Michael Elliott

if new sonar is like my ancient one, you hold the shift key while moving the selected nodes / segments, and it's locked to vertical movement only. You can also change your snap to move-by / measure and be zoomed in far enough so movements aren't going to snap to either side, if the shift modifier doesn't work.

Thanks--i'm still working on it, but got stuck so have been working on this one to get my mind off things i can't figure out and let it percolate back there instead. Thanks--I started poking at these things, but am stuck as noted above, so iwll come back to it once i can hear stuff in it clearly again. i have some thoughts but i'm wiped out atm so will post them later.

A Peek Over The Wall https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/a-peek-over-the-wall-wip This is related to a (very good) anime called Haibane Renmei; imagine one of the Haibane sneaking up Guri's wall, and getting a look outside.... This one I started because I was having trouble hearing anything i needed to in the other WIP (see link below) so i forced myself to (so far) just use sounds out of the "beta" free packs from Cymatics.fm, and to do what I could to misuse them by layering any loops so they are from different "sets", if there were "stems" I used them from different sets too, with a few exceptions, to make me make decisions I probably would not otherwise have done. Wherever loops came from the same set, I misaligned them on purpose so they wouldn't be "as-designed", and chopped out bits as needed to make things fit what I heard in my head as I listenened to the results. Added fx to some (including Acmebargig's Shred to some of the guitar bits after rearranging the chopped up pieces of those). Except the bassline, which is created using some of the midi clips supplied with some of the stemmed clip sets, then edited / cleaned up to play a Z3TA2+ synth with an arp. I also "splattered the canvas" with various sounds first, dropping things into the tracks (using a template made from the other WIP over here I don't know if it will get longer; there are some sections I would like to expand on but don't yet know what I'd be doing with them, and i'm wiped out and can't concentrate ATM. EDIT: previous versions: https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14900124 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901375 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901398 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901402 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901406 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901818 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901819 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14905850 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14905853 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14905852 New version 2, 120524 000001 000030h -- mix edits, arrangment tweaks, etc New version 5 120524 000001 000046l previous versions still up at the sounclick links in the first post. Main changes: removed bellchime intro measures to go straight into the piano, reduced bass a lot, reduced percussion some, effected some percussion clips (reverb to push back in stage). (details in one of hte replies belwo) I also added two string tracks, one Dimension with Full Tremolo strings, the other SI Strings Detache Strings, with hand drawn (snap off for "feel and movement") versions of some of the vocal melodies as backing accents in various places. Synth track volume automation was used for dynamics to "draw up" some notes after they start to go along with the vocal dynamics, or in some cases to contrast with them. Just for the sake of trying it, I rearranged some of the clips and tracks so I could just mute out all the bassline and most of the percussion, leaving just the slow stuff and accents, to make a "closer to ambient" version : https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901552 To really become ambient it would need quite a bit of changes, and an underlying unifying bed-sound I haven't decided on. It would need to not only fit what's there, but