user905133

1 minute ago, John Maar said:

Many thanks! I'll pass this on.

There's more, depending on the user's workflow, setup, etc.  Only 1/2 way done!  I will leave this as is for the time being (except for the "to be completed" comment).  Maybe its enough to help.  If not, I set up my P2500 to verify accuracy of the methods, so can add the other 1/2 if requested.

The clarification makes sense.

1 hour ago, John Maar said:

I saw the answer to that question about MIDI channel in the forum but that’s just how to select it from a dialog. The question is where is that information defined in the Instrument Definition File?

In particular, if you’re auditioning individual patches on a single channel of a multi-timbral synth then presumably you select the channel to which you want those messages sent.

In a nutshell, the channel is not defined in the Instrument Definition.

The Instrument definition is selected for use within Cakewalk.  As the screen shot from Preferences shows, the 16 midi channels for each port/device can be assigned a previously designed Instrument Definition. 

I think of it as a linear process: (1) Define Instrument, (2) Assign Instrument Definition to a Port/Device + channel(s), (3) Assign a Track Output to a Port/Device, (4) Assign a Track to either a specific midi channel or to None [if using the channel from the midi data itself, such as the case with a multi-channel track], (5) Assign an initial Bank/Patch if using a forced midi channel approach, or None if track has up to 16 channels of midi data.

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Auditioning individual patches on a single channel . . . . It depends on workflow, how the user has the track/project configured, and where in the tune/performance process the audition is being done.  For example, this past year when I was getting back into Cakewalk and setting up an assortment of multitimbral synths--each with up to 32 midi channels, I created a template.  The idea was to have all modules in folders with all midi channels available per midi port as a starting point.

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Forced-channel Template Method

With the forced channel template, I can use the track control/widgets to make selections from the track itself.  That way the initial bank + preset/patch can be saved on each track within a project.

Note: During the setup phase, I can use my keyboard to audition sounds (1) by changing the channel it is sending on and (2) by using preset change buttons. Also, I can play notes and record patch changes as well. If I want to then make one of those banks/patches and initial track setting, I can then edit the track controls/widgets.  Or, I can set the Bank and/or Patch settings to none, and then moved the desired Bank/Patch Program Change to tick zero (or wherever I want it).

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Multi-channel Track Method and other methods [to be added, if needed].

14 hours ago, John Maar said:

6) How does one define on which MIDI channel to send out a bank select and program change message?

Sometimes the little letters [I, O, C, B, P] on the track controls/widgets for the initial bank and preset can be hard to read. 

Not sure if you were asking where to set up the per channel instrument assignments:

You can also insert/edit Bank/Patch changes in the Event List:

4 minutes ago, Joe Dun said:

I am the original poster.  In retrospect, I should have named the thread "Make Cakewalk a cakewalk"... and that primarily means that a new user of the software, and even new to MID should be able to get started and have a path to master the program with the resources provided.  That resource should primarily be the user manual.

I realize that many of the replies are not directed at myself, but just general statements about software users.  I will restate that I am a highly experienced computer user, who cut his teeth on CPM, then in DOS, and even did a bit of machine-language programming.  I have invested the hours to try to learn Cakewalk. Though, I will concede that I should give the BandLabs version a fresh start from the beginning.  However, the recent example where I was unable to figure out how to reorder tracks, somewhat discouraged me on that effort.  It indicated to me that the documentation is still not where it needs to be, since the documentation described actions that didn't work.  Hopefully that was just a fluke, and the forum proved to be a great resource to eventually figure it out.  I am willing to give Cakewalk another try.

Cakewalk, to live up to its name sake, should be something a complete beginner should be able to do basic operations without having to resort to asking for a proper explanation on a forum.

-Joe

I agree the name is misleading. There are many steep learning curves involved throughout.  For the first time I now side with the people who said "Sonar" should have been retained, instead of reclaiming the old "Cakewalk" name. I do not think that this robust software can ever be a snap to learn--turn it on and instantly know how to do things.

On 12/24/2019 at 10:47 AM, Olaf said:

. . . I'm gonna use your advice, by keeping the browser minimized over the console, cause I find it harder to click and drag across different flipping windows, everytime.  I'd much rather have it open in the console, with automatic sliding of the bus, and drag and drop at will, just like you can do in the Track View, then close it, and recall it again easily, when you need it, from a click arrow, or mass select tracks, and drag and drop on all at once, which is another suggestion. Basically, all that you can do in the Track View, available in the Console, plus the mass drag.

One suggestion I thought of making that might fit with your workflow was having the option to have a few panes within the multidock--perhaps the ability to have 2 or 3 tabs open at the same time. I had something like that happen as a bug--one partial pane with actual functionality!  I didn't report it to staff as a bug for three reasons: (1) I hadn't written up the steps to reproduced it, (2) I hadn't written up ideas on how to turn it into a feature request, and (3) I selfishly wanted to keep the "undocumented feature" for myself until I found the time to document the bug-to-be-made-as-a request.  ?

