Notes_Norton

Hi, I'm new to this forum. When following a thread in many other forums, there is a "First unread post" link that sends me to exact spot I left off on the the thread last time. I don't see one here. Am I missing it? Or is there just not one I'm not complaining, but if there is a link I'd like to know how to find it. Thanks, Notes

And he has a point, but perhaps because he never played MIDI. Also we all have a tendency to look at other performers through musician's eyes, and forget about how our audience looks at us. As a sax player who doesn't play trumpet, trombone, harmonica, concertina, clarinet, flugelhorn, and a dozen other instruments, I enjoy playing different sounds on the wind synth and it gives our duo tonal colors and variety that they wouldn't get if I only played sax and guitar on stage. Speaking of guitar, it's my 7th instrument (8th if you count vocals) and I can still do some thing solo-wise on the wind synth that I'm not able to do on the guitar yet. Also, there is an art to emulating other instruments with MIDI. If you play that sax patch like a piano, no matter how good the tone is, you won't convince anyone that it's a sax. You have to recreate the nuances of sax playing, which are partially governed by the advantages and limitations of that instrument. If you play a piano patch like a sax, it won't fool anyone either. Not to say that these are wrong things to do. If you want a piano to have sax-like qualities in your song, go for it. It just might work fantastically. Learning to emulate other instruments with MIDI, including my own primary instrument, the sax, also taught me a lot about coaxing expression out of 'pure synth' patches that don't emulate anything specific. For those of us who make their living playing music live, we must remember we are in show business and we must also remember to see ourselves through they eyes of whatever audience we find in front of us at the moment. If I thought making my guitar do a nice kazoo solo and it would please the audience, I'd do just that. And once you have the audience on your side, they won't mind at all if you occasionally throw in something that is exclusively for yourself, as long as it doesn't stray too far away and/or is at the right moment. Insights and incites by Notes

Until the editing features of audio approach those of MIDI, I'll stick with it. Good sound modules can get 90-95% "real" and I can do so much that I can't do with audio that it makes for a more expressive output. I'm going to quote Craig Anderton from an old Keyboard Magazine article extolling the virtues of MIDI: You can edit every characteristic of every performance gesture: dynamics, volume, timing, the length and pitch of every note, pitch-bend, and even which sound is being played. MIDI data can tell a piano sound what to play, or if you change your mind, a Clavinet patch. With digital audio, changing the instrument that plays a given part requires re-recording the track….but MIDI can do much more… Craig, if you're listening, thanks for putting the way I feel into words. I just sequenced an old song for my duo. I have about 30 different MIDI guitars in my synth modules, the one with the Telecaster Rear Pickup patch did the trick. It's a GM patch with a LSB bank change option. I also sequenced the backing vocals. I used Syn Vox for some and "Hamming" for others, so I get the backing vocal parts without human voices making what we do sound like karaoke. It took a lot of different patches to come up with that combo. And these are just the simplest of edits. Insights and incites by Notes

Just for a little smile.

Thanks. Some day I'd love to visit your beautiful country. Notes

Admit nothing. Stand on the 5th. Notes

Another very good sounding synth that I think is no longer in production is the Ketron SD2. Of all the synths I own, if I were to choose one to play a General MIDI sequence, that would be it. The sounds are consistently way above average. For monophonic solo brass, woodwind, string and guitar lines it's hard to beat the physical modeling synthesis of the Yamaha VL line. The VL70m, also discontinued, may not have the best tone, although an aftermarket chip from Patchman Music improves that, but it has the ability to recreate the nuances of the instruments it emulates well. (I have no connection with Patchman other than I'm a customer). I like this one so much that when there was a rumor of it being discontinued, I bought a second one. Insights and incites by Notes

