Michael McBroom

Thanks, I'm gonna give WASAPI a try first. I don't like ASIO4All, I've had problems with it taking over my system and not wanting to let go.

I'm working on a piece that, at the moment, is 100% MIDI. Earlier, however, I recorded an audio track of guitar. But I wanted to keep this file clean of audio, so I renamed the file with the audio, then I deleted the audio track and saved it to its original name. When I bounce to tracks so I have an audio copy of the song, there is at the end a leftover sound from the audio track. Immediately after completing the bounce, this sound, well it's a chord, actually, continues until I stop the playback. But it is only recorded up until the end of the piece. That in itself is strange. It reminds me of when a MIDI instrument will sometimes get stuck on a note or a chord, but this is audio. This sound is only audible after I've bounced to a new track. When I play the song back, there is no trace of this leftover audio, and there shouldn't be either since there are no audio tracks anymore. To attempt to rectify this, I exited the file, and called it up fresh from memory, then did the bounce to tracks again. Same thing, the audio "ghost" is still there. Taking a look at the bounce options, I decided to try setting the Source from "Entire Mix" to "Tracks," reasoning that, since only MIDI tracks are present, it couldn't pick up any leftover audio. But it still does. Next, I tried different driver modes. Normally I use ASIO, but I switched to WASAPI Exclusive. Same result. Then I tried WDM/KS. Again, same result. I didn't bother with any of the others, figuring I'd get the same result. Well, I'm stumped. I don't know what else to try -- and I don't have a clue as to what is causing this. One thing I just thought of. What if I record an empty audio track to this file. Would that possible overwrite whatever has gotten stuck in the works somewhere? I'm gonna give that a try and I'll report back. Welp, that didn't work either. So I just recorded an empty audio track, saved the file, then tried bouncing to tracks, but this time I selected "Entire Mix." Reason why was because when I selected "Tracks," the Bounce routine created two tracks -- one a recording of the MIDI and the other a recording of the blank audio track. I didn't want that, so I went with Entire Mix instead.

I almost always use ASIO. Which other one would you recommend? I guess I can just start with WASAPI Exclusive and go down the list. I don't know what WDM/KS is used for.

Oops, double post.

I have a Marshall CODE 50 amp and I'm trying to use its USB out to record audio in CW (I just installed the latest version of CW btw). The CODE comes with no drivers and there are none available from Marshall. Marshall claims that its CODE amps are fully USB compliant, so they need no drivers. I have gotten this amp to work in Band in a Box just fine. It found the CODE and recognized it as an audio device. But in CW it shows up only under the MIDI inputs and outputs, which obviously doesn't do a bit of good. I guess I'm wondering, is there a workaround for this, or must I use my audio interface and forget about the amp's USB out?

Okay, I've run into two separate issues with two different pieces, but the problems are at least somewhat related, I suppose. In the first instance, I have a piece of music where I spliced in a few sections from other MIDI files into a single track. The instrument traces that are shown in the track view are not complete. There are large gaps where no trace is showing, even though the notes are being played. They're visible in the Staff and Piano Roll views, just not the traces. This is mildy annoying, and it's a problem I run into on occasion. I would like to figure out how to get all the notes in every MIDI track to display in its trace. The second instance is worse. It's another example where I have pasted in excerpts from MIDI files into a single track. In this case, the trace is complete -- no gaps. The Piano Roll shows the complete piece, which is 32 bars long. But the Staff view shows only 12 of the 32 bars. I've never run into this before. I tried selecting different editing tools (Smart, Select, Move, etc.) and even double checked that I had highlighted all 32 bars before clicking on the Staff View (I had). Since I had imported MIDI files into a New file, and hadn't saved to Cakewalk format yet, I thought that might be the problem. So I saved it as a Cakewalk file, and then called up the file from the disk. Still nothing past bar 12. The music is there. Playback works fine. I just can't see past bar 12 in the Staff View. Now, this is a big deal for me since I do almost all my editing using the Staff View. Not being able to see the music as I move forward will be a big problem for me. So, got any ideas what I might have done to cause this? EDIT: Something else I just tried. I used the "scrub" function (hit the "J" key to activate and deactivate) to scrub through the notes and all the notes in the measures beyond 12 scrub just fine. So they're there -- just the Staff View is refusing to "see" them.

