Sridhar Raghavan

Colin I am happy to know you have already made a feature request. Makes so much sense to have the feature, whatever [simple, logical] building block is used. You can count me in. How do I add my vote to this?

I went through most of the past posts related to this topic, and I am unable to develop a clear picture of the "actionable" conclusions. Hope some who was active participant in it can summarize for everyone.. Thanks in advance. At present, I can feed my external Keyboard (Korg PA600) to many Simple Instrument tracks, record/play them back. No issues. So I am wondering why.. I can create a MIDI track, with MIDI IN as my Korg Keyboard -- This is just Input->Output with nothing going on. but not able to set its MID OUT to the IN of other tracks (that can/take direct input from the same Keyboard) - Unable to do this. Am I missing some setting while creating the MIDI track? Alternately, whether the other Simple Instrument Tracks can take their MIDI IN from this MIDI track? Unable to do this also. This is a pragmatic question and not just a curiosity question. If it is not possible with Cakewalk basic mechanisms, for whatever reasons, it is just fine. Would be good to know. I will skip details of what I can do with RTP-Midi, loop Be, and Virtual Midi Ports. regards

scook thanks for confirming it. I was using the "insert" dialog panels, until I discovered this ADD button. Though functionally it may be equivalent or even less, I find the "active" interaction nicer. regards

I am referring to the Add Track window one gets by clicking the + icon in top area of Tracks View. Wanted to check if there is some setting to Move or Un Dock and Move. I would like to move this panel closer to the center of my large screen, so it is easier for me to work with. I find this panel useful for interacting with while adding a Track. It is not a show-stopper, but inability to MOVE, as if it is a context menu, is rather strange, and an unnecessary annoyance for me.

David Baay and bitFlipper Thanks for your tips. I was able to run all my 32-bit plugins in Cakewalk without any issues, at least so far. DSK India Dreamz [Sitar, Sarod, Veena, Tor, Tabla] runs fine as well. But I cannot recall now, how I was using that VST with the Scale Tuning file!! and on which DAW. So, I am stalled for now. I may have to look at the other VSTs in the list. regards

Star Krupa You should feel very good about it. It is a case of Name Matters. I am very happy that I made that instinctive choice - and will also explore racing green, as well as the new updated pack by Mathews. I have placed the Themes work on hold to sort out the other environmental idioms -- getting Swar Plug, Native Instruments working with Cakewalk. regards

Thanks for the quick tips David Baay. I will give this a shot later today with DSK Indian Dreams.

All I am starting this as a new topic, so it is not buried in another thread. I have already read the few existing topics and conversations related to this. Here is a gist of what I learned/reflected from there: a) Not clear whether VST 32-bits can be run in the latest editor Cakewalk. Likely Answer is NO. b) Whether there are some indirect methods for running them. May be? c) VST 32 Bits are ancient -- so why bother? I disagree. I will address this last question: i) DSK India Dreams is the only free DSK I could find (which I used for several years in Ableton 32 bits for example) that supports Alternate Tuning via Scala. I have also run this under other DAWs whose names escapes me for now ii) DSK India dreams has Sarod and Veena and few other nice instruments which are hard to come by. I checked on this on the net as well. Some of the links I found were dead ends or simply not inspiring my trust iii) Talking about ancient, I wonder why recent generations have not caught up with Alternate Tunings that was available in DSK? Alternate Tunings are not "ancient" but represent the "future". So what is "ancient" and what is "modern" is not a simple view point. True DSK India Dreams has not been updated to 64-bit, I can understand that, given that there is just one man behind DSK, while Cakewalk and similar have, to use a proverbial expression, "an army" behind it. They ought to be leading the Music Technology front given the vantage of their huge following. iv) In this regards, as I mentioned in my earlier post (on Tuning) Swar Plug and Native Instrument India Series have some claims to support Indian Scales -- but these claims cannot hold, as there some basic foundational/design flaws. I do not want to elaborate on those, as it will be discourteous and uncivil to discuss them here. They can claim many things on other dimensions, d) Some of you have pointed me to list of VSTs. I have not looked at them in details. So are they? 64-bit VSTs with microtonal support, what are their interpretations? support Indian Instruments like Sarod, Sarangi, Veena? Appreciate your thoughts and wisdom on any of the above points a,b,c,d. My intent is keep this focused on the pragmatics of using Cakewalk to play Indian Instruments with Indian Tuning/Scales. And keep out other discussions, that are away from this bulls-eye, as much as possible, Until I can get the Tuning capabilities worked out, I guess I may have to ignore most of the VSTs (instruments). regards

Great Matthew. If you can also include the download link, it would be nice/handy.