also fit the idea behind the song. In that show, the opening is full of rushing air / wind as someone falls and falls and falls in their cocoon dream, so, probably that kind of thing, so there's a temporary bed of wind sound. I'm still working on the original "ambient beats" 😆 version but the above will probably be the basis of an extended full-on ambient version of it. New version 7 120524 000001 000057p Cleaned out unnecessary bassnotes that trigger the arp, and transposed the remaining ones in various places to match vocals or complement them. Added wind fx (same as that used in "ambient" version) at beginning and just barely in the background during the break. Other minor edits and timing tweaks, various mix tweaks. I've been poking around at mixing tweaks, and ran into a wierd issue that took several days to figure out the cause of; the cause is listed at the end, in case anyone ever runs into this, but it's wierd, and doesn't make any sense to me. It's quite likely that whatever wierdness caused it isn't even present in current versions of Sonar, but I don't have those to verify, so this is just archival info partly so I can refer to it later if I ever run into the issue again. Removing some unused empty archived tracks (mostly MIDI) suddenly caused all synths to stop receiving any MIDI from their tracks. The MIDI tracks feeding them all had signals on their MIDI meters, so they were outputting data, but none of the synths were receiving any. The synths would work if I played them from their internal keyboards in their GUI, but not from any clips on any track, even re-routing tracks to other synths, or inserting new synths, or deleting all synths and making new synth tracks, etc. Same for the MIDI tracks--I even made new tracks to route to existing (and later new) synths, and drew in notes that should've worked, but didn't. Undoing all the way back to the original empty archived track deletions did fix it.... but nothing about those tracks could affect the others, even if they weren't archived they had no data on them, etc. Certainly shouldn't make all synths suddenly unable to receive midi data. Redoing the deletion, then changing the midi buffers in Global prefs from the 25ms I always use (without issues) to 250ms (because adding a zero was fast and easy) also fixed it, but anything less than 250ms would not work, even though the projects all work fine with a tenth of that (except for this one after the track deletion). So I deleted the empty archived tracks one at a time until I found the specific one that did it, and it had two disabled MFX in the bin--Track Doorman by TenCrazy, and Quantize by Cakewalk, in that order. Removing TD would cause all synths to not work, but removing Q didn't affect anything. Neither should affect anything, as neither one is in an active track, and this track is archived as well as empty. Adding a TD to the track doesn't fix the synths, *only* undoing the original TD deletion. Tried rerouting the track midi output to all possible ports, channels, but still deleting the TD or the track would nuke the synths MIDI again. Moving the TD to *any* MIDI track in the project, active, inactive, archived, empty, or with data, still allows the project to work as normal...and removing the empty archived track doesn't then cause any issues. No other TD (existing or added now) causes this problem when removed...just this one. 😕 So I just left the disabled TD in one of the tracks, and the project works fine...but I have no idea how removing a disabled MFX (that was in an empty archived track!) could break all MIDI in a project. Back to the irregularly unscheduled updates of the track, now that I can work on it again. New version 10 120524 000001 000085y Assorted minor edits and mix changes, replaced some shakers with dog pants from JellyBeanThePerfectlyNormalSchmoo, added some crow sounds. I couldn't get JellyBean to pant in time with the notes so used Audiosnap and dragged the markers around as needed to fit. Timing not perfect yet but had to move on for the moment; couldn't listen to the looping of the short section anymore tonite. 😢

