Herbert Chong

if it were as consistent as that i would be happy. it's not. the identical instrument and preset across Cakewalk projects can do different things. that's why i asked here. Herb...

i forgot to mention that i have carefully checked all CC in the MIDI data for every track. Herb...

i'm not sure if i am just missing something, a bug somewhere, or a misunderstanding on my part but when i mix tracks using the Cakewalk console where the instruments are all virtual instruments, moving the level sliders in the Cakewalk console sometimes moves the levels internal to the virtual instruments and sometimes not. this seems to depend on the Cakewalk project and not the instruments. i have at least two scenarios: moving the Cakewalk level slider does not move the level setting inside the instrument. some instruments never do and seem to be intentionally designed this way and i end up using the internal level control of the instrument. this is less annoying than the situation where depending on the specific Cakewalk project the instrument sometimes responds and sometimes doesn't. for the same instrument across projects there are some projects where the level gets passed through and some where it is not. i mostly find this inconsistent problem in Kontakt full version. whatever happens for a specific project never changes by closing the project/Cakewalk and opening the project again. beginning play resets the internal level setting of the virtual instrument. this seems to happen only when the console level control isn't affecting the virtual instrument but in other projects it does. i have noticed this happen for Aria and Kontakt full version virtual instruments but i don't think it is limited to them. most of the time this is where i set a level in the Cakewalk console and nothing happens in the virtual instrument so i change the virtual instrument's level control. starting play in Cakewalk and then the virtual instrument's volume changes, usually dropping a lot and not at all matching the console level setting. virtual instruments that never respond to Cakewalk console level setting are unaffected. i'm hoping that there's some Cakewalk setting/option that i have overlooked that makes it so that if the instrument is capable of responding that it always responds and that Cakewalk stops resetting the level. Herb...

thanks. i'll keep all this in mind. there's other reasons for me getting a hardware controller including doing controller fades and pans more easily than drawing with a mouse which i really dislike. i use a drawing tablet for drawing kinds of things but only when there's something really important. i had mostly been thinking of a hardware solution to just send the Learn mode CC events because i have other uses for the physical knobs and pads in the controller. Herb...

i've figured out a way to process a MIDI file using CAL to do the basic transformation i need but it's fragile with lots of assumptions about controller use in the file. i am too lazy to deal with the complications right now. i also decided to take the hardware approach since all of the virtual instruments i am using have a Learn mode. i got an Akai LPD8 Mk2 and programmed some of the knobs to send the controller values i need every virtual instrument i own to learn. there's only 4 that i can think of right now and there are 8 knobs. besides i can use the controller for CC7 volume fades and other such related things and not have to draw them in with Cakewalk. however i did look at the plugins on TenCrazy and downloaded the CCMap one just to have handy for other things i might work on. as far as i can tell all that he does in CCMap can be done via CAL and i'm comfortable writing CAL scripts when it's really important and i can't find another simple way to deal with these problems. i had been leaning toward the hardware approach anyway because i can use the controller for other things besides just forcing a CC sequence for a virtual instrument's Learn mode. Herb...

i don't mind getting a hardware programmable controller if that's the most flexible solution. it's been 30 years and tons of things have changed since i was active doing this kind of thing. i didn't have to worry about virtual instruments not having enough controls. the rack was big and heavy but all the sound modules had ways to configure realtime controllers to different parameters by entering numbers. the other thing i can do because i'm actually decent at programming CAL scripts is to write one to change or swap controller numbers. it's not ideal but if an incoming MIDI file is full of controllers already sometimes that conceptually is easier. the vast majority are CC1 or CC11 and it turns out about half my virtual instruments want CC11 to control dynamics and the other half want CC1. Herb...

i mostly do orchestration which means i work on other people's MIDI files and mix to a final audio track. it's just for fun and these are mostly downloaded MIDI files. I've run into a problem with my virtual instruments that don't have a control panel where i just enter the CC numbers to be used to control certain aspects of the instrument, say vibrato. my most frequent problem is that the incoming MIDI file expects to use Controller 11 for one thing and Controller 1 for another exactly opposite to the default for the virtual instrument. the only way out is to Learn because the specific software doesn't have direct controller configuration entry. my digital piano doesn't have anything other than pedals and the wind controller only lets me choose between CC2 and CC11 for controller outputs. inputting a long stream of controllers into a Cakewalk track and playing it seems to not work because Cakewalk is outputting a volume controller as it starts playback. all my virtual instruments in learn mode are learning CC7. i am thinking i need to get a hardware controller device of some kind where i can program it with an arbitrary CC number. then i can just have the instrument configured on a track, put it into Learn mode, and cause the device to send whichever CC number i want. am i missing something in Cakewalk that lets me have an instrument in Learn mode and play a track full of CC events? otherwise, what's a good programmable controller i can use for this. i'm never going to perform with it. Herb...

already have one such tool. that's what did the final mix conversion to dry vocals and MIDI. that mostly works but i'm missing the guitar riffs which are just as important. i decided for now i am just going to keep the final mix and learn more before diving deeper. Herb...