Thanks much for your replies, guys. I've been quite busy these past few days and this is the first chance I've had to check back in. Looks like I have some homework to do. Thanks for the recommendations. I'll check into them. I agree that the term 'multitimbral' can be misunderstood, but this is the term that is used when one is referring to a synth that can play more than one track or part or instrument at a time. My DAW is an older machine that still has respectable numbers -- on the surface at least. It has a quad core AMD processor and 16 GB RAM, and I learned recently that the thing to look for in multi-core processors, especially when they'll be used in a DAW application, is the speed of the individual cores. I think that's where my machine is taking a hit. I haven't run a test on it yet, but it's the only thing I can think of that will explain the overhead issues I'm experiencing with some of my larger pieces of music. I've found that some synths have more demand on resources than others and that when I stack them, I quickly run into overhead issues -- Rice Krispies in the playback (snap, crackle, pop, donchaknow) and even playback audio dropouts. When I incorporate audio tracks the problem quickly becomes worse. I don't know what you mean by "multi-threaded," unless you mean multitimbral.

Cakewalk's TTS-1 is the best multi-timbral synth that I know of. But I would like to find others that have instruments besides the standard set of MIDI instruments. So far, I haven't found any worth mentioning that are available for a reasonable price (say from Free to under $100). I'm sure they exist though. Care to mention any of your favorites? I'm interested in finding other multi-timbral synths in order to keep the overhead to a minimum. Sure, I can stack mono-timbral synths, but with the increased overhead, which can range from mild to substantial.

Scook, thanks, I'll take a look at that link. mdiemer, that's a good point. I have MuseScore3, which I do use on occasion, and I've found that it translates MIDI files very well. But when it comes to fixing aspects of the notation, I'm not so sure it would be any sort of time saver. It definitely looks prettier when it comes time to print something out, though. Actually when I print a file I prefer the traditional jazz leadsheet look. You know, melody on a single staff with chord symbols above it. I find this to be most useful if I want to read through a piece. And for that, I find that Band in a Box still works best for me. Only problem with BiaB is it does a lousy job of handling MIDI imports, tending to make a complete hash of things, so it's only really useful if I've built the tune in BiaB. By the way, I did find a much faster way to edit my MIDI file, changing those dotted halves with leftovers to whole notes. I saved the symbol for the whole note, "4:0" to the clipboard, and then in the Event List, I was able to edit the time values by double clicking on the value, which pops open an edit window where the current value is highlighted, did a CTL-V to paste, then proceeded to the next instance. Lather, rinse, repeat. This method is about 20 times faster than having to right click on each note, then replace the value in the popup. It should be worth noting that other values in the Event List can be similarly edited, although not with the greatest ease in some cases. EDIT: Scook, I took a look at your link. The text seemed to indicate that values from 1 to 2 quarters could only be converted to a value of 1 quarter. I doubt this, so I took a look. Yeah, I've taken a look at this screen before, and honestly didn't know what to do with it. So I tried plugging in some values into the min and max duration fields, hit OK, and nothing happened. So I'm still puzzled by what this window actually does. I guess I'll need to read up on it some more.

Regarding a Global Search and Replace feature, something else has just occurred to me, as I'm working on another piece. This one has about 100 measures where one part is playing -- or supposed to be playing -- whole notes. But the MIDI got recorded as dotted half notes with a bit left over. Four part harmony, no less. So, again, mostly for the sake of appearance, I'm having to go in and edit the time value of some 100 x 4 = 400 notes from the dotted halves with change to whole notes. Not looking forward to this. I'm procrastinating; I'm about 13 measures into it. The only bit of time saving I've been able to come up with is to save the new value with a CTL-C shortcut to copy the new value and then CTL-V to paste it in replacement of the old values. Still tedious, but it saves a lot of typing. So it would be nice if any global search and replace feature also had the capability to do searches and replacements of time values as well -- where you can specify one or more tracks. With confirm, of course. Oh, and if Cakewalk has this capability -- that I'm not aware of -- please tell me how to access it.