I just stumbled into this issue -- Unable to see the You Tube Publish menu under the File->Export->Audio->Format. Now I know, from this thread, that this is no longer available, though described in the manual. But, not before spending some time navigating through various menus to diagnose what setup step I had missed, and decided to check in the forum. if there are many such instances, I am just guessing there may be more.. It may be good to consider releasing an Updated Version of Just the Ref Guide with such sections with a watermark [or some such indicator] Not Available. Just a suggestion..

Here is a link to Scala Downloads page of HUYGENS-FOKKER.org https://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/downloads.html I felt that I should post the link, rather than simply share the files I downloaded from there 2-3 years ago. There is plenty of information and assets there, for your interest. See the Scala Archive at the end of the page to download the SCALES.ZIP. That contains many scale definitions, especially for Indian Tuning expressed as ratios (in my PDF I listed them as adjustment in cents to Equal Temperament Pitches)

lapasoa Good thought but more or less redundant to my context. As I have been considerably soaked in the context for general directions from others. I would add the following: Classical Indian Musicians -- YES. But keyboards and Synths are No-No in that world for many reasons. North Indian musicians use Harmoniums, but serious one use custom tuned ones. It was banned for use for a few decades because they were not pure. In South Indian Music, Harmoniums are never used as they just cannot produce the needed musical/microtonal patterns. Film Music Composers of Previous Generations - YES. They were outstanding maestros in Indian, Western and their Fusion. Wish they were alive and I had personal connections. Current Generation Music Composers - I hesitate to make any generalized statements. I am sure they are using very Expensive Technologies meant for high-end Professionals. I would love get my hands on those for trying/discovering. But they as a source of knowledge about Tuning/Music etc.. I may not lose much passing on....

User 905133 You should look ay Synth One on iPad (if you happen to have one) and how it supports Scala and Tunings (not limited to 12 notes to an octave). Very innovative. To your question about switching scales, usually it will be via unused controller and/or RPN/NRPN or command Sequences. On both my keyboards, I can do them only via direct UI and not via MIDI. This is not a technical issue, they just decided it was not a priority. But they do provide so many other vendor-specific MIDI commands for selecting style, pads, picking variations, fills, fade-ins. fade-outs etc.... I may open a topic on this if it is not clear to me, how to compose/send those. I do have the Scale Editor and plenty of Scala files -- have used them with Ableton or Close in the past, and now usable on Synth One. They are useful as a good documentation for various Tunings/Scales.

Colin Thanks for your note and the pointer to Dim Pro. I went through the manual(s) and also explored with the UI, and can confirm what you said. Cakewalk lives only in Equal-Tempered Pitches/Notes and, Scales means only presence and absence of notes, and that too without any further distinctions about Ascending and Descending. Therefore, the VSTs have to support those Alternate Pitches. Would not fault this approach, though I would have loved to see deliberate conscious support. So this just brings to the fore my need to locate [free, affordable] VSTs/Plugin that can augment Cakewalk for Alternate Tunings. Cakewalk Scale Manager entries are a bit misleading, with Title likes Exotic Scales, Hindu I, Hindu II, Indian I, Indian II etc. all of which are nothing but presence/absence of notes, and in this regard no different from any other scales (except for the names). Pitches do not play a part. I am attaching a PDF in the way of introduction. I will respond to lapasoa and User 905133, as well as to other points in the above replies, separately and soon. SriIndianScales.pdf

Cakewalk Team I started with Cakewalk ~10 days ago and so did a first pass through the full ~1950 pages of reference documentation. Very Well done, nice work. Not only as a reference to all the features and capabilities, but also for including valuable tips/guidance for usage. Already feeling very much at home with the product, especially due to the tremendous fast help received from the forum leaders/members. Kudos!!

