John Vere

This is true. Out of all those songs I linked above- probably 1 in 100 will sound like a real song. The rest I think are cranked out from Band in a Box, Auto generated Mall organ keyboard workstations or hand entered in a sequencer . You can tell the difference with the ones that were actually "played" by a musician. Such as it is with free stuff. I've never "bought" a midi file as if that needed to happen I just roll my own because that's more fun than working a day job to pay for a midi file.

There are 1,000 of free midi files spread across the internet. This site I think has the most. https://www.midiworld.com/ I generally google a song and see if it's out there Example -" Sweet Child of Mine midi file" Just avoid any site that tell you you have to download anything else. The good sites it's very straight forward no strings attached. If you go to preferences and un check all the output boxes under MIDSI/Devices, Cakewalk will play these files using the TTS_1 sounds. They will play as GM ( General MIDI ) sounds. You have to OPEN the midi file. If you set Cakewalk as the default software for midi files in Windows settings they should automatically open cakewalk and play if you double click the file. Otherwise you can preview them in Media player.

This is obvious but did you try opening a new Basic Template, enable the metronome during playback and hit the space bar. The transport should carry on. Otherwise, The only thing I can surmise is a corrupted project. I can even see you don't have loop recording enabled. I have never seen the transport not move. It's normally sort of mindless and will move for days until you tell it to stop.

Few things- Overloud was one of the nice companies that took pity on us when we got the boot from Gibson. Most of us regular forum members were paying attention and Overloud gave us a serial number. All we had to do was send them a screen shot of Splats about screen showing our serial number as well as creating a account with them. I still get e mails about Overloud stuff. In the end CCC still seems to activate TH 3 etc. but its nice to know I can use their stuff on any system. I have a laptop I don't use much anymore that has me logged in under a different account and has none of my Sonar stuff on it only Cakewalk. Everything is like what a new user would experience with only CbB and free VST's. Nothing on it was purchased but it is loaded with powerful software. So every once in a while I fire it up and it most always needs Cakewalk updated. This now takes under 2 minutes. It's never actually asked me to re activate . If you go to the Help menu there is a " Refresh Activation" if you click on that in 1-2 second you'll have the blue toast notification telling you you are re-activated. How hard is that?

That's not much RAM for if you use a lot of Sample driven VST's. Keep an eye on the Performance module in the Control bar next time you run a project. Or Better yet open Task Manager. This machine is an i5 with 16 GB RAM and it struggles with bigger projects. Thank goodness it's just an office computer but I like to do some editing and stuff on it. I call it Studio B.. It's got an issue right now that seems to have come from installing software and then not uninstalling it properly. That's what MS tells me. I use this machine to test stuff on before I install to my DAW. Looks like that was a good plan! Anyhow I find you try a few tricks and eventually everything works and sometimes you really don't know what it was in the first place. It is the downside of computer based recording systems.

Actually this post should be moved to the folder called “1 post wonders” Especially in QA sub forum 50 % of the questions the op never responds. As well as seems it’s rare the voting system gets used.

Does your export play in Windows Media player?

So the actual transport stops at measure 3? Or does it keep going? There is only 2 measures of midi data so that is all you will hear. You need to drag the clip out to as long as you need. I’m being very basic here as all this is covered in tutorials and the documentation and it’s important for new users to spend a little time learning how things work first. In the Help menu at the top is a link to the documentation and in the header is a link to the official Videos. They are sadly outdated but most of the basic cakewalk stuff is still valid

Couldn’t have been a very good tutorial if it didn’t make it clear what you do. Try a better tutorial like from Creative Sauce

That's right, Excellent point. I have a GR 50 and a Godin with the Hex PU so Midi Guitar for me is much more work but for those that don't have the luxury of a guitar synth Midi Guitar is best thing since sliced bread. It's almost free, The GR 50 was close to $2,000 when I bought it and in todays money that would be---- from Google- $2,000 in 1980 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $6,626.29 today, an increase of $4,626.29 over 41 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.96% per year between 1980 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 231.31%. If I tried to sell it I'd be lucky to get $50. Funny thing is when I first got the GR 50 in the 80's I was excited about using it to lay down bass parts instead of struggling with playing them on a keyboard. At that time I was terrible on the keys. But the amount of data generated by the GR50 filled a floppy disk in sort order! So I had to disable all controller data. That really sucked back then. The Bass parts had way to many wrong notes so it wasn't worth the bother. We are most certainly spoiled now with not being restricted by 1.44 MB of data for a song.