I think BiaB is not for people who don't play instruments if making backing tracks is the desire. BiaB could make a backing track simply by entering the chords, but the interface isn't for non-music people, and is rather awkward even for music folks at first. But that can be learned like any app. However IMHO the output from BiaB is "not ready for prime time". First of all, the tracks are good but quite generic. And they should be. I had a customer ask for a style to make Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" so I made one for him. The problem was, as soon as that signature guitar lick came in, it stated "Don't Be Cruel" and if you tried using it on another song, it still shouted "Don't Be Cruel". So it was a one-song style. I could have sequenced the song from scratch easier than I could have made the style. On the other hand BiaB has some very good things going for it. I've written aftermarket styles for BiaB and as work-for-hire for other auto accompaniment hardware and software apps. BiaB has by far the potential to make a much more musical accompaniment. The 'handles' are there in the StyleMaker so you can have special patterns for exact musical situations. For example: The ii of a ii V7 I progression or the V7 that leads to a I at the beginning of an A or B section. There are more. But like I said, BiaB isn't ready for prime time. Because the styles are generic, if you need song specific licks (like Don't Be Cruel) you have to add them when the song is over. Some of the oldest BiaB styles use quantized drums, and could use some kind of groove filter to bring them to life. BiaB eventually got rid of the drum grid and allowed drums with a resolution of 120bbm, but the early styles have never been converted. As a drummer (it was my first instrument) quantized drums don't work for most forms of pop music. The exceptions would be some Disco, EDM, and so on. I like writing BiaB styles because it gives me a chance to learn new things, use my schooling in theory and arranging, and there is a puzzle/challenge/game to overcome the limitations of BiaB to get it to do more than it was designed for and hide what it cannot do yet. For example, BiaB only allows 4 chords per bar, but I invented a work-around that allows up to 8 chords per bar, I call them EXPANDED styles. They also double the ppq resolution of BiaB. I write styles for BiaB more than I use it, but I do use it from time to time. For my own duo's backing tracks, I use BiaB for what I call the 'mule work'. That is if there is an appropriate style. Mule work? Say I've entered the drums, bass, and signature licks in a song in real time and those background comp parts like piano comp or rhythm guitar are close to a BiaB style --- I just put the chords in BiaB, extract the comp parts and put them into my sequence (I'm still all MIDI at this point). For fewer songs, especially if there is an appropriate style, I can even use BiaB for the drums and bass. Latin Salsa, Rhumba, and Merengue come to mind immediately. Some rock, jazz and blues too. Even then, I'll touch things up in a DAW/Sequencer before recording it. But for some songs I just need to get to the sequencer/DAW and play the parts in one at a time, starting with the drums and bass and adding the comp parts. I had to do that for "Blurred Lines", "Uptown Funk", and James Brown's "I Got You - I Feel Good". I'm thinking about Rascal Flatts' version of "Life Is A Highway" next (we had a couple of requests) and offhand I can't think of an appropriate BiaB style. But I did "Your Mind Is On Vacation" by Mose Allison pretty much 90% BiaB a couple of months ago. Also, BiaB has a harmonizing feature that follows the rules I learned in the Berklee Correspondence course many years ago. I can put the chords into BiaB, play the top note of the horn, string, or whatever line and have BiaB put the lower notes in for me. There are dozens of harmonization schemes to choose from. This can be a real time saver without any sacrifice of quality. It saves me of playing each part separately. BiaB now comes with "Real Tracks" but I hardly ever use them. The Real Tracks are audio styles, which are non-editable for all practical purposes. What PG Music has done is genius, but if I wanted to even simple things change a drum roll, use a ride bell instead of the ride edge, change the LP sounding guitar to one that sounds like a Strat, change an acoustic piano to a Rhodes, or more advanced edits like take out a generic pattern and insert a song specific lick, or change where the accents are, even exporting into Melodyne won't do most of what I want to do. But then I like PLAYing music and PLAYing with my tools. If I wanted to just play someone else's music, I'd pop in a CD, a flash drive or stream. I want the music to have my touch in it. They don't call it PLAYing music for nothing. It's not for everybody, but if you like playing with your music, BiaB can be a good tool for many of us. Insights and incites by Notes PS, about musicians who don't commit. I've played in up to 7 piece rock bands, and even was the warm up band for headliner concerts many years ago. But there were always problems with the musician who got too high on the job, didn't show up on time, spent a too long break chasing some sex relations, and so on. Before the duo I was in a 5 piece, the bass player quit and we replaced him, the drummer quit and we replaced her and I was out of work for a total of 3 months while we worked in the new members. Then I realized that I had to depend on us if I wanted to work steadily, so Leilani and I left the 5 piece band in 1985, started the duo, and we haven't been out of work since. We don't play in as glamorous rooms as we did, but we take home more money per gig (the price people pay doesn't go up that much with each additional member). Anyway, if I want live band kicks, I go to a jam session - that is as long as I know the house band is making decent money to host it.

