Starise

Craig you must be a wheeler dealer. I have a friend who would buy the latest guitars and keyboards. You would think the dude would have been happy and set for the next 5-10 years. Nope. He would find something about it he didn't like, next thing you know it's for sale and he hasn't had it for a year. He must have gone through a dozen guitars and five keyboards in only a few years......I still don't think he is content to this day. He would always buy on a deal and sell top dollar, that way his loses were minimal and he got to play with different toys all the time. That just isn't me. I get attached to my stuff and try to learn it. I was more of a buy and keep kinda guy, though I traded a few things. That's why there's no room in my studio. I don't really have a lot of stuff, just a small space. I guess I need to define what a "lot" is lol.

Looks very interesting! I mostly looked at guitar plugins as something keyboard players use to approximate a guitar. Many other possibilities for the guitarist as well.

Kudos to you for doing something you love to do and helping others at the same time. I only wish I could do that and still eat YouTube generally isn't a reliable or a huge source of income for most....so yes, the idea for a course would be very useful to many I'm sure. People learn in different ways. I hate to admit that I have a tough time watching instructional videos. I'm one of those types that goes out and learns mostly by reading here and there, making mistakes and hard knocks experience. I know I'm not the norm. PLENTY of people would love to have something like that, so I say go for it man! and best of luck!

I dunno, they say those low frequencies can travel a long distance. No? All of the flies have vacated my area and that's a good thing

I thought I heard something flapping in the distance.

I wonder if he still has a job lol.

I have watched a few of your videos and they are well done. You provide a great service here to those who are new to the software! Good luck. My only question is, are you doing this from the goodness of your heart? Is there an angle? I hope you're selling something because making these videos is a lot of work which I hope will be appreciated.

If you are a registered Melodyne customer upgrades are not overly expensive unless you upgrade buy their top tier version. The "drag and drop" is simply an incorporation of Melodyne using ARA2. I am using the "editor" version. Not sure you might be pushing the limitations of the free version. Melodyne basic only deals with mono files. If you downloaded Cakewalk with the free Melodyne addition, you might need to see if there were updates to it. Cakewalk utilizes 32 bit through bitbridge and doesn't natively support 32 bit. It is best to use 64 bit versions from now on if possible. To date there isn't anything else out there that does what Melodyne does as well as Melodyne does it.

Any evaluation of a plugin is often highly subjective. What do you mean by "process the side"? Are you looking to get an M/S mix? If so, there are plenty of plugins I could suggest for that. There's also this- Tonespot Acoustic I would download the demo to see if this is something you might like. Personally I don't like to diddle too much with acoustic if it was well recorded, but when I do, I usually reach for this plugin.

Melodyne is a possibility but there are several caveats. Works best in the lower versions of Melodyne with a solidly recorded mono track. Not sure about the highest version of Melodyne if it can do better than that or not. The more in tune the guitar was the better, though Melodyne can "pull it in" if the recorded file is clean. IOW not a lot of background noise. If notes overlap, you might need to do some midi editing of the converted track. Results can vary depending on the track. Can't hurt to give Melodyne a shot and see how it goes if you have a decent file. There are also midi guitars and midi guitar pickups.. Some are better than others. Might be something you would be interested to look into if you plan to add midi instruments to your work often.

Ovox will likely come down. I have most of the 29.00 plugins I want. I doubt Ovox will go up. Nothing to loose either way.

I would maybe do the voucher deal but I don't see it.

