Starship Krupa

For sidechaining, I use the aforementioned MCompressor, from the Meldaproduction FreeFX bundle. There's a thread here in Deals that describes how to upgrade it and the 36 other plug-ins to their deluxe versions for about $10. Sale lasts another couple of days. But it works just great in its free state. The sidechain detector in MCompressor has an EQ so that you can filter selected frequencies, which is great if you have a complex signal and only want to duck the bass or whatever.

Odd, I just tried walking it up from my PRV Grid Background color and it switched at 7F7F7F, which is 127. I wonder if it's influenced by the black keys background. I also wonder whether it takes its cue from R, G, or B.

Good lord, how on earth did you figure that one out?

At the very least, the UI's need to be larger, or scalable. I don't use them due to the tiny UI. I believe there's been some talk of porting them to VST, along with a UI makeover. Would love to see that.

Now I'm confused (not an unusual state). I just tried switching around different themes to see what colors I got for different states. With Tungsten (and my own Tungsten-derived themes) selected notes are white. In FLIGHT DECK and Mercury, they seem to be a slightly darker version of the track color. Where is this color/behavior for selected MIDI notes set?

My big issue with it is that it's the same colour as selected notes, thereby leading to confusion and consternation if the user happens to turn off Hide Muted Clips. I've submitted a feature request regarding this, along with a request that Clip Fade Lines respect the Custom Color setting when the clip is selected (instead of none more black).

May I redeem some points and humbly suggest/request that you add my note about changing Muted Clip Data to something other than bright white? I'm actually going to FR that and another color change. I've seen too many people express exasperation about juggling takes in the PRV, and now I know this is one of the reasons. Any idea whether Cakewalk has Hide Muted Clips enabled by default?

Got another: Piano Roll View/Muted MIDI Clip Data is the color used when displaying the notes in muted clips, when View/Hide Muted Clips is not selected. The default color is bright white, the same color that is, of course, used by Cakewalk to display selected notes, so it seems a recipe for much confusion if someone a: has muted clips with data in them and b: turns off Hide Muted Clips. Why the default color is set to be that way is a mystery to me, and it also may explain why it took me months before I could trust that the notes I was editing in the Piano Roll were the ones I wanted to be editing, and also why sometimes I'd be in a situation where "selected" notes couldn't be altered (or deselected). From here forward, my themes are going to use 5C5C5C grey for this color.

FYI, even with all of these step-by-step instructions, I have still never been able to get my templates to show anything but the default sheet of paper with "CWT" on it in Start Screen: That's the start screen icon I get after opening the factory Basic.cwt (which has the monitor picture on it) and without doing anything else, saving it as a template in my templates folder by clicking on the existing filename "Basic.cwt," then selecting the word "Basic" only and replacing it with "Really Basic" and clicking okay. It just won't work for me for some reason, even though multiple people have reported success. I sat through the video where he shows what he's typing, I read the PDF. What am I doing wrong?

Let's see....okay, weird, on my main DAW, both Archived and Frozen are showing impression 6. This persists through re-loading the project and restarting Cakewalk. This may be one of those flukes of theming, where it won't appear until the UI needs to load some other resource. Maybe you could try it again and see what you get? I guess the bottom line is that at least sometimes impression 5 is used to indicate that Take Lanes can't be opened, and should be treated as such whether it always works or not (so when you're theming for public consumption, don't leave a placeholder image there like I did). Ah, the treachery of images....

Yeah, it's odd that people who bought it won't get an extra seat. However, it makes a kind of sense in that iZotope are probably hoping that if they give away one seat, it will inspire the recipient to pay for another. I have to say, PhoenixVerb is about the best advertisement for iZotope's reverb technology I can think of. Of course, the idea with these loss leaders is to get money from people (in the long run), not to let them keep their money. Still, seems petty when you're handing out free licenses to snub people who've already given you money for it. Might foster a bit of ill will toward iZotope, but as the purveyors of the Exponential technology, it's their game. The one I'm hoping for a second cheap/free seat for is R2. Whatever, this situation is what my, uh, housemate's account is for. The one I let use my PayPal account.? She never buys anything over $10.

