How to use Pigments 5 as an effect in Cakewalk

[Hillmy]

The new Pigments 5 has the ability to be used as an effect. Though not in the traditional sense.  After experimenting in Cakewalk I found out how use it as an effect for an Audio track and for an Instrument track.

For Audio Effect:

As you can see I added Pigments as an Effect. But when you go to insert an effect make sure you choose "Inert Soft Synth" then choose Pigments. There should be a MIDI track for Pigments too and make sure it's Output is set to it as well, as you can see in the picture above. You need to also add a MIDI note in the Piano Roll as a constant note. It doesn't really matter which key. You wont hear anything if you don't have a MIDI note recorded. 

Configure Pigments like this:

Choose a new default preset then disable Engine 1 and enable the Utility Engine. Then make sure only Noise 2 is ON then change it to Audio Input. The volume on the right will be very low by default so you will need to dial it up to hear the audio to a desirable level. 

For Instrument Effect:

 

Here you can see me using it on both the Audio Track and Instrument Track. To make things easier to follow, name each MIDI track with it's corresponding output and make sure the outputs are correct. The MIDI track for the Instrument Effect should have the Input Echo ON so you can hear it, as you can see from the picture above with the speaker icon in yellow for PigmentsFX 2. This way you can hear the effect as you play with your instrument if you don't have a MIDI input recorded. When you do though, you will need to have that same constant single note in the effect MIDI track just like the above PigmentsFX 1 in the picture.

[Starship Krupa]

Nice. Might be a good thing to link to this in the Tutorials forum.

[Hillmy]

10 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Nice. Might be a good thing to link to this in the Tutorials forum.

I totally forgot about that! 😅

[Magic Russ]

I have mixed feelings about the effect version requiring MIDI input.

I suspect that in a large percentage of use cases, a person might just want to slap this into the FX bin.  In that case, it seems silly to have to have a MIDI track just to hold onto a C note.

However,  you can use keyboard as an assign for things and use the envelopes.  Also the comb filter takes in MIDI input, which can be used for some interesting vocoder like effects.

[Hillmy]

On 1/24/2024 at 11:39 AM, Magic Russ said:

I have mixed feelings about the effect version requiring MIDI input.

I suspect that in a large percentage of use cases, a person might just want to slap this into the FX bin.  In that case, it seems silly to have to have a MIDI track just to hold onto a C note.

However,  you can use keyboard as an assign for things and use the envelopes.  Also the comb filter takes in MIDI input, which can be used for some interesting vocoder like effects.

The midi can be an advantage when you consider that you can sequence the effect with spaces in the notes. You can make it only occur when you want it during different time periods of a song. Plus other scenarios that I have not become aware of yet.