David Baay

OP said "multi tracked drum recording'. To me, that does mean they were miced/tracked individually. In that case, any of the available methods will work: - Drum Replacer - Audiosnap > Copy as MIDI - Melodyne drag to MIDI Melodyne is the most straightforward without having to learn anything, and will probably do the best job with the least amount of tweaking in any case. If the drums are not individually tracked, then I would start with Drum Replacer.

FWIW, I played around with this a bit, and did not get any unexpected results either with executing or undoing SM/BAN with position-locked and/or absolute-timebase MIDI clips. The results are different in each case, of course, but make sense if you understand how the the settings work. And Undo always got me back where I started.

It's not be necessary to change the timebase of MIDI clips or lock data when using Set Measure/Beat at Now. Cakewalk automatically recalcuates event start times and durations to maintain their absolute playback timing. Undo functionality might actually get fouled up by changing the timebase. I don't know; I never tried it. Be aware, incidentally, that locking a MIDI clip does not lock the data to absolute time, it just prevents direct editing. And the timebase setting only affects the clip start time, not event or clip duration. I would need to understand better what the goal is and see what you're working with to explain more fully. Whatever problem you're encountering, I don't think it's related to the number of undo levels.

If the clip doesn' start at 1:01, you will have better luck using Save As and choosing MIDI Format 1 in the Save as Type field. You'll get a MIDI file that opens with two separate tracks, and you can grab just the piano track from it at the other end. IIRC, a non-zero start time will get lost when you drag-drop out of Cakewalk.

Each execution of SM/BAN is single event, and undoing it should completely undo the effects of the resulting tempo change. I use it constantly, and have never encountered a problem with undo - even undoing dozens of 'sets'. I didn't completely understand the meaning of "4 tracks 8, 2 each track midi clips", but I assume that means some clips are audio. Have you changed the timebase or enabled stretching on any audio clips? If you could share a copy of the CWP file without audio (the dummy clips Cakewalk will insert should be enough to repro the issue), it would be easier to figure out what went wrong.

Any time, no pressure. ;^) Interesting comment about playing different notes on different strings and frets. As a keyboard player, I hadn't really thought about that, but it explains why guitar is sometimes difficult to transcribe; some of the subtle changes in chord voicing aren't due to changes in chord structure, but to pitches moving to different strings.

Yes, this part has many tied trips, and also a lot of 'partial' trips. This is where CbB really falls down; it only reliably recognizes triplet timing if all three notes are present. Otherwise it fills and trims incorrectly, and notates things with whacky combinations of dotted notes and rests, regardless of the display resolution. It gets even uglier if you mix triplet 8ths and straight 16ths or 'oddball' triplet timings like 3 in the time of 5 16ths. It helps to hard-quantize both start times and durations rather than relying on filling and trimming, but it can be a lot of work to get the durations right. As you pointed out, it's just a display issue, and easy enough to export to a dedicated notation program. I use Notion when I really want something to look right, but getting bass and treble piano parts into a grand staff in Notion is more difficult than it should be - easy with XML, but since the Cakewalk notation is wrong, it has to be MIDI. Recording from CbB to Notion in real time is the easiest way, but Notion doesn't record sustain pedal (a longstanding feature request of many users). I'd make a habit of converting all my solo piano stuff to notation for posterity if it were easier. Since I don't actually read and write notation very well, I have to rely more on the software to get it approximately right as a starting point.

Welcome back, Jerry! Oldtimers rule! ;^) It's a good thing I really don't need notation because the triplet issue would kill me. Last night I opened a melody track in Staff View just to watch it play for fun. The whole part is based on eighth triplets, and it was a disaster.

Ouch. Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays are big favorites and (I like to think) influences of mine. I still get choked up every time I listen to Are You Going With Me.

I have altered shortcuts for this on my main DAW, but I just tried with the default keybindings on my laptop, and they are working here.