I use a DAW for two things: I'm in a duo. I make my own backing tracks mostly from scratch but sometimes I use Band-in-a-Box for some of the backing comp tracks. Since I play drums, bass, sax, wind synth, guitar, flute, and keys I can make the tracks in our key, and our arrangement. I make aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box. I sequence MIDI parts in the DAW and then import snippits into the StyleMaker app for Band-in-a-Box I'm mostly MIDI because MIDI is hundreds of times more editable than audio. But there is more than one right way to make music, and currently this is the right way for me. That could change as technology evolves. Insights and incites by Notes

I play in a duo and we do a lot of 50s to 90s music. We play for an adult crowd. We also do some newer tunes that the over 50 folks like and we have a lot of Big Band Standards that we used to do when we first started cultivating this market. Most of the Big Band Jazz people are gone now and the oldest ones are the Elvis generation. We've played this same market since about 1990 when we got off the cruise ships, found it more profitable than working clubs with fewer days per week. The downside of course is moving gear every gig, but they tell us weight bearing exercise is good for us ;) Now with the night club business getting worse and worse, I'm glad we made that move when we did, as we are well established in that market and still working steadily. Insights and incites by Notes

There are some good sounds on those old sound modules. I played with the TX81z, MT32 and Korg DDD5 drums for a while. When General MIDI came out, I added a SC-55 Sound Canvas (which I still have). I like the Ketron SD2 and the Edirol SD90 for more modern emulative sounds, the XV5050 does some nice non-emulative synthy sounds but none of my newer sound modules have those few gems that I still use from the TX and MT modules. I finally retired my Korg DS8. It has some nice FM sounds but being a full keyboard, it just took up more room than it was worth. If I ever need it, it's in its case. I think it's nice to be able to add sound modules and not lose any of the old sounds. At home I use a UPS and on the gig I always use a Line/Power Conditioner. I think this protects both the computers and synth modules on stage. Insights and incites by Notes

Thanks again for all the warm welcomes. It's good to see some old friends and to meet some new friends here. Every new sequence I've done since the invention of Standard MIDI files is to save them both in proprietary format AND MIDI type 1 files. Since MIDI 1 doesn't tell me which sound module I use I put notes on each track name in my own shorthand. That way if I pull up a MIDI 1 file and see acoustic bass it will tell me Acou Bass and have notes like SD (for studio Canvas) V for variation number or MT for my old MT32, TX for my old TX81z. Before standard MIDI files I had 300 files stored in a hardware sequencer that failed. A number had been saved in standard MIDI files because as soon as it was introduced, I saved in both formats, but I still lost a couple of hundred songs. Lesson learned a bit too late, I should have spent some time converting the old. The nice things to me about having hardware sound modules as opposed to software synths is that they never get orphaned with OS upgrades. The MT32 and TX81z have a lot of dated sounds on the, but still have some very good ones that aren't replicated on the ROM based synthesizers. I bought them during the Atari, DOS and Motorola MAC days. How many software synths from decades ago still work? I even have an old Akai S900 hardware sampler and a Peavey SP sample player in the mix. I sampled my own J-Bass, left/right hand snare drum hits (so rolls don't sound like a machine gun), ride cymbals hit at various distances from the bell, etc. I also like the fact that all my hardware sound modules have for all practical purposes no latency (actually I think there is about 5 to 6 msec on each). I can take one voice from my YamahaVL70m, another from my Edirol SD90, another from my Roland XV5050, or whatever on different MIDI channels and they are all in sync. Don't misunderstand this as the only way to do this. There is more than one "best way" to make music and I've changed my own 'best way' quite a few times and figure I'll be changing it again and again as time goes on. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Sensuous Saturnalia/Krazy Kwanzaa/Happy Hanukkah (for next year I guess since it's gone already), and/or whatever you may be celebrating. Me? I'll celebrate anybody's party as long as there are smiles and good will associated with it. I have a gig this evening for a bunch of French Canadians wintering in Florida so let me add Joyeux Noel to the above list. Time to load the gear. "Hi" to my old friends and "Nice to meet you" to my new friends. Notes