Cakewalk's enharmonic misspellings have become something of a pet peeve of mine. I realize that enharmonic misspellings don't matter acoustically. But if you're reading through the score, or if you want to print out a copy of it, then the spellings matter. Now, granted, it does a decent job of correcting many, once I bother to set a key signature. Like for example, setting the key signature to A Major changes all those pesky Db's to C#'s. But there are other instances where this doesn't happen. Cakewalk has a preference for certain spellings, which end up being rather inconvenient. Say, for example, I'm working on a piece in E minor, and I make a brief segue to E Major. Well, Cakewalk spells the G#'s as Ab's, necessitating my having to go in and replace every misspelling by hand. Currently, I'm working on a piece in E Major. It's about 120 measures long and has 10 parts. The chord structure is complex, with lots of modulations. There are several instances in this piece where modulations occur where C naturals are called for, but Cakewalk insists on spelling them as B#'s. This is highly annoying. I'm about halfway through editing this work, changing all the B#'s to C's, except for one measure, in which B# is the correct spelling. I mean, when a C Major 7th is being indicated, why can't the program have enough sense to recognize this chord and spell it correctly? Or F Major 7th, or A minor 7th? Etc. When I think about the key of E Major, in this instance, and its relationship to other keys, you have to get all the way to C# major before you have a B# in the Key signature -- 7 sharps! True, it's a move of three sharps either way, to get to either C natural or B#, but which is gonna be the more common spelling? When's the last time you've seen a B# in a score? Even if the bakers were able to correct this misspelling habit, I recognize the likelihood that it can't catch all of them, which is why I'm also asking for a global search and replace (with confirm) feature, where I could type in the existing spelling and the requested spelling, then be able to confirm each replacement -- just in case there might be an instance where the spelling is correct. So, should it be too big of a project to fix the misspelling problems, adding a global search and replace feature to the Staff View would go a long way toward being able to deal with this issue.

Thanks, Mark! Tom, you should have heard the older arrangement! I dialed the highs down a lot with the new mix. But you're saying they could come down a bit more, eh? Okay, I'll give it a listen. I'm still nt entirely happy with this new mix. The guitar has been a real challenge, getting it to come out sounding halfway decent, and there are places where it still has too much highs. I agree with you completely about the sudden start. In fact, I've found that, at SoundCloud, if a piece just jumps right in at 0,0 that the first half a beat or so often gets truncated off the beginning. That is SoundCloud's fault, though, not mine. But I've also found that, even if I insert some dead air before a piece starts, while it will get rid of the truncation, there's still that abrupt beginning that hits. So I've begun to think of ways that I can ease into the beginning of a piece, anywhere from inserting an Intro to maybe just playing with the initial volume. I appreciate your feedback.

I used to play a guitar transcription of the Prelude in C Major. Not a bad idea, actually. I can hear a few symphonic parts in it as I listen to it. Then there's also Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, the Toccata and Fugue in Dm, and many others. I've never messed with Guitar Pro. Sounds forgettable enough. If I have a chord progression to work with, I've had better luck with using Band in a Box to assemble a working copy of a piece, or a backing track.

Hi Andrew, I appreciate the feedback. When I arranged the Air, I was in the middle of composing and arranging a bunch of my own music, and I did this arrangement almost as a reprieve from my regular activities. I don't recall putting much into it, to be honest. I used a utility called PhotoScore & NotateMe to translate the file from pdf to MIDI and I don't recall having to play around much with timing. I just let it be. Now, it's been my experience in the past that this utility often does not copy from pdf to MIDI faithfully, so it might be worth a closer look. And I agree about giving the instrumentation a little closer attention. Back when I arranged that piece, which was not quite two years ago, I knew much less than I know now about arranging in CW. The inner voices could definitely stand to be brought more to the fore. I write also, and there's an old truism about writing, and that is a book is never finished being edited until it reaches the printer. I think the same thing applies to arranging music. I listen now to tunes that I put together not even a year ago, and I see places where they could be improved. The only thing that stops me from going back over other pieces I've arranged and written is I have a full plate of current projects that need my attention more. Oh, and have a Happy New Year!