All I am starting this topic after a search for this topic in the forum. There are some topics that touch on this, but they are more or less tangential for my understanding needs. I do have keyboards [Technics KN1400, Korg PA600] which support many tuning systems: notably Pythagorean, Custom Pitches. I have been using it for a long time. GeoShred on iPad, Synth One are recent ones I use, which have done a fantastic job with world scale and flexible pitches/frequencies. If you direct your midi out to these target synths, the Music is played with whatever tuning you have set there. For Indian and other World Music -- it is extremely important, specially for me, to play/hear music in Natural (a term to distinguish) rather than in Tempered pitches. I can share more thoughts on the Pros/Cons of these , but will keep out of scope of this topic. I do have, and I am familiar with VSTs from DSK, Native Instruments and Swar Systems and to the extent to which they support custom pitches for Indian/World Music. We could have more discussion on those in their intersection with Cakewalk on separate threads. Let me quickly clarify the term "Custom Pitches". In simple terms, it means specifying adjustments in cents for each of the 12 notes in a Tempered Scale. I am deliberately avoiding the use of the term "Scale" as it is often used in the way of presence/absence of notes, with no implications to Pitch Frequencies, a major issue for me. In Indian Music, Scale includes Pitches as well as Ascending/Descending Swaras/Notes and much more. My main quest is: a) What VSTs that come with Cake Walk (and or free ones which can be downloaded and added to the environment) support custom pitches using any mechanisms - Scala files, would be ideal. b) To what extent Cakewalk is "Custom Pitches Aware" in any/broad sense ? This is a general question which I will deliberately leave it fuzzy, to allow/permit free/full interpretation. I would also not know what all things to ask here. In the context of Keyboards, such a question would include things such as: do custom Pitches propagate to Styles/Accompaniments, Transposes, Dum Kits etc., are they saved and remembered when reloaded etc. Thanks in advance and look forward to a good compilation of thoughts.

Colin very nice to see your note. Kudos for the great PDF you and Denizens have compiled/ created. One thing I was thinking about is combining the information you have in your PDF with some screen shots to help users to identify elements DIRECTLY. The gist/basic idea is: A user can select one of the screen shots (each shot is a UI view of Cakewalk). Given the now-you-see-now-you-do-not-see nature of the UI design, for arguably very good reasons, we may need a set of Screen Shots rather than just one. Click on an area of interest, and get the Navigation Path for the Themes Editor. Ideally using some arms length copy-paste, it would be nice to position to that element(s) in the Themes Editor. Though I see a FIND in its UI, under Color, I do not know how and whether it works. Similar to REGEDIT of windows. But Themes Editor does not seem to support entering or searching for a path. This will enable embolden users to manage their Cakewalk UI (at least the display/appearance) for easing their interactions, especially for folks with some vision challenges. I was hoping that the .STH file might be XML, as that would make creating such things easier. But I noted that it is some closed/binary format - nothing negative, but understandable given the long evolution of Cakewalk.

Thanks John, you laid it out clearly. I was hoping to do some test to assess the delay. And this will come handy. You may have more ideas about using some plain DELAY Effect (or physical shifting of an audio track, as needed) to compensate for the lags and get things musically aligned. Would love to hear your thoughts on that.

MSMCLEOD, JOHN Very good points and caveats. Truly appreciate these forewarnings. I have experienced some of these issues with Native Instruments -- which seems to take over the audio devices in exclusive mode - such that I cannot even play YouTube when NI is open!! I will revisit that front soon, as I am hoping to leverage those assets/instruments with Cakewalk. Would love to have your wisdom related to that as well. I just did my first test of recording Audio while playing the MIDI tracks. Worked very well. Adding a screen shot below. I then played all the tracks. Midi tracks to my Korg Keyboard; Audio Tracks to Big Monitor Speakers. Plays nicely. I could not see any lags or sync-offs, at least not yet. Will do some more tests. I can also play the Audio via my Korg Keyboard - which I do all the time, but did not at this time. Yeti also gives me an Audio Output Jack where I can plug in my headphones. I have used this also many times. Works nicely. For this I need to direct my laptop audio output to Realtek (and not the big Monitor). So did not check that at this time. Feels like I can really start recording Audio and Midi together on Cakewalk. Really excited. I think I may have ramped up to a reasonable initial plateau to be productive as well as explore/harness more/advanced features. Nice to see integrated Notes for jotting down all the key details related to a project - rather in some external place. regards