The Transpose dialog once you set it to any number (example +12) stays like that until you completely close Cakewalk. Often I leave my DAW on for days at a time and just put it to sleep when I stop for the day. It's off line when I do this. I have set the "H" key to open the Transpose dialog. So for me it's pretty straight forward and only a few moves. Probably like 5 seconds.

Yes, his are probably the most watched and very well done. To bad they are not a sticky at the top of this sub forum instead of those outdated videos that have mostly stuff about Sonar. Cakewalk should support people like Mike.

Sounds like the hard way to do it to me.

@treesha When you open Melodyne as a regional effect and check in the Help dialog .. does that show your using version 5? The box actually has both the choices and the warning.

First, make sure you have the most up to date ASIO driver- https://o.steinberg.net/en/support/downloads_hardware/downloads_ur_c.html Your buffer setting is a bit high, change that to 256 or even better 128 . Generally we try as low a setting as possible until you hear artifacts or drop outs. Then you move it up one notch. Make sure your computer has been optimized for audio, Laptops can be iffy as they have more junk in the BIOS. Run this to test- https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon Otherwise your settings look correct to me. Because your using soft synths ASIO does matter in you system as that is what adjusts the timing offset for the playback of the VST which IS audio. Usually having certain effects running will recording can cause latency issues so always bypass all effects while recording.

Seems a bad idea to log in with Google. There certainly a few people that have trouble with that system and have started threads here. So don’t use that system. All you need is a email address. Just like 90% of the other free software I use. And Bandlab must be the only company I’ve given my address to that doesn’t bombard me with offers. You simply log on that first time and after that activation is more or less automatically done. For me this has been by installing the updates. My DAW is often off line when I’m recording new tracks so I make sure to check for updates when I go back online for all my software. Cakewalk is nice enough to let me know and it takes only a few minutes to do this. They have made recent changes to the updates and activation process and it seems pretty together now.

If you set snap to whole notes I find it locked on to each measure.

On the laptop running with what ever is left of Melodyne 4 after the demo expires . The big difference is there are no algorithm choices. It just pops up the second box telling you it might take a while. But it did create a polyphonic midi track which surprises me. The results are definitely much worse than what I got with version 5. It’s there but more editing will be required. Lots of missing notes and pitch issues which didn’t happen with 5. So my $99 was well spent to upgrade. Thanks to all who answered, it was all valuable info. I think I’ll edit my OP to list what my conclusion was.

I use Ample P bass Lite on everything.. Probably over 300 tracks by now. I have been Tempted to buy the full version just to get the lower notes. I'm a bass player and I am fussy about bass. I sometimes forget that I swapped my Yamaha Bass audio track for the Ample P bass. Hard to hear a difference in the mix. And I don't even EQ it. Just a little hi pass and a touch of compression. And ya I love that I can then change things around a bit with the midi. The results for a real bass player are close to achieving a perfect take. Something that used to require hours and a lot of drooling. Anyhow here is a short sample of what I got. I put the Original in the Left side and the Strum Session on the Right. There is no processing and I didn't edit the midi yet so you can get a better idea of the results. The Original guitar part is a rough take I put down as I was writing this song so is probably a direct into the interface track. I think this is sort of exciting that this works with the cheaper and possibly the free version that stays in Cakewalk. At this point I think Cakewalks Melodyne is version 4 so tonight I'll fire up my laptop and check. My Laptops is all free stuff and I don't have a licensed Melodyne installed, so we'll see what happens. Melodyne to MIDI.mp3