This is a fairly straight-up rock-flavored instrumental. What makes it somewhat unusual is the solo instrument -- classical guitar. Other instruments include electric piano, voices, a minimally invasive horn section, bass, and drums. This piece was composed in Band in a Box, but arranged, produced, mixed, and recorded in Sonar Platinum. It was freshly remixed in CWbBL. No armadillos were harmed in the creation of this music. https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/armadillos-for-amarillo

Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Suite in D Major (BWV 1068) contains the famous Air, known as Air on a G String. This world famous piece is beautiful just as is, written for two violins, viola, and cello. But I couldn't resist playing around with the instrumentation and giving the tune a more modern twist. The two violins and viola are synth voices -- a close analog to an organ for the solo voice, and sweep pads for the 2nd violin and viola. The cello part is a clarinet. This is just my first attempt at alternate voicing for this tune. This piece was arranged, produced, mixed and recorded entirely within Cakewalk Sonar Platinum. https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/air-on-a-g-string?in=michaelmcbroom/sets/classical-and-baroque

Thanks, David. I too studied classical guitar for years, and I'm still an active player. But the Chaconne was always one of those pieces that I'd just play through on occasion and wonder if I'd ever have the technique to play it in public. Eh, not quite. I agree, there's really so much to that piece. I'm still astounded that Bach wrote it for solo violin.

Thanks again, everyone. It's gratifying to read that my choice of instruments for this piece meets with approval. And, yes, Tom, I had to massage the volume for each track a lot. It was one of the bigger challenges of getting it sounding right to my ear. And of course, a doff of the cap to Walter/Wendy Carlos, who were the original inspiration for my attempt at this.

Heh, I'm not familiar with that quote, but I wouldn't disagree. Bach certainly has the kontrabass working out in Brandenburg No. 3. Dunno if I'd want to give JB's bass much of a whirl with Bach, though. I always thought his live performances with that EB-0 through Marshalls sounded like it was farting.

JS Bach's Chaconne from his partita for solo violin (BWV1002) is an awe-inspiring work. As a fledgling classical guitarist, I first heard the Chaconne as a transcription for guitar. I have long felt, however, that the Chaconne is too much music for a single instrument, which is what led me to attempt an arrangement for multiple instruments. Following is my arrangement of the Chaconne in ten parts. The instruments I selected are perhaps somewhat unconventional, but I selected them for optimal separation, so the various parts would remain distinct from each other. One major difference between the violin manuscript and the guitar transcription is the guitar is played an octave lower than the violin. I elected to keep this distinction, mostly because I used a guitar transcription as the basis for my arrangement and also, as a guitarist, I'm most familiar with the way it sounds in this lower register. This was a challenging arrangement. I was helped by using a program that translated a pdf document into a MIDI file, but there were many errors in the translation from pdf to MIDI. So many, in fact, that it might have been quicker just to input the music from scratch. Well, I exaggerate, but not by much. As for the arrangement itself, I'm still not entirely satisfied with it, so any constructive criticism you'd care to offer, I'd welcome. This piece was entirely arranged, produced, and finalized using CWbBL. https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/bach-chaconne-bwv-1002-highly-modified

Thanks, guys! For you Bach fans, I have a couple more transcriptions I can post soon.

And now for something really different . . . The following is an arrangement of mine of JS Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (BWV 1048), done entirely within Sonar Platinum, just prior to my switching over to CWbBL. https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/bach-brandenburg-no-3-bwv1048-v20

Huh. How'd I miss the MIDI quantize plug-in? OK, so I tried it out on the melody track. Set it to quantize both start times and durations. Left everything else alone except for "swing," which I changed to 70%. I've had reasonably good luck with the value so far. And I gave it a spin. Hey, it works pretty well. A few isolated 16ths are getting jerked around some, but I think I can tame them once I've focused in on the individual problem ones. Interesting -- in the sheet music, it's retained all the dotted 8th-16th figures. Oh well, as long as it's giving the tune the correct feel, I don't care how CW shows them.

I imported a horn part into this piece, a part that had a lot of dotted 8th-16th figures, so just guessing again, I set the time value for dotted 8th, and then just played around with the other parameters. After quite a bit of experimentation, I came up with a strength of 75% and a swing of 70%. This changed the dotted 8ths to 8ths, and isolated the 16ths. The result was the best I've been able to come up with so far. Still a little edgy in parts, but overall, a swing feel predominates. So I'm somewhat satisfied with the results. I think, though, if I'm going to try to write a part with a swing feel, I'll use triplets and be done with it. Hardcore jazzophiles will tell you that swing and triplets are two different things, but I dunno if I'm willing to split those hairs at this point.

I tried playing around with the Length command, but it didn't do anything for the MIDI tracks. I just assumed it was for audio only.