Startship Krupa /Erik Thanks for your tips. I imported Midnight Blue, Racing Green and one other and started modifying Midnight Blue, to gain some understanding of the theming work. Thanks to you and Colleagues (Colin?) for writing an excellent PDF on Theming.. It is coming very handy for knowing what is what -- though I am still not able to reliably figure out everything. I feel like I am making very good progress. I am attaching a Screen Shot below of my Experimental Work in Progress Theme. I have added some annotations on it as well - and you can easily know where there are typos. Progressively I should be able to get things to what suits me best. My main initial goal is to get all the TEXTS - white bold. Looks like Font and Size of Texts cannot be changed. Also many things are Graphics - it has pros/cons. Ability to work with the Themes and Seeing its Effect on Cakewalk is nice, though Cakewalk seems to hold the *.sth file (do not know why) that prevents saving that Theme in the Editor. Wish Cakewalk Theme Panel had a Refresh button, to pull in any changes made. Just a bit of annoyance when you are trying so many items - though functionality complete.

John Vere thanks for the quick pointers to your Videos. I will certainly watch them soon. Thanks also for the insight about USB versus Using via Mixers/Audio Interfaces. I wanted to see how well USB/Yeti Mics works, and use them accordingly.. I have an 8 Microphone mixer [and several quality XLR Microphones, Condenser and others ] which is my staple for all Family Music Recordings and House Concerts. It is 10+ years old but works very well for my needs. But it is heavy and has large foot print. Importantly has only Audio Line Out, to be fed to Laptop via Line In. Unfortunately most of the Laptops have gotten rid of Line-Ins or just give only Combo in mono mode [not sure at what impedance] . Even my High End Gaming Laptop has the same issue. I am hoping to get a multichannel USB (3.0 ) Audio Interface. Will look at your videos for insights into them.

SCOOK Right on the money!! Thanks for the fast response. That worked perfect. I unchecked all devices and then enabled Yeti and recorded. Just one observation, with Yeti enabled, I am not able to enable the Realtek and Stereo Mix. I guess/hope that disabling Yeti will allow me to enable them - and get back to that. I am sure you will have more insights about this.

Just wanted to add the following to get some obvious things out of the way. Audacity was not running when I am on Band labs. I closed and opened Band labs. I am on Windows 10, with latest free version of Band Labs.

Connect a USB Microphone January 29, 2022 16:20 Rather than using an Audio Interface with a dynamic or condenser microphone, a USB microphone is a simple way to start recording with better sound quality than using the mic/headphone connection on your machine. Most USB microphones are plug and play, so you should be up and running in no time! To connect a USB microphone to Cakewalk by BandLab: Connect your device to your machine prior to starting Cakewalk by BandLab Launch Cakewalk by BandLab Go to Edit > Preferences, or press P when the Start Screen is closed to open the Preferences menu Under Audio > Playback and Recording, set your Driver Mode to WASAPI Shared (Windows 10), or WDM/KS (Windows 7 or ? Under Audio > Devices, make sure your device is selected as an Input device. If you’re using the headphone output, also check the Output category. Click Apply and OK to save your changes! The above text is from the Documentation. What I am facing? I am able to record/play with my Yeti Mic with Audacity and other apps. But I am not able to get it to work in Band labs. I cannot select it. Sorry, If I missed a topic that addresses this specific issue. Below are three screen shots showing the configurations. Hope some one can help to nail the issue and get beyond it. Thanks in Advance.

Wll_Kaydo I completely disagree, but I am always open to persuasion. I am just observing that : a) The Split Tracks produced by the CAL does not play the Original Music b) The Original is Destroyed by the CAL in the Process. These are basic common sense violations. Neither should happen except in special situations. Therefore I declared that the CAL is erroneous. I corrected these in my CAL. I can easily reconcile with such errors in designs & implementations, for various pragmatic reasons. But the arguments you advance in its defense, has no merits unfortunately. Here, in this case, as well as generally. Allow me to wear a different hat for a moment to state the following: Every tool advocates certain paradigms, often new, innovative and a departure from the state of practice in small or big ways.. These make it worthwhile for users to embrace it, even if it means changing their habitual methods and approaches, even fundamentally. But it is dysfunctional to use that as a driving principle to bless/perpetuate flaws/errors which have nothing to do with the anchoring paradigms themselves.