Here's one I just noticed: Track view/Track Pane/Show/Hide Take Lanes is a button we've discussed at length. Turns out it had one last behavior to reveal, which was what impression 5 was used for. It's displayed when the track is frozen.

Ooh, reverb envy. My favorite 'verb plug-in is PhoenixVerb Stereo, and I also like R2. Since Nimbus and R4 are supposed to be the deluxe versions, I know you can get good sounds with them. If Nimbus has "Sml Neutral Hall," that's the PhoenixVerb preset I use for 90% of my mixes. Use it on a send bus, and of course, use it sparingly. One of the reverb suggestions is that if you can hear the reverb as an effect, you're using too much (that is, unless you're using it as an effect, like for rockabilly). If you mute and unmute your reverb bus, you should most definitely be able to tell, but if during the song it sounds anything other than "richer and fuller and more natural," it may be too heavy. I usually start by turning the send up until I can just hear it then backing off. One thing about Cakewalk-with-Exponential is that the sends are way too hot when you first insert them, so crank backward on that knob right away. Also, if you're using virtual instruments that have their own internal reverb, turn that off and use your reverb send instead. It'll help everything sound like it's in the same space.

The deal with Strum Session is that it has 3 different modes. The first, "Keyboard," you send it notes and it plays whatever note you sent it, as if it were any soft synth or sampler set to a "guitar patch." In that case, whatever time signature the notes are that you send it is what's going to come out. The second, "Guitar," is where there are keys mapped to chords and articulations. You press a key with the left hand to select the chord, and then any number of articulations with the right hand to make notes or strums come out. Again, in this mode, you get out the time signature you put in. In the third mode, "Loop," it acts as a MIDI loop player for either its own factory loops or ones you load into it. Then you trigger the loop(s) by sending the plug-in notes. This case is where you need to set a tempo and time signature so that the player knows how to play it back, but you don't do it anywhere in Strum Session, you do it in the MIDI loop files you create to use with it. The rules are as follows: 3.3.2 Creating MIDI Loops Loops for Strum Session are easily created in your favorite sequencer by respecting the following rules: • All the events must be on MIDI channel 1. • The loop must begin at the start of the file and finish at the end of the track. In other words, if the track lasts for four bars but there are notes only in the first bar, Strum Session will still loop over the four bars. • The tempo and the time signature must be defined at the beginning of the loop and must not change during the rest of the loop. Strum Session indeed ignores tempo changes occurring in the middle of a loop. • The loop must be recorded on disk on a file using MIDI format 0 or 1 and having a .mid extension. It's easy to create such files in Cakewalk.

The exception is VSTi's like Strum Session where sending it a note triggers it to play a pattern rather than a note. Break Tweaker and any number of other drum machines are similar. They play whichever of their internal or user patterns corresponds to the note. All the user is doing is sending it different notes to trigger different patterns. The notes can be sent in any "time signature," but the patterns that get played will still be whatever time signature they are in the VSTi.

A favorite freeware de-esser of mine is Lisp. VO people usually use a leveler like Sonic Anomaly TriLeveler 3 Broadcast Voice Limiter. Sonic Anomaly dropped a bunch of great freeware plug-ins a few years ago and then sort of disappeared, but their downloads are being hosted elsewhere. Their Unlimited limiter is still my favorite master bus limiter. For excellent workhorse compressor and EQ, MCompressor and MEqualizer from the Meldaproduction MFreeFX Bundle are my favorites. They can be used for free, and there's a recipe for getting a deal on the upgraded version of the bundle in this thread: Check out my buddy Jim Edgar's JustAskJimVO site for tons of tech and performance tips for VO people.