Not strictly true. You can still use the older versions (as long as your computer system is compatible, as mine is with even a really ancient version), you just can't get updated versions without the subscription.

Unfortunate that the paying customers are the ones punished (by having to deal with all sorts of issues from the copy protection methods of various companies) for other's misdeeds. Especially since the ones causing the problems are just going to hack it so it still works for them without paying for it, so all the stuff that still punishes the paying customers just slows down the pirates, from what i've seen in google searches over the years when this topic comes up. I certainly understand the money issue...but I disagree with the ways many companies have gone about protecting their stuff because of the problems it creates for legitimate paying users. //end rant

well, that requires selecting the event (clip) and opening the event inspector (unless that's something in new sonar taht's not in mine--mine i have to open clip properties, then go to the tab for times/pitches/stretches, check the box to enable either looping or pitch/tempo changes, then do the transpose, then close the properties dialog (because it's modal), for every clip i'm experimenting with...which really slows down the workflow and gets me out of the groove of creating). if i had a key shortcut i would be ablet o just tab from clip to clip and key up or down while looping a section to see what it sounds like.

this kind of music sounds like what i used to make before i had any form of sequencer available (in the device or a computer), and just used some salvaged reel-to-reel decks and cassettes to record things to and loop and dub, back in the 80s. i haven't really done the kind of stuff i originally did in quite a while, so this thread is prompting me to try going back to that. i did a lot of it (have boxes of tapes that probably can't be played anymore) and was what i would sit down and play just one part of with usually just one keybaord (usually a little toy yamaha psr and later added a tg33 bolted to the top as a parallel sound source), at scifi conventions in the hallway or lobby or consuite, and sometimes had a little crowd. poeple sometimes asked me when i would release a tape, but i didn't have money for that. i got more complex with stuff once i got my used ensoniq eps16+ because it had an 8 track sequencer/editor in it, started trying stuff with drums and beats and songlike stuff, inspired by a local alternative rock band called the narrow way that i sometimes was a sort of roadie for to help setup/teardown. some people that had been my audience before still liked my new stuff, some didn't. at cons id play usually more of the old type of stuff cuz it's hard to do multitracking in that environment since i have to make everything up as i go along (can't play the same thing a second time; i can't learn/memorize stuff like that). i eventually released a cd (the uncommon ground cd on http://amberwolf.bandcamp.com ) but it didn't sell even to those that had asked, but it had neaerly all new-style stuff, not really much of anything that was the older ambient type stuff i started out doing. i couldn't really get any answers from anyone in the audiences as to which type of stuff they'd prefer, though. i haven't played outside the house in a very long time (couple decades?) and couldn't do it anymore with the style i do now, but the more complex stuff i do these days i put up on the internet, and few people listen...maybe if i went back to my "roots" i'd get a bigger audience? (i'd do the music even if no one heard it, but any creator / artist wants their stuff to be experienced by others...it's part of the ego that makes us do what we do, i think)

if it's not already in sonar nowadays, you could ask for the keystroke to transpose audio clips up/down. that was pretty handy in p5. been too many years so don't recall exactly, but it might've been ctrl+ / ctrl- ; i think it worked in realtime during playback/looping (many (most?) things in p5 worked realtime, which was really useful for messing around and grooving to come up wiht stuff; i'd usually take the idea over to sonar to build from there if it was any good....hmmm...tempted to install it and see if it still works in win10 to mess around with all the audio loops i have made, downloaded, and bought, these days).

can't happen. besides, wherever i go there will be "people" like this, and if there arent' when i get there they would move in. do i just run away forever and never have a home?

so the loud party has basically been going on for four days now. tehy haven't yet gotten back as loud as they were for the first 10-12 hours, and they haven't done the earthshaking bass for more than a few minutes here and there, but they just won't stop. they have paused now and then--for instance they weren't doing it when i went to work this morning, but they had already started again before i got home. it's hardly ever never gone on this long before, but i'm about at my rope's end. now there is a second party that started earlier tonite and it's actually louder than the first one, though thankfully it is apparently live music and they don't seem to have an earthshaking sub, but the trumpets and vocals are loud enough to hear even thru my block walls, doublepane windows, and the thick foam blocks in the windows...and they don't seem to be at their max volume yet as it gets louder every few minutes. really wish someone could do somethign about these *****ers, since they obviously don't give a flying ***** about anyone else.

fwiw, this actually has benefits--you could reduce the circumference on smooth roads for better torque**** and performance and handling, and increase it to gain clearance on rougher roads and/or to gain speed****. ****above and beyond what the gearing in the transmission (if any) or the motor kv/kt vs system voltage/current allows. as far as "automating tempo" goes, I wish my ancient sonar had envelopes in the tempo view instead of the prv-controller-like control method, which is extremely difficult to use to create a smooth and accurate tempo map with. (perhaps the newer versions have it, but they aren't useful to me because of the way licensing and updates are handled by bandlab).

if a user has to do all sorts of gyrations that they have to come to a support forum to find out about, instead of a website (especially one selling a product) just working, the website is incorrectly designed for it's purpose. if you make it hard, even just a little bit, for people to buy things, they will just go somewhere else. only the very stubborn or desperate / poor will attempt to get help with a sales site offering a deal they can't access.

if you're looking to split out the individual drums to different tracks, that depends on the individual vst so for instance with session drummer, it has multiple stereo outs that you can assign different drums to, but si drums only has a single stereo out. the old dr008 drum synth had four stereo outs, iirc. some non-drum synths also have multiple outs, but most are only a single stereo pair. as far as having multiple tracks fed from the output of a synth, you can do that just by creatinga new audio track and setting it's input to the vst output you want then you'll have that track in additon to the regular synth track you already have, but both of them will be *all* of the audio that's on that output, so if you have a synth that only has a single stereo out it's still going to have all the sounds from that synth on boht tracks.