I can't infer a motive for why people do what they do, yet I would agree that actions speak louder than words. I believe some of this has to do with how a person sees a songs forum. Everyone wants their material to be heard and there are a few that go around to these forums strictly so that they can get their play numbers up on whatever social medial platform they are using. Nothing wrong with posting to multiple sites. I have done that in the past too. My motive in that case was to get the track heard not to boost play counts. I just think that there is a give and take even if it is unspoken and I guess why some forums have made it a rule that in order to post one must also listen and comment. Most if not all on the Cakewalk songs forum do this gladly and enjoy the process. I don't tend to respond to those who never comment on anything anyone else does. I know people are busy and sometimes it happens on occasion. I'm talking about a trend with a person. If I see a trend like that, I simply ignore them. Is that a bad way to look at it? I don't know. If you don't care about my stuff guess what? I know there's a of back slapping going on, but we need that and we need for people who mix and play to comment. This has been happening for the most part. FYI, I'm going to say something that most here already are well aware of. This forum is largely made up of those who have a taste for Rock and Pop music, so if I post a classical music track my expectations are pretty low here that many will really care for it. I knew this going into it. It isn't their thing. That's ok. Not saying anyone else has to abide by this because I guess there are no real written rules. If and when I post any track I post ONE track. Then I listen to others tracks and do my best to comment on all of the ones that were most recent to the best of my ability. Then I wait awhile to see if anyone listens to the track I posted. They always listen and comment, even if they don't much care for the genre which I think really says something good about the songs forum. After a few comments on my track I just let it go after I respond. I have been known to intentionally comment on other tracks if I see someone recently posted and my track is toward the top. I'm actually trying to bury my track at that point. The way I figure it. I'm not in this to stay at the top and keep pushing my tracks. I made the music. I posted the music. I received comments. I commented. On to the next one. Everyone deserves a turn. I hesitate to say this, Larry could have already driven the nail in the coffin so to speak. If I posted umpteen tracks, never supported anyone else. Went to another place to complain about a comment someone made in private to me. Then touted what a pro I was compared to the other people here citing my experience and training. Yeah, the nail has likely been driven.

Mighty fine, Mighty fine indeed. Quite a find. I bought a Hellraiser from GC and never had any issues with it. Also a nylon string acoustic and a Martin DX. Come to think of it most of my guitars have been bought from GC with the exception of my Variax. Never had any issues with those guitars. I don't know nearly as much about guitars as you likely do. I'll admit that. You knew what you were looking at. Not sure how you managed to talk them down so much unless maybe they didn't know the guitar ( very likely) and might not have paid the original owner much for it. At 599.00 they still made money so they must have bought it for a song. Ibanez isn't generally thought of in the same context as the old Gibson's which might have really worked in your favor. I have traded some nice gear into them and whoever bought it had something decent. One amp I traded was worth something. It was just too darned loud for my neighborhood and my ears so I sold it. The guy working that day was a very good guitarist and he really lit that thing up, almost blew the roof off of GC lol. Since this last deal I am VERY skeptical of anything electronic they sell used. Sometimes amps need to warm up before problems show up. Thankfully they have a 45 day return policy. As my own personal rule, since this last incident, I will probably be looking at new electronics. Guitars can always turn my head if the price is right and it's something I want.

Congrats on the new album batsbrew. No sleight of hand going on here, just real solid talent and composing. I hope it does well...I would have called you for another interview but I couldn't keep up with my podcast. I hope somebody picks you up for an interview.

On the same page here. There is a certain level of risk in buying from the GC used section. I wish the item would have been at my local GC . Still might not have changed the outcome because I would have assumed someone checked it out before they tried to sell it. The item was advertised as being in good condition. It wasn't. From now on I will likely insist we plug in the item and try it out on site. If it isn't local, I will have it shipped to the local GC and then try it out. I doubt I'll ever attempt to buy from them again though. I'll just spend more money and buy something new, probably online. Sweetwater, Musiciansfriend, Americanmusicalsupply....places like that. Are they going to recoup me for my time and money spent in driving there 20 miles from my house? We know the answer to that one. If I have to pay a "restocking"fee. I will never darken their door again. I'm not feeling the love

True that. I just updated two older computers. You can also buy an inexpensive license for win 10 in ebay and save some $$. I did that with one of mine because the validation didn't register with Microsoft. Went off without a hitch.

Nice David! I have not done any of this kind of thing yet. I am not the best guitarist because I haven't been practicing lately. Time is important. I might resort to something like this in the future if I just can't play it and /or it makes a song construction process faster.

