Larry Jones

@tonemangler: Thanks for that. I had high hopes for Audiosnap, and I completely forgot about Melodyne. I feel like Audiosnap would have worked for me if I could occasionally add my own transient marker. But when I came to a spot where the timing was off and there was no marker, it seemed there was nothing I could do.

I've got a bass guitar track that is not rhythmically solid. He is playing eight to the bar at 155bpm. A very high percentage of the notes are off by a tiny amount, but the MIDI drums are, of course, bang on, so the incorrect timing on the bass is noticeable. I've never used Audiosnap, but this is a long-distance collaboration and I don't know if I can get the guy to play his part again. I have tried many settings -- threshold, resolution, stretch method, manual editing, quantize (note durations, audio snap beats, etc) different amounts of "swing" and have come pretty close to "fixing" this track, but something always goes wrong, Like there is an extra transient detected that I can't get rid of, or a transient is missing. When I play back sections where these things occur it sounds worse than when I started. Note that if I could get this working I wouldn't mind editing the whole three minutes manually, nor would I mind if the track ends up "perfect," i.e. mechanical sounding. The song won't suffer. Is there a clear tutorial somewhere on how to do this? It seems to me that anyone who's tried to edit a track for timing must have run into the same glitches. I have been at this for a few hours now, and I would welcome any tips or ideas.

Weird that it would do this, but in your case it's the proverbial gift horse. Don't look it in the mouth.

One of my first jobs in audio was an 8-hour voice session, recording to mono 1/4-inch tape, in Japanese, a language I don't speak or understand. Luckily the producer told me where the outtakes were, where to cut, and so on. But over many years of voiceover recording to tape I learned a few things, and if I had to do it again I'd probably mimic the same methods I used in the old days. Make sure the narrator understands the importance of working the microphone. Most of the time, she needs to place herself in the same spot exactly, all the time, to keep the sound consistent throughout the recording. Have a printed script for you that's the same as the narrator's. Have a code word for when a word or phrase needs to be re-done. The word in common use when I was doing it was "pickup." The narrator would stop, say "pickup," then countdown "3 - 2 - 1 ..." then start again. When this would happen I'd make a note (on paper or directly onto my script) of where it took place in hours, minutes and seconds. I would never stop the tape, because that would break the spell. These notes would be (sort of) accurate when it came time to edit. With a DAW, your notes could be frame accurate if you wanted them to be. You could even just press "M" when a pickup occurs and type in what happened while the narrator continues reading. Record a minute of silence in the room with the mic on and nobody around. You can insert this silence here and there when the editing creates an unnatural-sounding pause. I've only ever used four DAWs, but I haven't seen one with the clip-based timelines or other VO-specific functions you're looking for. Still, I applaud your efforts to make a modern workflow for the new millennium ?. Best of luck!

Do you mean you want to buy Microsoft Windows 7? Or are you looking for a version of Cakewalk by Bandlab that will run on Windows 7? SONAR is gone, but CbB is completely free and only comes in one version. Download Bandlab Assistant and use it to get CbB. It will probably run on Windows 7-64, but if it doesn't you have nothing to lose. (Cuz it's FREE!)

Don't forget to set your grid to whole measures, so you don't accidentally select an unwanted duration.

I've only scored one 30 minute film in Cakewalk, but I can confirm all your problems and frustrations. I tried converting to a couple of different video formats (in Vegas) and ended up creating an .avi file. This worked, but of course it had to be converted back to a .mov at the end. I think any DAW worth the name has to be able to do film scoring. But having a video track that won't accept modern formats doesn't make sense to me.

Ya got me there. I don't think I've ever had to do that, but I'm gonna guess if you open the take lanes under your MIDI track you'll figure it out.

The only sure-fire way I have found is to switch the cursor to the "Select" tool and drag it across the track, making sure you've selected everything that's showing (everything you want, that is). Then Bounce to Clips. Every other selection method sometimes fails. Of course, you'll forget to switch back to the Smart Tool when you're done, but that will be made apparent soon enough. ?

Hey Erik! Just wanted to let you know -- since you're sounding a bit wistful about it -- that I find both your freeware threads super useful and I have bookmarked them and check them periodically. Bookmarking or searching seems easy enough to do, but you're right: they scroll down to oblivion if not bumped from time to time. For the most part that's just going to be your cross to bear, but... no good deed goes unpunished in this rotten, beautiful world. Thanks for your fine contribution to the forum. Your impulse to make this a better place is much appreciated!