i suppose ctrl-shift-click would be an obvious modifier? assuming the feature gets added...

i guess it depends on what exactly those vst automations are, and whether they're on the midi track or the vst audio/etc track? for instance (in my very old sonar, so options are probably in different places than newer ones), if i choose to add automation for the controls on si strings, i right click in the audio track for the synth, and choose that synth in the track envelopes submenu. then i get a dialog for all the various automatable parameters, which include in it's case the enable/disable for the whole synth, master volume / attack / decay / reverb / tone / etc, then volume and pan for each of the three insturments in the synth. then the envelopes created are all 0%-100% for the values shown as you add nodes or drag segments around, regardless of what the actual automated item is, and what the synth internally processes that value at (for instance the transpose). same thing if you make a node and use the properties dialog to change it instead of dragging it. the actual value is 000.000 thru 100.000, so you have actually a pretty fine gradation in values, down to thousandths, but there isn't a way to directly see the correlation between the automation values and the synth's parameter limits or values, unless you can see it in the synth ui as you change it (some you can, some you can't, depends on the programmer's choices when creating the synth). same thing for fx; such as kerovee for it's transpose it shows just a percentage, so to know where i am transposing to i have to leave it's ui open with the nowtime on the specific spot i'm changing, so that i can watch the change in the ui and see what it's transpose control actually says. in midi tracks, if you insert a midi envelope, then most of them only have 0-127 values available (dragging nodes/segments or in properties dialog). rpn/nrpn get 0-16535 (i think), etc. if the synth control internally corresponds to a midi event / value range, but allows automation of the 0-100% type in the audio track for it, then i would guess that the reason the synth only responds to the first few percent of the automation range is because some setting that only has 128 possible values vs the automation that can range from 000.000 to 100.000 in 0.001 increments (a hundred thousand possible values) is only a bit more than a tenth of a percent of the possible values of that automation. for things like the rpn/nrpn midi that have 16536 possible values, that's a little more than 10 percent of the total automation range of a 0-100% envelope, so it would likely respond only to that first amount of the envelope and be maxed out past that (or would just ignore / filter out any values above that).

fwiw, that link just takes me to a bandlab login dialog, with nothing else on the page. which a new user wouldn't have, so they'd have to choose one of the social logins...but why would they want to login without even being able to see the page? there is a tiny little "not now" below the other stuff in the login dialog, but i'd bet that many people miss that. i don't know what's past that point, as i wouldn't (and won't) bother with pages or website that try to get me to login just to see or read something (even if there is a tiny itty bitty link to skip past it--the attempt to get me to login is enough to drive me away). edit--same thing for the "get membership" link in a previous post on this page, though it does first show the deal offers. but if you click one of them, it pops up a create login page first, before anything else. i'd expect that to be the last thing, during the payment/etc process after it shows you what you actually pay and all that stuff. so, another way to drive people like me away from the whole thing. (not that i'm a candidate anyway, since i won't do subscription-hold-my-work-hostage-forced-update-etc-software, but i wanted to see what the issue was)

just some perspective for the average forum member to think about: i've got a few years of experience with spam control over on the endless sphere ebike forum, and i can say that it is a highly manual operation that depends on forum members reporting it when they see it, and many hours per week of manual sifting thru the recently registered members list to check them against each other, prior spammers, spam control sites like stopforumspam, etc, and basically just having a "feel" for who is a real person and who is just signing up to spam so you can ban them before they drop their load on your forum. that is a lot more work than most people ahve time for, especially since virtually no moderator or admin of a forum gets paid in any way for their time, and virtually none are so dedicated to a forum as to spend a significant percentage of every day doing that work (i was one of those until earlier this year, but just couldn't continue doing that and the other things i have to do). automatic spam control has severe limitations--if you set it up for strictness, it's going to nuke real people and real content. you never want that to happen; it's better to let spam thru than to ever cause problems for real users. over at es we have worked on various spam control and management and prevention tools and methods over the years, but there's no good automation that is going to get all the spammers without getting real users too. 😞 so....anyone that sees spam should report it so it can be removed, and that's about all you can really do. if the forum software is advanced enough to autohide it when reported enough, that's great; most places dont have that, so that makes this place easier to keep clean than most.