it's livable. all those years ago i had a close friend who was an opera trained coloratura soprano singer who enjoyed working with me creating demos for local songwriters. i did it for fun and the learning experience. she liked trying these new songs, and the song writer got way better than usual vocals. my stack of sound modules worked together with that. it's a couple of these demo songs that i want to revive by reorchestrating from MIDI tone generators to virtual instruments. i have the MIDI sequences in the WRK files but aside from the lead and accompanying vocal tracks i recorded, i had a friend from the Berklee College of Music occasionally contribute a guitar riff or two. i briefly searched and yup those song writers from 30 years ago were aspiring songwriters then and are still aspiring song writers today. the guitar riff guy now works for Kurzweil. when i extracted the dry vocals the stem program gave me the option of creating a MIDI file so in theory i could replace the vocal WAVE with a virtual instrument and at least get the melody across. if it becomes too complicated i'll just live on memories and the final mix digital files i captured. Herb...

drives are long gone though i did clone drives and folders from computer to computer for a long time, probably through to early Windows XP days. somewhere along the way i stopped installing Cakewalk when i built new computers because i had to put my MIDI gear into the storage locker. that would have been when those files were lost. i have a WAVE file of the final mix for the most important set of MIDI files. i know i can pull the vocals from them using a stem extractor and i have done that but there are a couple of guitar riffs that seem like they would take a lot of work to isolate given the tools i have come across so far. also working with the original vocal WAVE files would have been nice though the extracted dry vocals are decent. Herb...

The current Cakewalk by Bandlab opens the attached file no problem but when I look at the WAVE data it's totally flat - as in zero sound volume. I'm pretty sure the actual WAVE data is still in the WRK file but since I created the file about 30 years ago, it would take a great deal of work to find and load Cakewalk Pro Audio 5 or 6 that I used to create the file and double check to be sure the WAVE data is there and intact. Given the song I am pretty sure you can guess what the WAVE file contains. This happens to be an example file from that long ago that has audio data embedded. I have a couple of other files with larger and more embedded audio clips that all look the same when opened in Cakewalk. These other ones are more important to me because they contain a couple of original and unreleased songs I was working on for a friend including the vocal track. It would be great to figure out how to open the WRK file and hear the embedded audio as when I saved them. There is a possibility I saved the Cakewalk Pro Audio retail box from that long ago that I could install into a Win 95 or Win 3.11 virtual machine (I have these available to run inside Oracle VirtualBox) but that means doing a deep dive into my storage locker's software boxes to see if I can find that version of Cakewalk. I'm hoping to avoid that. Herb.... WIPEOUT.WRK

true but that leaves hundreds and hundreds still worth working on and the really interesting ones to me are the classical pieces. things like the entire Beethoven symphony collection is available as fairly high quality MIDI files. and yes i have been collecting music -1 files for a long time. a fair number of what i have are clearly better than what's on BitMidi and Midis101. i came across PSR Tutorials and if that's any indication lounge music however well performed is still lounge music but there are some gems in there. too bad they require a Yamaha XG device to work properly and i am trying to stop using mine because its really old. the goal to me was always to develop an interesting and eclectic collection of music where i can replace one or more tracks with something i can play with my WX5 and a good physical modelling synth. i have the VL70-m from when it was new but i am moving to virtual physical modelling instruments. after all is said and done messing around and having fun is more important than performing for anyone else but me. Herb...

i tried Google song identification and it mostly didn't recognize anything. i thought Shazam was paid. i didn't come across Soundhound. i will check them out more carefully.

given the file name that's a strong possibility. I've got probably a couple thousand or so of these unidentified to me songs collected away. a good chunk are just poor sequences that i'll keep in the deep archives for now but some like this one are worth looking through and tuning to sound their best. my collected MIDI files are highly biased towards popular and well known songs with a small mixture of original compositions. the most difficult to figure out are the classical pieces because there are hundreds of allegros in the classical music repertoire and i'm just not that familiar with some composers so unless it's something I've liked listening to it's just a blank. the next most difficult are the ones that seem to be General MIDI demo released by companies to show off their new tone generators. the early 90s were when a wave of GM devices were just coming out and wavetable synthesis was just becoming mainstream. i was one of the early adopters getting a Roland SC-55 when it shipped. i just put it back into storage last week after verifying that it still works. having said all that, i do know and have identified a few thousand already and moved the best performance sequences to a place to spend time working on. piles of the others are bad performances and i don't care what they are but i am reluctant to just discard them. disk space is cheap and MIDI files are small. modern MIDI file download places thankfully use long file names and give the entire song name. some people creating sequences even fill in the song title and composer along with their name on their MIDI files.

i've been poking through my collection of MIDI files i downloaded in the early 90s (over 6000) and trying to identify some of the more obscure to me songs. i know some are original compositions too but between being a long time ago, no documentation, not being familiar with many genres of music, and 8.3 file names, i really don't know what a good number of these files are supposed to be. for instance this attached General MIDI file seems like it's an arrangement of something successful but trying to play the file and using Google to listen and identify the song doesn't get me anywhere. i have created WAV files and uploaded to some free services and they either come up with nothing or clear nonsense. is there some online service that does decently in identifying songs differently arranged than any of their commercial releases? Herb... M_SALLY.MID