Cool, thanks. Oh do they ever slice and dice late 70's Los Angeles on that record. Parasite coke dealers, baby boomer dudes trying to make it with teenage girls....the music goes down so nice, but the lyrics are dipped in acid. Their engineering, production and musicianship are things I will never reach, but whenever I throw in a 7th there's probably some Steely Dan in there. The first time my awareness of the emotional impact of chord changes was piqued was when I bought the "Reelin' In The Years" single at age 11 and wondered why a song with such cutting lyrics made me think of the Peanuts holiday specials?. Rock played with jazz changes. The wistfulness of the chord changes communicates a wistfulness that undercuts the sentiment of the lyrics.

I've never used it myself, so I don't know: isn't ReWire supposed to be able to do this, depending on the other program also supporting it?

Generally, yeah, the sounds themselves don't need compression to even them out or adjust attack and decay like real world drums. As the others have said, compression as an audible effect, deliberate heavy pumping with or without sidechaining to a compressor on the bass, those are the things that I hear. It's about adding things that aren't already there. The sky's the limit if you're not trying to create a virtual drum kit in a room. I've smashed the snot out of the entire drum mix using a hard knee compressor or something from the electronic-oriented plug-in houses like W.A. Production. They have a freebie called KSHMR Kick that's designed for kick, obviously, but I've put the thing on an entire drum mix and was very pleased with the results. W.A. are running a bundle sale right now. Comb filtering, like MComb from the Meldaproduction FreeFX bundle, is something I've used, delay, whatever makes it interesting. Also be sure to have Boz Digital's Bark of Dog on hand.

Trippy. CbB offers me something called "Split Instrument Track" when I click on the "+" sign above the track headers. I've always assumed that it was a proper noun, since it's capitalized, but then the dialog also capitalizes other things, and they are not the names of things so who knows. When I choose that it creates both a MIDI and a Synth track with the MIDI track already routed to the Synth track. Very handy. So if there's only one kind of Instrument track, then this command instructs Cakewalk to "Create an Instrument track, then split it before it's displayed." I prefer my Instrument tracks split, be it noun or verb. And I use Synth tracks all the time, even if they're not "basic."

Indeed, that's why I asked. It's supposed to be a "character" EQ, and oftimes those have certain sweetening tricks they are known for, like the Pultec's "bass trick," or an "air band." I figured with this thing that maybe back in the day some coked-to-the-gills hairy guy might have worked out that if you set the Low Boost on 12dB/oct. then turn the 60Hz cut to -9 it resonates with the kundalini or something. I seek opinions, because this is an area where my own knowledge and experience are lacking and there's much accumulated knowledge here. I don't know character EQ's very well. From what I read they can be kinda specialized. It could be great on bass and saxophone and weak on guitar or whatever. I ran some pink noise through it and with LOW BOOST it's putting on a slightly rounded low shelf. The bump in the shelf might be part of why it sounds so good on bass. There's something other than just EQ going on with it (which is audible). They're trying to model the response of the tubes, the transformers, etc. It has a setting for if you want to just use the pure EQ curves and bypass the analog emulation. Speaking of air bands, when playing around with the TE-100, I do kinda like what it's doing to a vocal when I hit the 4K button, switch to 12dB per octave and give it about +7. I liked what it did on bass when I set the filter to 12dB/oct. 170Hz and gave it about +3 or so. It gave it a nice presence and girth. Seems like it would also be good for "what the heck is that thing? That's my secret weapon." exchanges with people looking over the shoulder.

I twigged the thing about dragging the cursor between the buttons. So would you say that it's pretty much a bass flavorizer, or are the other nodes useful as well?

The UI looks a bit intimidating, kind of like the telephone switchboard in an old hotel. The other ones I'm considering are the Maag EQ4 and Millenia NSEQ-2. The Millenia assures me that it has a 300V tube and discrete J-FET signal path, which is pretty impressive for something that is, in actuality, a computer program.

Okay, I already have all of the Unfiltered Audio stuff I want, and then elysia mpressor, which, by the way, man o MAN. I guess it's one of these knob EQ's. I'm not that savvy with knob EQ's, but I might as well have a nice one. Lindell TE-100 has the magic pixie dust, eh?

What did you do to try this? Did you edit one of the segmented meter images?