You make good points, but a.) I lean way more toward finding the instruments I need rather than the instruments CbB might bundle, and b.) Haha, SONAR/Cakewalk has been around much longer than the three you mention, and is already more sophisticated and powerful than most competing DAWs, so it's "huge" enough for me.

Are you arming the track to record?

Your keyboard should act as both a MIDI controller and (assuming it has internal sounds) an audio input device. The MIDI data is transmitted to your computer via USB or the MIDI (DIN) connector on an audio interface. Actual audio (sound) from your keyboard is transmitted to your computer via a regular audio cable (or pair of cables if it's stereo) from the audio outputs of the keyboard to the audio inputs of your audio interface. You should be able to have both types of connections hooked up and working at the same time. Maybe you have forgotten to turn on input echo on the track you are trying to record? (PS: I have tried to remove these diagrams, but I can't figure out how, so I guess I'll just leave them. Maybe you'll find it useful. ?

Don't now if my issue is related, but I've been seeing something like this with regularity the past month or so: The input to my MIDI tracks keeps switching from my MIDI controller (Nektar LX-61+) to my audio interface (Scarlett 6i6). I have to switch it back manually. The Nektar controller has also lost a bunch of DAW functions, roughly, it seems to me, at the same time as this I/O weirdness. As usual, I don't remember exactly when this started, so I can't blame Noel for a bad update. Or can I...?

Great! Really good, useful information. Thanks for all your work on it. I learned a lot and have already started to use some of it.

Found your Google website and looking forward to Part 3 (and 4, 5 & 6 if you care to keep going). Good stuff.

Hi Johnny! The Front Page files open, but without the images. But you might want to consider putting links to the videos on the Tutorials section of this forum.

Input echo button (D). Click it on the track you are recording.

Wow, that's a pretty tall order! Do you play an instrument? If you do, you probably already know how to listen to a recording and pick out the instruments that were used. And if the instrument you play happens to be a keyboard (like piano), you have access to synthesized and sampled sounds that can mimic what you hear on a recording. But it seems to me if you're just starting out you should tackle something easy to begin. Play and sing a song as best you can, with whatever instrument(s) you can, examine the results and see how you can make it better. Don't give up. Ask questions here. It's about the journey.

Thanks, @Promidi. I wrote my post last night thinking I had tried everything (BTW, input was set to "omni"), but this morning I discovered something new: It turns out there were two instances of Addictive Drums in the project, and the one I was trying to use (through the AD interface) was not the "real" one as seen in my Track View. I don't know why I did this (it was a couple of years ago), but once I opened Synth Rack this morning and saw the two instances, I switched to the other one and it all works for me now.

Ashley - Welcome to the forum. You'll probably get help quicker if you post your specs (computer, processor, OS, RAM, audio interface) like what you see at the bottom of my post here. There are millions of possible configurations. If we know what you're running we can assist you better.

I opened a two-year-old project in hopes of finally finishing it, and ran into this problem: The MIDI instruments (Addictive Drums, Dimension Pro and True Pianos) all play as expected from the MIDI data on the timeline (recorded long ago), but I can't trigger any of them with my keyboard (Nektar Impact LX61+). I can see MIDI activity on the meters, but no sound. I have checked the I/O, and the settings seem to be correct (I don't know much about MIDI settings, but these settings match the settings on another project where everything is working). If I add a new MIDI instrument, that instrument works as expected, and all the old and new audio tracks are fine, too. Further complication: I use the loops in Addictive Drums, and now I can't hear them in the AD preview (the preview cursor doesn't budge at all), nor can I hear anything when I trigger individual drums with the mouse. Something has changed in my system, because obviously this all worked when I created this project in the first place. It's worth mentioning that these days when I Insert|Soft Synth, the input defaults to my audio interface, and I have to manually change it to my keyboard controller. I've looked at all the settings in the track pane and in preferences, but I don't know what I'm looking for, and the only thing that seemed out of order is that the old project apparently was recorded at 96k, and my current default sample rate for new projects is 44100. I don't know if that would cause this problem, but wouldn't CbB respect the sample rate of an existing project and continue using its original rate regardless? Does anyone know how I can get back this lost functionality? Thanks!

If it's not already there, try putting your cursor inside the created Melodyne region on your Cakewalk timeline. This has worked for me when Melodyne failed to display the blobs.

You must have the 64-bit Win 7, I believe.

That's what I was referring to. I read the first couple of posts and never went back to see your solution. Thanks!