i like to hack things, and to repurpose things never meant for the purpose to do somethng for me. it started out as a necessity, possibly learned while i lived as a really poor kid in a little pink house in texas farm country, where you have to make do with what's already there if you want to play, and there were two dumping areas nearby in flood/wash gulleys.... after a while it became more fun to do things that way than to be normal, though nowadays i have so little time and energy for anything that i tend to go for the premade solutions wherever they will more or less do what i want. anyway, my first electric guitar was a crappy first act thing from goodwill, and while it physically worked, and to me, not knowing how to play****, it was still pretty nice despite the many flaws--the worst of which is taht it doesn't stay tuned even just sitting there for an hour :lol: the pickups weren't adjustable and didn't evenly pick up all the strings, etc. since then i've removed the original pickup unit and replaced it with a slightly less crappy multi-pickup / pickboard combo; had to dremel out pits for those, plus the switch to choose which one is being used, and the tone and volume knobs for the kit. i also demeled out a pit in the back and parts in front for a cheap string-bending setup, though that didn't work out as well as i'd intended; the actual bar itself snapped off at the start of the threading at the base of the bar, and the springs suck so it never returns correctly to neutral, making the tuning problem much worse. i've got a list somewhere of other tuneups and tweaks and mods to try on it, since i cant' really hurt it :lol: but i don't know that i'll ever get to them. i'm not worth spending the money on for a real guitar, so i doubt i'd ever replace it with one. mostly it's just fun to noodle around with them as a different way to input sound into the computer; sometimes i use jamorigin's midiguitar program to get that in as midi notes as well as the original audio recording. ****still can't, have to lay them in my lap and fret strings from the top; i can't wrap my hand / fingers around from underneath and still manipulate them to push the strings down. even so i can't control my fingers well enough to do more than two strings at a time, so i have to record parts of chords into the computer and stack them to do much with it. since i picked one up cheap used, i usually use an ibanez 6string bass to play everything in instead of the firstact monstrosity because the bass has much more space between the strings so i make far less mistakes trying to fret strings, and it "never" loses it's tuning. it also has a much fuller sound than the fa.

over at another forum (for ebikes, but i've been there a decade and a half and post a lot of different things there) someone pointed out that their eq/spectrum analyzer shows lots of content in "all" my stuff at 20hz and below, and said that nothing will ever play that back and you couldn't hear it if it did, so there's no reason to have it there since it just takes up bandwidth/power away from the rest of the song. so i looked at the master bus wiht voxengo span, witht eh lowest low setting it has of 5hz, and it shows there is some stuff but the spectrum doesn't look anything like what their image shows, it shows it rolling off down there but their image shows it flat / going up. i think tehyre using fabfilter q-something. either way i went ahead and stuck the sonitus 6-node eq in there and set all the nodes for a high q 24 and -18db for a steep notch to get as surgical as i could, and stacked the bands from the zero end to 20hz, so it should be completely taking out the whole area from just above 20hz on down without taking much above that. span doesn't show any difference with it in the masterbus (span is the last thing in the entire chain and bus path), and even if i insert the same eq setup into every bus, it doesn't change the span readout or the waveforms on the buses which are realtime drawn by the playback. i can't hear a difference either but i'm sure the vizio soundbar i'm listening thru isn't capable of that low a frequency anyway (nothing is from what he said, though i think that systems with subs liek the one used to assault my neighborhood with by the partiers yesterday/today can). i know hte eqs are working because if i take their master gain down it drops the whole output down. have to use the steep notching stacked up because the lowpass fliter or the shelving modes have a nonchangeable very low q and they roll off lots of stuff way too much above the center frequency, up to 50hz or more above the point it is flitering, and that's with the q at 2. if i up the q it doenst narrow the filter, it just greatly *increases* the output in the octave or more above the filter frequency, so i cant' really use the lp or shelf modes for this; they take too much out and/or change the whole balance too much even using just one band. i'll have to load up the exported wave file from the master bus into audacity where i can access other newer stuff like filtron and see what that will do (though it's already past the multiband compressor at that point) but if anyone here can help with advice or explanations, i'm all ears.

