John Vere

The reason you speak on an angle is the friggin thing is big and you can't read your script! But yes if you talk directly into it is very plosive. That's with the built in sock that I've never tried to remove. The extra sock makes it look vey uncool and I assumed it was for outdoor use as that's what it looks like. I used my Beta for narration for the first year of making videos with no issue but I did put a cheapo clown nose wind sock on it. I use the SM 7B for scratch vocals which I do sitting in front of the computer as you see above in the screen shot. But for the final serious, get down to it takes, I stand up and use the Beta with a proper vocal windscreen in front of it. I try and go for 4" as the closest I get. I also have to get away from my CPU which has a tiny bit of fan noise.

Ya horns are tricky. I was the sound guy for a 10 piece R&B band with a 3 piece horn section for 10 years. Sax, Bone, Trumpet. That sound is stuck in my head. It’s that Chicago horn sound. They called themselves the Hounds of Sound I created a horn section in Xpand because it plays 4 parts. Took a long time to get it satisfactory. Just a touch of reverb is all I use on horns. The sax guy liked delay on his solos.

I just joined the BiB user forum and ya I see some familiar avatars there. I asked a question and got really good answers which have helped learn how to use it. Lots of people seem to use it as a tool to start songs and then finish in a DAW. Great user forum just like here it seems.

The thing about a DAW is you can choose to totally ignore the features and use it like an 8 track. You can choose,like me, to only have 1 reverb unit and 2 compressors like I did in the 80’s. So for me the audio recording part never really changed other than Melodyne. I think the biggest improvement over the old days is what we now get out of midi. This has made the one man band sound 100% better than it did back then. I just posted a song in the song forum that is about 8 tracks. And I didn’t use Melodyne. It totally could have been done on a 8 track and midi sync to an Atari. Vocals and guitar tracks all one complete takes. It’s not my best work for sure but it was done this way on purpose.

Agree with Jack can’t understand one words at all . The music sound good. But without be able to follow the lyrics it quickly became boring.

Awesome it’s a keeper! Refreshing to hear real instruments

Definitely need to clean up the timing issues. There seems to be a lot of the instruments that hit notes out of the groove. Even the snare. It’s like it got Quantized and put notes 1/16 out of place. If it done with midi this is easy to fix.

Nicely done. My only criticism is the choice of the horns? It sounds very wavetable synth to me. Do you have Xpand or Something that uses real samples? It sort of takes away from the quality as the other instruments sound fine.

Take note that this is what I really sound like. I sang it at 10 in the morning and only had to do a few punch ins to get the phrasing right. No Melodyne was involved. I love this style of country music because it sounds better if you can sing that well!

It’s Ok I would have felt guilty. I don’t mind spotting developers $15 or even $30. But it has to be incredibly awesome to get much more than that out of me. This is a hobby. Sort of, I do make backing tracks that I use at gigs I’m paid for. In the end I’m not overly impressed with the steel drum from Soundpaint and have returned to using the Marimba in Xpand. Looks like TTS-1 is still a good bet but I don’t like to keep it in projects. I was back and forth with Cakewalk support re the crash dumps. But so far all they keep saying is open the project in safe mode, ?? The projects open just fine. I have no clue why they crashed and it appears either do they. They haven’t crashed for a week. You start to think you’re taking to an AI after a while.

This was an experiment. I bought Band in a Box because my 14 year old Grandson has taken up playing guitar and has written 30 songs already. His songs are actually good as country music goes. He writes about Pick up trucks and his favorite hat, etc. He has a good sense of song structure but is not really there yet with his playing. I proceeded to learn how to use Band in a Box. The idea was he could learn to pick a style and play around with different chords and arrangements on his own. Then export it as midi and we would finish it in Cakewalk. I then found out how limiting Band in a Box is. The midi it exports apparently is for the notation display. It's bare bones. Example a steel guitar will have mod wheel pitch bends that sound cool in Band in a Box but they do not export. Apparently band in a Box doesn't really use Midi or Midi instruments it uses Real Tracks. I imagine they are sample loops that kinda drift around the chord changes. Anyhow for a laugh I entered the chords for this old song of mine and as exported the midi to create a TTS-1 project in Cakewalk. I then exported the Steel guitar as an audio track because as I said the midi sucked. I had to fix a bunch of spots that sounded terrible using Melodyne. Then I've totally replaced all but the midi drum part. The rest sounded like,,, well, Band in a Box.

The short answer is to use a proper audio interface with direct monitoring and ASIO driver. Your stuff is made for Podcasting. If that was your goal and not to record music then Cakewalk is not the best choice for assembling podcasts. If your goal was to record music and not do podcasts then get you money back and put it towards the gear that will work. We can help you with that.