What would you have the Track Inspector show when more than one track is selected? And what would you have the various controls do if they weren't hidden/locked? Yes, I know that the Clip and Track tabs of the Inspector will show 'multi' when more than one clip/track is selected with different parameter values, but there's a very limited set of situations in which this is useful, and that behavior wouldn't be applicable to the main Inspector view of the track/bus widgets or the Prochannel tab.

After a while, the separation of selection and focus becomes so ingrained that you don't even think about all the things it makes possible. Here are a couple that I'm aware of using regularly; - A selected track is the source for a copy/cut while the focused track is the target for a paste. Separating the two functions facilitates copy/cut/paste from one track/lane to another with keyboard shortcuts. - Separate focus lets you inspect and modify parameters on any track/bus without losing a selection you've made on another track or multiple tracks. If focus and selection were the same thing, the track inspector could only work when a single track/bus was selected.

Not sure this merits an exclamation point given that it's only a display bug, and that it's not typical to have a sustain controller at time zero (?). More problematic in my view (but still not really a big deal in practice) is that a sustain controller at the end of clip (the much more common case) is generally not visible in the clips pane. EDIT: Oops. Was thinking you meant the clips pane because it's a longstanding issue there with controllers at the end of a clip. EDIT 2: Now that I understand what you're talking about (the controller 'shaddow' disappearing), I think this was brought up a long time ago in another thread. Again, a pretty uncommon situation for sustain controllers, but more common with some others (e.g. setting initial, fixed values for Volume, Modulation or Expression). EDIT 3: Found it on the old forum. OP was wrong about there being any functional problem; it's only a display issue: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Midi-Controller-data-quotforgottenquot-after-about-1-12-minutes-m3255463.aspx

Timebase=Absolute only affects the start time of a MIDI clip, not the length, timing or duration of events within the clip. The only way to change tempo and have MIDI maintain its absolute timing in Cakewalk is to use Set Measure/Beat at Now. I've requested the ability to lock the absolute timing of a MIDI clip several times over the years, but never got it.

As I'm sure you know, MIDI Gain (Velocity Offset) is not a controller message. It will be applied to all notes in a track dynamically during playback, regardless of what channel they're on or what output channel is being forced by the Channel setting on the track. The Channel widget, labeled 'C', is visible when the Track Control Manager at the top of the Tracks pane is set to 'All' or 'I/O'. MIDI Volume, Pan, Chorus and Reverb controls are disabled by default until they've been moved. The disabled state is indicated by parentheses around the value displayed in the widget. This allows messages embedded in the MIDI track to take precedence. If no output Channel is set, Cakewalk will default to sending the relevant CC messages for these controls on channel 1 whenever you move them and every time playback starts. If you set a specific output channel, the messages will be sent with that channel.

No, changing the time signature is just going to divide the total number of quarter-note beats in the track into smaller or larger groups without affecting the absolute timing of playback or removing any material. To squeeze four beats of notes into three beats without removing any material you would need ot change the relationship between tempo and absolute time in a separate step. With audio, you can simply change the tempo of the project directly, but with MIDI, you would need to either drag-stretch (actually compress) the MIDI clip to fit the smaller number of beats without changing project tempo, or use Set Measure/Beat at Now to have Cakewalk re-calulate the start times and durations of note events to make them fit with a lower tempo. For example, to go from 4/4 to 3/4, after changing the time signature, snap the Now time to the note that used to be at 5:01 (Now at 6:02), hit Shift+M to open the Set Measure/Beat at Now dialog, and enter Measure 5, Beat 1. This will make what was previously 4 measures of 4/4 (16 beats) play back in the space of 4 measures of 3/4 (12 beats) with a project tempo that's 3/4 of what it was to start (e.g. 90bpm instead of 120bpm). If you actually want to throw away the notes in the last beat of every measure, you'll need to manually select and delete that material, with Ripple Editing enabled to close up the 'holes'.

