings for sounds today that really outdo Dimension Pro entirely but then there are some signature sounds in Dimension Pro that in some instances, nothing seems to sound sweeter. You might be able to buy and old version (CD/DVD) of Cakewalk X3 on Ebay. As long as it comes with the serial number and activation codes it should work, but I am not absolutely certain of that. By installing it, it does not negatively impact your Cakewalk by Bandlab version. You just have an older version you can open as well. You might have to use the Cakewalk Install Manager (Command Center). I am not sure how a "new user" would apply in that instance as well. Make sure the version you buy from Ebay has the serial numbers and activation codes also for Dimension pro and Rapture. When you install Dimension Pro you have to right click and install and open it as "administrator" to get the serial and activation codes to work right. Perhaps there are others that can answer better and I am sure there are entire threads on this forum that discuss how to get a hold of legacy Cakewalk synths, instruments and effects. Best of luck on this Keith!

Well, I made the final changes to this song today. I made the nylon guitar a bit wider and the bass also on the upper end. I fixed the dubs so they did not shift the lead vocal as much left to right, lowered the volume on them and aligned them better, added vocal rider. I fixed the timing on the lead vocals and fixed the phase problems with a lot of the tracks. I think it is done. (maybe) 😁

Many kind thank yous for the compliment Ross!

On the voice I used a Waves Kaleidoscopes Chorus and I also widened the vocal with IZotope Ozone 10 imager and during the chorus part (the part that is repeated) I sang 2 extra dub/unison tracks and panned them left and right, I am not sure which of those effects is the offending one. Probably the dub tracks during the chorus. I can put vocal rider on them and then use Melodyne and align them up with the main vocal a bit better so they do not undulate as much. Thanks for the heads up on this! 👍 I still have a few vocal lines that are late and a particular note I sing on the wrong pitch I need to correct as well. I will go in and make a few more changes before this gets published. I love the critiques, you people are so good at finding my mistakes and alerting me to them! Best to you!

I have a lot of different string instruments that I usually prefer but sometime fall back on the trusty old Dimension Pro violins (strings) as I did in this case. It was the espressivo fortissimo ones I believe.

New tune for you beautiful Cakewalk peeps! 💝 Critiques welcome!

I am not sure what you mean by "active". When a part of a Melodyne clip gets erased its blobs should no longer be seen in Melodyne. Currently, that is not the case. If you record over a part of track take with a Melodyne instance applied to it, it will gray out the Melodyne section that your recording overlapped on it. Then if you add Melodyne to the new recorded take and then delete the old grayed out Melodyne section, the blobs from it still remain in Melodyne even though the clip has been deleted. If you close the Melodyne window and open it up again, the blobs from the deleted clip are still there. The only way to get rid of the deleted blobs is to close Cakewalk and reopen it. Once Cakewalk is reopened and you double click on the Melodyne clip the deleted blobs are finally gone.

Aww, thanks Jack for the really kind compliment! Best to you buddy!!!! 😁👍❤️

For some reason this is not playing for me. Try http://trexred.com You will find this single at the top of the "Songs" list. Song purchases help support my efforts, thanks to my fans! 💕😘💝

Thanks for the nice compliments, it makes me feel better about my efforts here. I am quite divided over this song, I want to produce it even more but I am wondering if it may already be over produced or simply badly produced. I think it needs to be produced better than I have done. I begin to doubt myself and my abilities. I believe it is a nice song lyrics and melody wise, and perhaps, I have done well at the vocal parts as well. But I just wonder if I have done it justice in the instrumentation part. I had to copy and past together pedal steel parts. I would much rather have had a pedal steel player play stuff directly for it rather than rehashing premade pedal steel segments and fitting them in. And, from there it all seems to get thrown off. I guess nothing is perfect... Maybe some things, but I know with the right musicians I could have done better. But that luxury is simply out of my reach so I guess this is the best I can do with what I have. I am lucky to have what I've got is perhaps the best attitude. 😘 All the best!

Hey awesome Cakewalk peeps! Here is my latest song, "Somewhere in Your Heart". I threw the kitchen sink at it, yet, I think it could use some more stuff. Maybe drums? Any suggestions/critiques are welcome. Best to you! RexRed 😊❤️

When I record over part of a Melodyne take, it grays out/mutes that part of the take and the new recording becomes active above it. Then, when I delete the old Melodyne take below it and put Melodyne on the new take segment, when I open Melodyne it still shows the deleted take along with the new take. The only way that I know how to get rid of the old take in Melodyne is to close Cakewalk and reopen the project and only then does the old take disappear from within Melodyne. I want to thank you for the last edits you all did with Melodyne and recorded takes, you fixed a lot of issues. It seems this last issue got left behind. I am wondering if there is a way to refresh Melodyne without having to reopen the project. Maybe you can look into why Melodyne does not delete the old deleted clip.