16 hours ago, Helene Kolpakova said:

Yes, I think this depends on the workflow which is probably different for many of us. . . .

Imagine that ONLY WHEN NEW audio tracks (or the audio part of the instrument tracks) are added to the Folder track, THEN they are automatically routed to the Folder patch point where they are summed together. . . .

Thanks for the very detailed explanation of how your folder patchpoint auto-routing for new audio tracks might work with several possible workflows. You address several things I wondered about in a previous thread related to auto-routing of tracks within folders. 

16 hours ago, Helene Kolpakova said:

Or perhaps I didn't understand you.

You successfully clarified several aspects of how your proposal might be implemented. Since I didn't detail my workflow and current uses of Cakewalk, there was really nothing to understand or misunderstand. Earlier today I started to reply with a description of my current Cakewalk configuration, workflow, and music development plans, but that would be out of place in this thread. I think it would be more appropriate to a forum topic on "Personal Workflows and Uses of Cakewalk."

As I wrote in the previous thread on auto-routing of tracks in folders, I think this opens interesting possibilities,  Since my current projects are being built within Cakewalk with four hardware buses, if this auto-patchpoint routing feature is implemented, I hope it can handle the possibility that users  might not have a single default bus and the possibility that users might route different tracks within a folder to different outputs.

5 hours ago, paulo said:

I think I see where you're coming from......maybe they could go a stage further and move all the DYKs to a specialist section called Attention Really Serious Enthusiasts?

Something like this would work, too! Or perhaps a special thread in the Tutorial section for a Topical Table-of-Contents with links to the embedded miniTutorials would work; that would save having to move them. 

BTW, I don't think ***** is an appropriate label to use. ?

EDIT: The auto-censoring feature of this forum didn't appreciate your acronym - Attention Really Serious Enthusiasts . Evidently it didn't have the ability to detect your hidden message. ?

5 hours ago, Helene Kolpakova said:

5. Folder tracks should only affect the audio tracks in terms of routing, i.e. when audio tracks are created within the Folder, they get routed to the audio patch point of the Folder by default, but when MIDI tracks are created within the Folder, they are not routed to the MIDI patch point of the Folder.

A few months ago, someone suggested something similar. While it might work for people who have audio/instrument tracks in the same folder all following the same audio path, some users have workflows where audio goes to different paths. So, if this suggestion is implemented, I hope (1) it would be optional to have all non-exclusively midi tracks routed to one audio path and (2) it would not be the default behavior. Perhaps there could be different types of folders? Or "folder options" within one folder type?  If so, it might be nice to have a "nestable" folder system so some sub-folders can have all tracks (of any type) routed through one path and other sub-folders routed differently. The best of all possible workflows!  ?

8 hours ago, msmcleod said:

FWIW, there's a couple of things that are more or less there already:

Adjusting Clip Gain

This can be done by holding down control, left clicking, then moving the mouse up & down. It currently doesn't change the waveform display, but this is in our to-do list:  [For mini-tutorial, see msmcleod's post directly]

VCA's (Grouping)

You can obtain similar behaviour to VCA's by using control groups: [For mini-tutorial, see msmcleod's post directly]

Is there a way for Staff to mark individual posts with consistently used generalized keywords/phrases, like "Did-you-know . . . " [DYK?] or maybe "Tips-and-tricks . . . " [TnT?] or "Often overlooked feature . . . " [OOF?] or "Mini Tutorial" [MiniT?] so users can do a search for whichever keyword/phrase is designated and go through on their own to find these kinds of gems  (something sort of like an updated, forum-based "Did you know . . . " series of tips from the old SONAR line)? Just a thought.

7 minutes ago, David Baay said:

.INS files are Instrument  Definition files - no relationship to ruler settings. If you don't have a Workspace enabled, ruler settings are project-specific - i.e. stored in the  .CWP.

Sorry about any confusion I might have caused. I typed (lower case L) (ns), not ins. I should have seen that the sans serif typeface might have caused confusion; thanks for catching this and for helping to clarify it.

Any idea where default.LNS gets recalled?

( BTW, I just assumed that since *.LNS [in lower case] was used for Lenses, for compatibility reasons, the extension was maintained instead of using *.wsp (or some such thing, but not *.wks!!!) for "Workspace.")

Excellent to know that with "No Workspace" or "None" (or however it shows up) the ruler settings from the project's settings are in effect.

7 minutes ago, Robert Bone said:

I suspect that since Vlada had indicated gear had moved from one location to another, that perhaps the USB cables didn't end up connected to the same devices/ports.  Could be wrong - just think that is my best guess on what is happening.