Actually if you watch my videos I do not put down using on board audio. I just explain it’s limitations and that people need to be aware of them. There’s a whole new giant share of the “music”creating community that have zero musical ability and would be to lazy to learn. They are just fine with using the on board audio because they won’t be recording anything as audio. ( Thank goodness) Welcome to the future of AI produced ( music??) But Cakewalk was originally designed with real musicians in mind, not “producers” . Other software like Abelton is designed for that use. Cakewalk has now introduced Next which is obviously designed from the ground up for non musicians. It’s dead simple to use too. Takes about 2 hours to figure it out and the manual is only 256 pages instead of Sonars 1,958 pages. As a musician I found it very lacking and even old Sonar Home Studio will blow it out of the water. So we Musicians will have Sonar. And the Producers will have Next.

This gives you a quick overview of how the views in Cakewalk. It’s the first video in the series that if you watch the fist half dozen you will be an expert at navigating Cakewalk.

Why not just transfer it as a midi file? This way you will open it in Cakewalk and if you have no midi outputs chosen TTS-1 will play the song if it was using GM format Heres how to transfer to a USB stick:? https://yamahamusicians.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13760 Heres how to use a midi file in Cakewalk https://youtu.be/TEJ3IfBymXc?si=k3RLe25-2Wx0aaLv

I think it might be possible to keep some stuff but generally Cakewalk goodies that came with some older versions were tied to the license for that version. Somewhere there’s a list of what came with what. Scook would know but he seems to have disappeared back in September. I hope he’s OK. So the general consensus is to install the older versions using custom install and only check off what you need. The software itself takes up very little room especially when we now have 1 TB drives. I just installed Sonar Home Studio a while ago to compare it to Cakewalk Next. It’s 10 x the Software Next is. And it sold for $50 back then. If it was all I had I’d be fine except it doesn’t do regional effects. You have to run Melodyne in the bin. And no pro channel but it has the EQ. And it is good for lifetime of use with out authorization.

This is a great idea but I think the problem is not totally under Cakewalk control. Cakewalk has never liked consumer audio devices. . Cakewalk will have no way to know until you set your devices in windows and then choose it in preferences. This seems to always work for ASIO devices and Realtek sound cards. It doesn’t always work with consumer devices like USB podcast mikes and Bluetooth. Just my own observation that’s all.

The screen sometimes doesn’t scroll if you clicked on something. Just hit the spacebar again 2x

Absolutely. When I first tried Cakewalk I was 100% midi editing in DrT KCS event list. As we know Cakewalks event list is limited and the PRV is for the details. I think it took me a few years before I finally gave in and started using it. My event list workflow was over 15 year old. So it’s probably a good thing Cakewalks event list sucks as it forced me to learn to use a much better tool. And my overdub preferences are directly descended from the days of analog recording gear. Bad take! Record over it! Why would I want to keep a bad take? Workflow habit that is 40 years old.

My observation is that if the device is an ASIO interfaces Cakewalk will automatically set it to 1-2 outputs. You can open a project over the years and change interfaces dozens of times and Cakewalk will always connect with 1-2 on the master. Then if there’s no buses it connects directly to 1-2 from the tracks. The “none” situation is rare and it only happens to people who are not using ASIO. So there’s no need for any changes to Cakewalk. People who choose not to use an ASIO interface need to be aware of the limitations and complications that will arise and learn how to manually set things up.

That’s what I was saying. It’s what happens when you change to certain devices. Your master goes no where. I apologize if that wasn’t in the video. I thought it was.

Believe it or not the Sonitus multi band is excellent for this It’s very easy to figure out too. If you own Sonar you might have one of the LP ones or the Adaptive Limiter.

And the question was never answered correctly and that is “ Drum Maps”. Most kits can use GM maps but that has to be set in the brain of the kit. SI Drums doesn’t support maps but most VST kits do. But ya, you might as well stand on your back porch and ask the OP a question.

When you read these ideas you realize how we all have such totally different workflows. I hate it when I start working on what started as a pure midi file and find out the default setting of comping is turned on. All my templates are Overdub mode. Just now that happened to me and when I opened PRV to edit my 10 th and final take only to find PRV a total mess of notes! All 10 takes were there stacked up. It was easy to open the lanes and delete all but take 10. But it super annoying to me that the default is this instead of Overdub like most DAWs. Funny Cakewalk Next default is Overdub.

When ever my wife complains that I spent too much time in the studio I point out that she could have married someone who plays golf in summer and snowmobiles in winter and then when at home watches sports on TV. Then she listens to the songs and sends me back to fix everything she doesn’t like! The nerve !