thanks for listening and replying! what specifically do you mean by brigthening up the vocals? someone else suggested taking out the low ends whihc i tried but it takes away the character of the vocals when i do that. so if you can give me specifics things to try i can see how they work with what i've got. the only parts generated by midi in this one are the synth bassline and the three different strings used to back the vocals up and fill them in here and there (they also back / fill the bassline here and there, along with a mutated vocal clip set). all the percussion is trimmed from and built out of assorted percussion loops that are not actually meant to go with each other. i'm not sure which one is the slap / wood block that you're referring do. there is a clap in some sections, whcih seems to have about four different variations within the clip used to create the sections in the percussion track with it. if you can tell me which sound it is somehow, or at which times it is a problem, i can alter the sound at those specific times to make them different, either by clip gain envelopes or other gain/cut means, or effecting them to change their sound (such as by splitting those soudns out of the clips into their own, then using various clip properties to stretch or shrink or tune / detune them slightly. i was going to check out the tracks you've posted but they seem to be deleted / removed from the threads? what do you think is not as good about your tracks?

if he dances with a cane really slowly by hobbling across the stage, sure, i can do that, for about two or three minutes, then i gotta go sit on the piano bench and catch my breath.

new tenth version, i doubled the volume of the vocal tracks, brought the strings up with them but only about half that much, and did some more percussion / etc tweaks (couldn't sleep) 110124 000001 100115P https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14898340 thanks for the reply and the listen and the comparison! i haven't heard their stuff since last century listening to musical starstreams on the broadcast radio stations.... (along with (pardon spellings) kitaro, andreas wollenweiter, david lanz, suzanne ciani, ray lynch, tangerine dream, yanni, and many others i can't recall the names of atm, most of which i haven't even thought about in so long i don't recall the last time....)

haveta make that night stallions and wolf....or maybe herd and pack....or packherd, there we go pakheard, or hearit packherd so we can spoof the brandname. sorry my brain is goo so not coming up with anything good atm. you'll have to do the singing cuz i can't carry a tune in a locked steel box. that's what the computer is for....so i can make vocal stuff like these with someone else's voice https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14898248 https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/the-moon-it-read-to-me-and-it-was-bright otherwise you're stuck with crap like these https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/back-to-the-world https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=13530596 https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/drying-tears we'll mount hte pa on their front door, facing inward, and turn it up so we can hear it fine in here, right?

version 9, some fixes based on above feedback, realigned some percussion, etc. 110124 000001 100110O https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14898248 thanks for listening and replying! i did some fixes based on the above. which hi things sound harsh? i havent' yet tried pushing the low end and vocals up and the rest back yet, am still exhausted from the last more-than-a-day of being physically beaten by the bass from the assholes' party down the street, which started around 6pm and went on and on thru the night, turning the music part down some around 2am but continuing with the earth-shaking bass. went quieter later until by daylight it was just the bass thumping enough to be felt but not shaking everything, and it continued that way the rest of the day utnil a couple hours ago they finally stopped. honestly surprised that they didn't keep having the party all night tonight too but i'll take what peace i can get. when i have recovered enough from the sonic assault of the last day, i will take a listen, i found the whole album on youtube. will probably be a while though; i'm just too stressed to listen to anything that i didn't make myself (because i can predict every note as it sounds) and even that's tough, which is why i couldn't do more with this track today.

and what kind of copy protection does it install along with the plugin?