Based on another discussion of the relocated-usb-device problem, I tried to find a tool to understand the issue better that might lead to a better solution than just taking a picture  (or making a diagram) of where each usb device was plugged in.  Looking at usb device properties was not very helpful, IMO.  I then found this and installed it. I believe I ran it once just to see how the information was presented. I have not gone back to it, but if you are familiar with that tool and/or have any thoughts on how it might be useful for the relocated-usb-device problem (if at all), I'd be interested in your observations. 

Apologies for bringing this up here; I don't want to derail the problem-solving of this specific problem. So, perhaps if the View USB tool is (or might be) useful, you could create a special thread ["Third-Party Diagnostic Tools" ???] and maybe add a link to it here and maybe the other places where the issue is discussed.  I have a feeling that unless/until Cakewalk (or perhaps Windows 10) has its own built-in "Locate Moved USB Devices Tool," this issue will continue to come up.

Some small footnotes to the discussion:

(1) After seeing many comments to "widgets" in the forum, I decided to look for all references to "widgets" in the Reference Guide.  I also compared those with the actual software, esp. the track controls/widgets.  In the process, I saw that the definition in the glossary was seriously out-of-date.  I have mental notes (and plans to return to the issue) to try to sort out the terminology  and uses--for my own benefit and possibly to share with "the documentation department."

(2) I know the Reference Guide Version 25.09.00 is 1712 pages, the previous one (Version 25.07.00) was 1724 pages, but the one before that (Version 25.05.00) was 2188 pages. A few months back, I did a casual comparison** to see "what was missing" from the 2188-page version and saw  that the page number reduction was due to larger pages and more content on each page in the 1724 page version.

**I did not do a full page-by-page comparison, but if I recall correctly the "shorter" [newer] one was tweaked a bit and also had more content due to the New Features and Fixes.

4 minutes ago, Ben Staton said:

Thanks for the report. That definitely shouldn't happen! I'll get it logged and hopefully fixed in the next release.

Thanks for looking into this!!!!

1 hour ago, Olaf said:

Thanks, man! I didn't know that, and it's actually really useful information. I'm probably gonna have them docked in every project from now on.

I'll still leave that suggestion there, though, because it would make dragging and dropping easier than having to flip through windows back and forth, on the dock bar, for every intervention. And it could be achieved very easily, with just adding the double arrow button just above the up arrow of the side slider, which is also its natural position in the Console View.

Happy holidays!

Glad you found it useful!  ? 

As for having your multi-dock set up the same way and saved in each project, keep in mind that you can store screen sets which are per project layouts, plus you can lock screen sets so that if you move them around temporarily , you can still return to the locked screen set. However, since Workspaces are global, you can design and save a  Workspace with those panes as tabs in the multidock and then just select that Workspace. No need to do that for each project.

There are a number of posts about Workspaces [formerly Lenses] you might want to read, if you haven't seen them already.

If you want to leave the list, you might want to edit them one-by-one with a strikethrough  for items on your list that  you find out how to do.

Quote

• Allow the Synth Rack and browser windows to be opened in the Console View (both docked and undocked mode).

Just a thought.

Have you tried Expanding the Control Bar?  [right click on control bar]

A month or so ago I had something like what you have.  I have not tested it consistently to be able to report it as a possible bug, but I seem to recall the problem happened when I had a collapsed control bar [just vertical modules like you have on the right side] and then switched something. Not sure if it was triggered by switching screensets, opening up a different project, switching to a different workspace, or what. But it looks like what you have.

Basically it seemed to me that the state of the Control Bar [collapsed or expanded] was not being stored or loaded properly or something else affected the collapses/expanded state.

I had totally forgotten about that issue, but I'd be interested to know if expanding the control bar solves it.  If so, maybe we can figure out some consistent steps to reproduce it. 

Addendum: I think I remembered where I was when trying to sort this out.  I will have to find the screen shots I took trying to document the oddity.

Also, which version of Cakewalk are you on?  I was unable to reproduce the problem and am wondering if no longer happens in 2019.11 build 63.

SCREEN SHOTS (from end of November):  I believe the top two might be the same problem you have here.  The first one is from Cakewalk rebooted [start up; project not yet loaded]. The second one shows the Control Bar after a project was loaded. The third one shows the expanded [uncollapsed] Control Bar.

Good news: it might be reproducable--from an open project with a collapsed Control Bar, I switched to my "Staff Entry Plus" Workspace and got this:

ADDENDUM (a few hours after the above): More good news: I am getting this oddity repeatedly and have been documenting the steps to report as a possible bug in hopes Staff can reproduce it.  

If you have a specific Workspace that caused the issue you had, I'd be interested to know the results of (1) expanding the control bar and then (2) recalling the same problematic workspace.  Not sure if you get the same results as I do. 

1 hour ago, Olaf said:

Allow the Synth Rack and browser windows to be opened in the Console View (both docked and undocked mode).