I agree. That's probably it as there isn't much more to say.

Thank you all for the warm welcome. I know I'm going to like it here. I'm gigging every day until (and including) Christmas, and if too much family doesn't get in the way after that, I plan to do a disk image of my hard drive and then install Cakewalk before the next gig on New Year's Eve. Then the Cakewalk fun begins. I probably should have waited until after the tourist season to get started with this, but I got a new computer, put my other music apps on it, and while I was at the Band-in-a-Box forum, I read some nice posts about Cakewalk and decided to go for it. My uses will be for two main things: Making backing tracks for my duo. I sequence them in MIDI, entering the parts mostly in real time from start to end. Drums first, then bass, and whatever comp parts I want to add. I always leave out the most fun parts for Leilani and I to play live on the gig (we don't want the machine to have all the fun). I could use Audio but I've been making MIDI tracks for the duo since 1985, before audio was practical, and I like the consistent sound with my earlier tracks. I have a half dozen sound modules and a couple of hardware samplers. I use a MOTU MIDI Express 128 to route the sounds to the best module for each part, combine the synths in an old Samson 12 channel mixer, route to another computer via AUDIO->USB interface, make a WAV file and rip to a 192k mp3. My work flow and use on stage can be accessed here http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html Making aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box. The recording is the same, except it's all done over one chord root (C). Depending on the style, I'll record a long sequence with variations that I plan to import into BiaB. The variations might be for situations like a V7 chord leading to the I for the next A section or the ii of a ii V7 I progression. BiaB takes car of the transposing, and there are handles in the BiaB StyleMaker that will let the specialty patterns appear in musically appropriate situations. Sometimes I use Band-in-a-Box while making my duo backing tracks as a starting point or for the 'mule work' (background comp parts) if there is an appropriate style. This is entirely song dependent. Some of PGs MIDI styles have quantized drums so I'll be very interested in Cakewalk's ability to turn them into something that has a groove. MTPro has a change filter that works well. I'm not opposed to learning a new way to do this. I don't do much song writing, everything I've tried I'm not happy with. Most is either too simple or too complicated and definitely not hit material. Oooh and the words, I can't believe how corny I can be ;) But on the gig, I love to improvise and am a bit of a solo hog. The duo fits me fine for that ;) I went duo because clubs and private parties were all downsizing and a duo can make more per person around here than a bigger band. I love to play music, but I have to pay my bills too. Leilani and I were in a 5 piece band at the time, and we lost a bass player, then a drummer and was out of work for a couple of months total while breaking in the new. So I bought a 4 track Teac reel to reel and started making backing tracks. Then came a keyboard with a sequencer followed by my first computer (Atari ST) and after trying a couple of sequencers I settled on Master Tracks Pro. I used it on my Mac Classic II and when it came out for Windows 3.1 I switched to Windows. The duo with the woman who is now my wife is great. We keep all the money, we can travel and go wherever we want, we both have strong work ethics, we collaborate well, and we really have a lot of fun on stage together. When I met her she was playing in another band and we became each others' groupies. My band broke up, hers was about to, and a pianist friend asked if we wanted to do a light jazz and some pop trio. We were in. Jazz doesn't pay around here though. We've been in a few groups up to 5 piece since then, but the duo provides the most stability. We haven't been out of work since our second year as a duo. We have close to 600 songs mostly for the adult audience (45 to those at the coda of life) and found it to be a good niche for business here in South Florida where there are a lot of yacht clubs, country clubs, and retirement developments. The list consists of mostly Baby-Boomer pop, with some newer songs that appeal to that audience, some country, reggae, soca, calypso, Latin American, and whatever they ask for if we can cover it. This is all probably TMI for most, but I'm going to make some new friends here, and I hope to learn more about you all as well. Notes