Not sure what your opinion of GC is. I love that there are a few of them not far from where I live. I know it's a tough business. I keep thinking they might not last another year. Apparently lots of people are still buying guitars. Small rant here. I have a looper pedal and I needed a small amplifier so I could take it out to play with the looper. I put a pick up on my violin and the idea was to have portability so I could take it outside of my studio. I also needed a way to play backing tracks in small settings. Started looking at those one speaker mini PA setups. Behringer makes one and so does Mackie. Basically a mini class D amplifier with a three channel mixer,phantom power, etc. I decided to seriously look at the Mackie units. Seen one on the "used" GC website for a lot less than a new one and decided to order it. Fast forward about 5 days and it came yesterday. I open it up, plug in a 1/8" to dual RCA stereo cable into my smart phone and pick a track to play. The sound is garbled, so I think maybe my impedance is off. I double check that. Use different inputs. Still has a very apparent mushy sound in the bass. I continue to play with the levels, plug in my violin pickup...same thing. This thing came well wrapped in bubble wrap, so I don't think it was dropped and damaged. The other possibilities aren't good. A fellow musician who knew this thing was bad when he or she came in to GC somehow bluffed them into taking it. Maybe had the bass turned down so they wouldn't hear it........basically schmoozed someone into taking their junk. GC apparently didn't check this amp out very well before they shipped it. Yes my local GC should take it back. Just a bunch of my time wasted and probably a fee of some kind. The person who brought it in had to know it was bad. I thought we looked out for each other? Never again. Same thing happened with a rice cooker I bought new last week at a department store. Took it home, took it out of the box and the cook lever wouldn't go down. Boxed it back up again. Took it to returns and told the woman I was very leary of another one and asked her if there had been others bringing them back. She said no so I hesitantly brought another one home, took it out of the box and it did the same thing. I said the H&&l with it and took the bottom off with a screwdriver. They had pressed the parts too close together and the linkage was hitting. A few small bends with needle nosed pliers and now it works. Just a pain in the hinder parts. I'm batting 1000 this week, had some a hole try to run me off the road in the car. I was literally laying on the horn and he still kept coming into my lane forcing me into the emergency lane. Half of my car was alongside his car. I almost made the decision to ruin his car but decided I didn't want the hassle of calling insurance people etc. You have no idea how close I came to doing it. I realize these are small problems in comparison to others. Everyone has a bad day...suck it up...I guess. Rant over

I think Blackhole is very similar to Valhalla Shimmer. I sometimes use Shimmer in small amounts for orchestra classical music. You could duplicate similar to the spring using timed plates in many reverbs. Unless your are making ambient music I doubt many would use those deep lush settings. But for 20 something quid...if I wanted it this would be a good deal.

If your computer is taking a serious hit, then a few considerations that would possibly help would be defragmenting older HDD drives. Having sample based synth libraries on a second drive. Adjusting playback buffers in your interface, removing unnecessary programs, especially virus software that has a check in/scan routine. If the scan kicks in while recording it can cause issues. More recent computers are less prone to becoming overloaded, but not impervious to it. Win 7 is no longer supported. Cakewalk dropped support for it too. If playing back midi recordings coupled to synths, you may freeze the tracks into audio and save valuable cpu. Audio interface and drivers are also often an issue. Asio has historically been the most reliable drivers for Cakewalk even though Cakewalk has invested considerable time in making sure WASAPI drivers can be used. The most recent update to Cakewalk includes some work with WASAPI. To get into working with synths the AIR synthproducts are inexpensive,capable and sound pretty good including Xpand2! Awhile back I bought some of the AIR synths and kept getting a scan lock in my vst folder for Xpand2. I downloaded it but never bought it, so to avoid the scan error I bought it finally. I was surprised by what it is capable of. AIR synths were originally made for Pro Tools by a 3rd party. They branched out and now sell those as vst to anyone. Xpand2 works similar to some other synth "shells" that allow you to load up multiple synths in one instance. Kontakt will do similar but is much more complex allowing you to use independent midi channels to trigger different sounds within that "shell". The benefit to Kontakt is it can load 3rd party written for it. A company called Plugin Guru has a new invention out called UNIFY that is a shell which allows you to load any synth from any vendor. Kind of unique in that respect. Comes with some interesting synths already loaded. UNIFY is really a lot more than just a shell. Sampletank 4 is a shell for IK sounds.