Where people often get in trouble is when they using MIDI-generating plugins like Cthulu. If a track is set to Omni, it will respond to plugins generating or passing thru MIDI from the track driving them. Like you (apparently), I don't use such plugins, but I still consider it a 'best practice' to limit a track to respond to a specific source, and always make it a point to do that when setting up a new track.

One clue is that the noise seems to be getting processed by the reverb. So whatever the source, it's getting injected before (or at) that reverb . I agree it really sounds like a plugin in demo mode.

In addiiton to disabling Zero Controllers, proactively set a MIDI Volume level in the MIDI track (or on the MIDI tab of the Track Inspector for an Instrument track). By default MIDI volume is disabled, and the synth volume is free to change in response to CC7 messages from other sources like your keyboard controller. that can stil hapen, but every time you start playback, Cakewalk will reset it. Also, to prevent stray MIDI messages from sources other than your controller from being echoed to Kontakt, always set the Input of the track to the specific port and channel on which your keyboard is sending rather than Omni - All. If all else fails, create flatline MIDI controller envelopes on the track for CC1 Modulation, CC7 Volume, and CC11 Expression.

Cakewalk is not the right tool for this. It can be done with MIDI-driven synths, but for audio, there is no recording configuration that will replay previous takes while loop-recording without restarting the transport. As an experiment, I found I could pull it off using a delay FX with a very long delay based on the tempo and number of bars in the loop, but it's awkward to set up, and you can't arbitrarily define the length of the loop while performing; you have to set it in advance, and play to a click. Better to use a DAW that's optimized for this kind of thing like Abelton Live as rsinger suggested... or a hardware looper.

Since the main burden on system resources of running a soft synth is due to the processing and memory requirements of the synth plugin itself, using a different host is unlikely to significantly reduce the overall CPU load or memory footprint. As a point of reference, Cakewalk with TruePianos running with a WASAPI buffer of 3ms takes up less than 200MB and about 8-10% CPU while playing (realtime or existing MIDI playback) on my crummy i5 laptop with the UI minimized to the taskbar to remove the graphical load. TTS-1 takes up only about half that - 100MB RAM, and 5-6% CPU.

Arpeggiator inadvertently enabled on the track?

I had the same issue with the VST3 version of Chromaphone. The VST2 was fine. Sometime after updating my Nvidia drivers I saw the thread below, and tried the VST3 again, and found that the problem had gone away:

Some of this post is specific to the OP's case (like the starting tempo), but the steps are generally applicable to aligning a timeline to existing audio or MIDI. In your case, you can stop at "When it sounds good throughout":

In Cakewalk, a 'beat' is always a quarter note. A 6/8 measure is only 3 beats long. The metrome will click on 8ths, but the tempo is quarters/minute, and you can't tap a tempo in 8ths. Three simple ways to match the tempo are: 1. Import the audio, and use Set Measure/Beat at Now (Shift+M) to tell CbB where the bar lines fall. Or 2a. Disable Stop at Project End so that the transport can run with no content in the project. 2b. Hit spacebar, and count out 4 measures as you listen to the recording. 2c. Hit spacebar again to stop the transposrt on 5:01, and set that measure and beat with Shift+M. Or 3. Import the audio and drag-drop the clip on the timeline, and let Melodyne extract the tempo. This last option may not work well with a 6/8 tempo. Melodyne may read it as 3/4, and sometimes it will set a double-time tempo even when it gets the beat value right. Higher versions of Melodyne can be tweaked to address this, but the Essentials demo that can be installed from Bandlab Assitant doesn't have those features. If you're just looking for an approximate match to re-record everything from scratch, option 2 is the easiestl (easier to do than to describe). This is what I often use to match a new project to something I've been improvising, and am ready to record. Or, since I record mostly MIDI, I'll record without a click, and set the project to the MIDI with Set Measure/Beat at Now, and then flatten any tempo variation that I don't want to keep - also easier to do than to describe in detail. I can point you to a previous post if you're interested in that approach. You can make the metronome click on 8th notes,