It sounds like I expect it to sound,, Like midi guitar if that makes sense. As I said I've from time to time recorded my GR 50 and created midi tracks with that so I'm no stranger to this sound. When I get a chance I'll post a short clip with the original guitar and then the Strum session. Of course Strum Session is probably a very basic guitar VST and not the best example, I also have Ample Guitar Lite which I will also try. Being a actual guitar player means I've never had to pay close attention to these types of VST instruments. I've never tried to make them work and I'm sure there's better samples out there but for this project which is archiving midi tracks the player really doesn't matter. I'm not using these midi tracks for recording, they are for backing tracks and to share the files. Down the road someone can use whatever VST instrument they want. As you are saying you can even use these parts to play non guitar sounds. I've done just that plenty of times with downloaded files. Often turning them into Wurly Piano parts. @pbognar As I have said I have a GR 50 guitar synth as well as a Godin guitar with built in Roland connection port. It works much better than Midi Guitar. I've played with Midi Guitar a little bit and it works fine with Cakewalk but way more fussy to set up than the GR50 which is dead simple because it's already midi. But truth be told there seems to be absolutely no difference in the results either way. Recording a midi guitar, or converting a clean guitar track = same midi track . Advantage of playing and recording a midi guitar in real time is you will immediately hear your sloppy playing as glitches and adjust your technique on the fly. The whole point is I need to convert a whole lot of already recorded tracks. Having to re play them is not something I'm that interested in. As long as I can make this work with minimum editing required it will be a huge time saver.

What do your master buss levels show before export? If they are correct and you have set your export options correctly then it will work. Make sure to select Entire mix.

Thanks @Glenn Stanton Last night Installed the full version. At least so I thought! Read on. I chopped the guitar audio track into short sections to experiment. This is a clean acoustic track no effects. I then dragged it to Strum Session Midi track. I tried both the Polyphonic Decay and Polyphonic Sustain and results seemed identical to me. But it did create a midi track that sounded about 70% correct. Mostly timing artifacts and jumped octaves, just like the Bass tracks I've made a hundred times.. BUT_ I wasn't exactly sure which version the 30 day trial was so I created a regional effect and opened the Melodyne screen. I checked and it was showing I was still using Assistant? So this tells me that even though Assistant is Monophonic it still creates a Polyphonic midi track with drag and drop! Truth be told I had never just tried this before as my understanding was I won't work unless you had Studio. I guess @Jacques Boileau was correct when he said he used assistant. I read into that post that it gave them pour results and that's because it was not studio. Any how within Melodyn screen under help there's a tab takes you to your product page and there I found a tab to "Activate 30 day Trail. When I returned to Cakewalk it now said I have the Studio trail version. OK, that was never included in the instructions. So I made a new midi track and dragged again. The algorithm dialog is identical to Assistant. I would have thought there would be different options? It seems there's no point in the upgrade if this is all you want to do. I will explore the audio editing a bit which is what I now think will be the only difference. It's not a feature I really need. If you look at my screen shot you can see that both midi tracks look the same. The top red one is with Studio, the lower Green one is with Assistant There is a small difference because I had worked on the Assistant track and moved a few notes to correct timing.. But my conclusion is that Assistant will do this just fine.

Well, all is long time users for sure. But I think the new comers outnumber us now. But that said on the form here most are still the same folks from the old forum. The newcomers ask questions and leave. They don’t hang around anymore.

@Starship Krupa I remember that free deal from I think it was Computer Music Mag. Even though I had Splat I grabbed a Copy of Home Studio and put it on a Laptop creating a 3rd set up. I was blown away with how much you could do for free. Sort of the pre-cursor to CbB I guess. I still have that license in CCC. That deal is still there if you go to the old forum and follow the links I posted in the deals sub forum. But then You come to a dead end when you get to the old Cakewalk site. Back to the topic. I find it sort of annoying that the emulator gets added to the Pro Channel by default with most of the templates. I have to delete it. I use my own "snake oil" the BBE Loudness Max and Sonic Maximizer. They ruin your perfect recording nicely too.

I am an idiot- You can try Melodyne full version for 30 days free! So Lets see if I can make this work and I'll report back, downloading right now.