If I understand what you are asking for, this is currently possible (1) by dragging and dropping the Synth Rack and Browser onto the MultiDock and (2) by using the Docking Options and choosing Dock in MultiDock--at least on my PC. Also, the MultiDock can be undocked as a whole so the Synth Rack and Browser are there as tabs.

Also, for some of your other points, have you tried (1) Screensets and (2) Workspaces? 

I have quite a number of workspaces with very different Control Bar Settings and when I load them up, the Control Bars are fairly consistent in returning to the ways they were stored.

Before a few months ago, I almost never explored using the different time ruler formats and never had more than one displayed at a time.  So, thanks for asking the questions and for the various comments. It now seems to make sense to me. As best as I can tell:

(1) The + and - let you change the number of time-lines (1, 2, 3, or 4) and select specific formats you want to add or remove.

(2) Right-clicking on the time line let's you choose which format(s) you want displayed.  However, this method does not let you change the number of time-lines. If there are two time-lines selected, the different formats of those two time-lines can be checked and unchecked, but there will always be 2, unless one is removed with the - button (or 1 or 2 added with the + button).

That being said, Workspaces might also be involved in what seemed to be random, but if the idea was to uncheck one of the formats using method (2), I was only able to reduce or increase the number of scales using method (1).

Again, this is totally new to me, but I just tripled tested the above and it seems to be consistent (at least on my PC).  I have no idea if the above has changed over the years.  I defer to others on that.

Addendum: The  on line Time Ruler description seems to match my trial-and-error testing.

I get that error message, too.  It's basically saying Cakewalk cannot access the device because another program [such as MIDI-OX] is using it.

If it were me, I'd check with Novation to see if you can get the full midi specs. I have seen discussions of MIDI 2.0 online, but I thought that was supposed to be 100% compatible with MIDI 1.0.

On my usb keyboard (Evolution MK-249C) a light test chord had a velocity of 5 and a hard test chord had a velocity of 71 hex [113 dec].

4 minutes ago, Nobletonmusic said:

If 17 under data2 represents playing hard/heavy, that seems way too low.

53 minutes ago, Nobletonmusic said:

User the manual of the Novation I assume you mean, what velocities is it supposed to send. I'm making my way through the manual since I downloaded it today.

Well, any of the units you want to confirm are working properly with Cakewalk.  It sounds like the Novation is your first controller.  Also, check the manual for velocity curves.  It might have several. Testing several different velocity curves by recording notes played into Cakewalk should help diagnose what is going on with velocity.

So I went to Novation, looked up product info, tech specs, and user guide for the LaunchKey line. Unless there is more complete information someplace else, the available documentation will not help.  The MIDI Implementation page just has Yes for sending velocity and No for receiving it.  Unless I missed it, there is nothing that tells what the range should be.  Also, I saw nothing about being able to select velocity curves.

A tool like MIDI-OX (or the one at TenCrazy) should tell you what what velocities any of the keyboards are sending into your computer/and into Cakewalk.

11 minutes ago, Nobletonmusic said:

Have MIDIOX open, I think I figured out a few things.  Selected the device - Novation. Clicked on Display Raw MIDI data. See results in window as I press a key - First note indicated Status = 90  Data 1 = 43  Data 2 = 23  . Not sure if this is good or not ? Any though scook

90 is hexidecimal (base 16) for a note-on on channel 1. Data 1 (also hex) is the note number. Data 2 (also hex) is the velocity.  The maximum velocity (in hex) is 7F [127 Dec]. The minimum velocity is zero (although a note-on with a velocity of zero is generally understood as a note-off switch).

If every note has the same velocity, that's a problem.  Try to find the smallest and largest velocity you can get.

There is a place to change the display to decimal.  Let me look.  Options > Data Display [uncheck Hex if you prefer Decimal numbers].

Perhaps check a manual first to see what velocity ranges they are supposed to send (as a basis for comparison)?

1 hour ago, scook said:

Yes but as mentioned above it may be a workspace issue. The image shows no workspace is loaded.

I never tested this, but maybe one of you knows--when no workspace is loaded, does that mean "default.lns" is in effect? If not, do you know where the settings come from and when they get loaded?  I started to explore this a few months ago, but since it was brought up here, I thought I'd ask.  Thanks.

4 minutes ago, Nobletonmusic said:

I did have the MIDI track selected, but everything under Apply Effects was grayed out.

I stand corrected.  I had already dragged the Velocity FX to the midi track's FX Bin. Evidently, that's why it wasn't greyed out.

I use the Browser.  If you choose a MIDI Track, "Process tab / Apply effect/ Midi Effects" will not be greyed out. Personal preference--I like seeing the list and dragging from the Browser.

Addendum: Since I don't use the Process tab method, I didn't know that was destructive. Thanks scook.