It's Cakewalk, it has been happening for years and it is the only program I use on my PC that does this, it has happened over various operating systems, motherboards, keyboards, mice and Cakewalk installs. I currently use a Razer Huntsman Elite mechanical keyboard, one of the best keyboards you can buy and it still happens. I hold control and drag a clip and it moves it instead of copies it and after several tries it finally recognizes the control key. It is like dragging while holding control somehow negates the control key being pressed. It happened several times today during a live broadcast. My Huntsman Elite keyboard has 4 prongs on each key so the key depresses down evenly and this still happens. It is Cakewalk. I only notice this problem when trying to drag and copy clips/notes at the same time.

You can split that into two tracks and I think Cakewalk will ignore the empty track when creating new tracks. Select your track, then open dropdown, Tracks => Bounce to tracks => Channel format "split mono" Uncheck track effects, automation, bus effects... on or off as needed (dithering none) Don't select "entire mix" select only the track you want to split Observe where the destination tracks will be set to. There are are presets that may be helpful.

Thank you Keith, your comment is awesome, much appreciated and the best to you! 😊👍

Okay I added the instrumental break. a subtle guitar solo in three places. This song has had some odd things. For one, my vocal only would work in it if I used no compression at all on it. When I added even the slightest bit of compression it got flat, breathy, the sibilance was horrible and the transparency was dull and it did not fit in the song. I could add reverb, and give it width but no compression or vocal riding. I could edit the words volumes manually but any compression was not good. I have never really had that happen with a vocal, compression usually does the opposite and makes the vocal work in the song. So I learned a new thing, not all vocal tracks need compression. I added drums here also. The snare drum is far away and the bass drum is very close up. That seemed to be the only thing that sort of worked in this song. Otherwise the snare drum was too much of a distraction. I added chorusing, flange, reverb and a very long feedback/delay to the snare. The organ seems to work well in places. The vocals got a lot of editing, mostly timing and loudness. And it got a new remixing and mastering. Please let me know if you like it peeps! Thanks for listening! Rex

That is the same for me once Cakewalk is aware that Ctrl is being used. But cold, it often does not respond until the second or third time.

It has been this way over many systems for many many years. Different keyboards and systems. It is subtle but a constant thing. I currently have a Razer Huntsman keyboard, still the same unresponsiveness I have experienced for many years. It is not always but often about two times before Cakewalk actually copies an item. I think this is a problem left over from when Cakewalk would forget its clipboard content. A month ago I reinstalled Cakewalk and Windows 11 from scratch and same thing. I do have Sonar X2 X3 and Platinum on my system as well. I hold ctrl and shift and put a reasonable amount of pressure there and no copy. I use this same ctrl key in many other programs and this never happens. This happens when the shift key is pressed with CTRL key as well.

It seems Cakewalk is not very responsive when the CTRL key is being held. You have to perform the CTRL key action several times before Cakewalk will acknowledge it is being held. It has been unresponsive for many years... Like something else overrides its awareness of that key. Considering that CTRL is used so frequently for copying stuff it is vital that it be more responsive to save time hitting it repetitively until Cakewalk becomes aware of it being pressed.

Hello FreeEarCandy, Thank you for your critique. There is not much I can do about the string distraction at the beginning of the song. (I noticed it myself as well.) I used a music loop as the core of this song and then added more instruments and vocals (wrote lyrics) to the song loop. I chopped up the loop rearranged sections and made it fit my lyrics. Perhaps I could surgically EQ that string to dull it a bit. Sometimes I use loops because it gives me ideas for songs that I might not otherwise have. Sometimes I build songs completely from scratch. When I do use loops I am often faced with instruments being frozen into a core track. I am still debating if this song needs more instrumentally. Some pads here and there. maybe a lead instrument in the solo sections. I am all up in the air about this. Usually I simply add these other instruments but there is a subtilty to this music that seems to work on its own other than the bass that I added. I am also considering drums to come in, in sections as well. Still undecided. Recommendations are welcome.

A really nice listen indeed, reminded me of the Harvest Moon, Neil Young era!