Larry this would have probably been very offensive to me and I think that response is over the top. I appreciate all who post here. Posting music can be a tricky thing on forums in general. I don't put up as much of my music anymore, but still frequent a few songs forums. One in particular is about as "clickish" as it gets. The people who hang around are made into mods lol. There should only be rules to benefit the entire group. A few forums have in their info on posting that you should listen to at least three songs from other people who posted and only post one song every so often. This isn't necessarily a slight. Simply a way to make sure that someone else's hard work isn't literally pushed to the bottom of the list because someone else posted 10 songs and no one else has any visibility on the page. Makes sense to me. Listening to other's songs was always so very difficult for me, not because I didn't like much of the music, but because the only time I had to do it was during my limited time slot to make my own music and I have a tough time sitting still I know that sounds kinda selfish and I guess it is. I admit it's really a shame some forums feel the need to make a rule requiring that we listen to one another's music. They shouldn't need to do that. FWIW I still make a point to do it no matter how inconvenient it is when I post my music because it's just the right thing to do and a reasonable expectation on a songs forum. I have learned so much and have been exposed to so much amazing talent here on the Cakewalk forum, so I'm glad I made the time. I haven't been over to the songs forum lately, but "if" you haven't been listening intently and making comments on others music, then you can't reasonably expect anyone else to listen to your stuff because the process is give and take. JMOP.

I do the same thing...try to flesh out an idea in one evening or maybe two at most. I should have something to work with by then. The idea at the time isn't to "go fast" just to get the ideas down even if things are a little shaky in the mix. I was up till midnight last night..don't laugh, I'm up at 5am.....I layed down maybe 10 tracks. I find a tempo and throw a drum midi in that has a groove I like for my idea chained to BFD3. The drums suck as a fit but they will get me there in keeping things together and having a decent vibe to it. Enough to move ahead. I figure I can go back and edit the drum midi when the idea(s) are down. I usually play in both an audio and a matching midi track for the beginning idea. To get ideas flowing I might copy that midi to another track and pick another complimentary instrument or arpeggio. For lower parts thin the midi data down or use the midi filters in Cakewalk to make space for the different parts using the same midi...you won't ever be out of time that way. If the midi is a simple melody, you can usually play a complimentary part to it. In the past I ran into trouble in trying to make things so complex, big mixes, everything begins to step on everything else. I still like complex, but most music begins with basic ingredients. You don't need to write the entire thing out. Everything doesn't need to be a solo. People don't buy recordings because they are complex. If I'm only recording audio, I'll have a melody in my mind or maybe even just an underpinning to something else. IOW something to play over...that often works well too. The funny thing is I might only take a few evenings to get the ideas down but the mix can take a Loooooong time to complete before I'm even almost content with it. I listen back to a lot of crap I made, but it was all a learning experience and fun.

I like the Indiginus libraries as well for the kind of thing I do. Haven't bought an acoustic library yet because I feel guilty having guitars hanging all over my walls :0 I just wanted to add one more source to look into. Kontakt Hub has a lot to offer and you could buy several of their libraries for less than one library from a few of the others. I listened to several of the demos and was quite impressed, especially given the prices..........not sure if it's what you're looking for specifically. Here's the link- KONTAKT HUB GUITARS

I remember playing Sampletank years ago when it first came out on a laptop. A lot has changed since then. It looks as if ST4 still allows a lot of flexibility to put different instruments (samples) on the keybed where you want them, panning, etc. All of the stuff you would have done with a hardware rack setup way back when. I don't believe Kontakt lets you record samples either. Kontakt will let you drop in samples. I don't necessarily associate the romplers of old with the more modern romplers. They have come a long way and many of them sound quite good. I think it's a great all rounder'. Sampletank max is loaded with probably more sounds than most will ever use. For anyone who fancies a way out of Kontakt land ST is a consideration. The main downside is there are no 3rd party libs so far as I know. In the end it has everything to do with the mix and what you're trying to bring out. In some cases a small library is just fine. I will say I'm not particularly confident in ST if I were leaning on it for large projects that had a deadline. This doesn't have much to do with the libraries or their quality. I would want to run it through more paces and be assured there would be no further issues. Studios can't afford to have things hanging up in the middle of a job...and I don't enjoy the frustration when it happens during a session. I am only marginally confident I won't have any more issues if I push lots of instruments into the ST4 shell. The jury is still out on that one.