Hi. My name is Bob "Notes" Norton and I just downloaded Cakewalk - but I haven't installed it yet. It's a gig day and I don't do involved projects on gig days. I chose "Notes" because in the pre-www days of the Internet, we conversed with the usenet/newsgroups and on the alt.saxophone group there were already two people with my name there. My sister's business partner called me "Notes" so that was easy to distinguish myself from the 'imposters' Call me Notes or Bob, either is fine, but I've had the "Notes" so long, I keep it around. I'm a professional musician and have been for decades (Sax, flute, wind synth, guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, & vocals). I'm currently in a duo, I make my own backing tracks, and I also write aftermarket style "disks" and fake "disks" for Band-in-a-Box and have done so since 1992. I have played in just about every venue a musician can, from seedy 'dive' bars - to show clubs - to singles bars - to cruise ships - to yacht & country clubs - to 5 star hotels - to being the opening act in concert for major headliners and more. I was in a band that almost had a record deal, but couldn't get the money thing to work (the label didn't want to pay enough for our management's calculations). I've done a lot of MIDI sequencing, mostly in Master Tracks Pro but MTPro doesn't work well in Win10 and never will because it's orphaned so I figure I'll have to learn to use Cakewalk. I tried a demo of Cubase (LE) but it kept crashing two of my computers so I gave up on it. I'll install Cakewalk as soon as I get a chance . I live in South Florida and it's a busy gigging season now. I'm still sequencing on an old XP computer and using a flash drive to get the results to a modern computer. I liked MTPro because it has great editing features and with no audio commands and a pure MIDI environment the work flow was quick. Every editing dialog box was accessible with one click in a drop-down menu with no little arrows for sub menus and sub-sub menus. But those days are gone so I need to evolve with the times. I've done audio recording in Audacity and PG Music's Power Tracks Pro. I like PTPro OK for the limited audio that I use, but I don't like it's MIDI editing functions. There is no control over groove, I'm hoping there will be in Cakewalk. People in other forums have indicated that there is. The website of my duo is http://www.s-cats.com and there is nothing to buy there so I don't think it's considered spam. My Band-in-a-Box website is http://www.nortonmusic.com. I'm just posting these for people who are curious. If this is considered spam, please let me know and I'll delete. I like many different types of music, from 3 chord blues to symphonies. Genre doesn't make as much difference to me as to whether I like the music or not. I have no idea why I like some things and not others on an emotional level, but just go with it. I've played classical, rock, pop, blues, jazz, salsa, soca, reggae, folk, country, and quite a few other forms on stage, and I find that the more genres I learn, the better I get at the ones I already know. After I install Cakewalk, I'll probably start by asking a few Cakewalk Newbie questions and I hope the seasoned users are kind and patient with me. If I stay with Cakewalk long enough to get good at it, I'll be happy to return the favor to anyone who hasn't climbed that ladder as high as my then current level. And if any user has questions about things I already know and can help with like wind synthesis, saxophone, basic MIDI sequencing, or whatever, I'll be happy to help. I'll probably visit this forum sparingly at first and be more of a lurker, as one can learn by lurking, but eventually I hope to make a lot of friends here. I'm sure there are friends from the Band-in-a-Box forum that I already know. There it is, probably TMI but my new computer types so well I just couldn't stop Bob "Notes" Norton