Jimbo 88

Yep, that might be the way. I believe the midi box connected thru a parallel port (which was really for connecting to a printer). I believe I might have a parallel card laying around that was used in another computer carnation and I can put into my current computer. Dang it Jim, I'm a musician not a computer guy. (Star Trek reference for those of you who are not 100 years old)

OMG What a great idea! I have a laptop from 1992 that I can fire up. And a case of disks with all my old projects. If I can find away to transfer files off that laptop. I do not have an old, external hard drive (just the drive in the laptop) ... and thumb drives, internet connections did not exist. I still have all the old midi sound modules that all work except the Casio FZ1 that I used mostly for piano samples. A project for a rainy day.

So hey, It appears Sonar is connected to Discord. Which is connected to AI thingys like Midjourney. So is this a possible thing. Sonar will be connected with some AI features. I'm already using AI Voices in another program and it's really cool. Am I reading too much into this?

I would say you are the "old" Nostradamus....Just sayin', We're all kinda old here.

Finally, something to go on... So I'm interested! Let's see where this goes. Worst case scenario is I use CbB to compose the rest of my life and other DAWs to finalize projects. Best case is I move into Sonar exclusively and conquer the world of music once again. --I'm game!

Ahhh, after reading the article it bodes well for me. It appears they hope to expand more into educational areas. That helps me on multiple fronts as I have been composing for schools lately. And hopefully they would have to look at notation (which would help me creating music for films etc and my academic projects.) So far looks like a win-win for me. (if they just stay out of that subscription thingy). I'm excited. I just wish they'd get to it and keep me (us) from guessing.

I feel like something really big is in the works. I don't mind paying for updates, but I can't do the subscription thing. For one thing, I get involved in projects that can last 6 months or longer and I'm not using certain software for one reason or another. I might be using notation software for an extended period of time, so I'd be paying money for software I'm not using. Or I'm not using notation for a long time. That is why I dumped Sibelius. I use a very old version when I need it and Dorico for the rest. I also have clients that come back for tweaks on projects after long periods of time (a documentary gets updated, a industrial video changes a word or two) . Cakewalk has been great for that...everything, every update has had no issues going back (can't say that about ProTools). I also worry about subscription software shutting down on me for some reason. And then I'm stuck with loads of files and work that I can't access anymore.

+1

+1 Yes, I'm a terrible singer, so ...yeah. The best thing is checking out vocal arrangements.

You can already do that, I've been doing it for years with Band In A Box. An Example... I wrote a song for my Dad 25 years ago. I had Band in a Box create a track with Errol Garner (my dad's favorite pianist). I added a rock beat to it, and had my kid sing it. Now I can do that, only have an AI vocalist and I don't have to bother my kid. Nothing is changing except things are easier. (I do miss bothering/torturing my kids).

https://dreamtonics.com/en/synthesizerv/?gclid=CjwKCAjw9pGjBhB-EiwAa5jl3MkeI7zF0_CSl_gou9KN0_M2-wpJfOH_Oy3zff-MDZJOlGyq56L_8xoCCdcQAvD_BwE Synthesizer V

I heard someone say (while discussing AI generating legal arguments), "AI won't eliminate lawyers, but there will be lawyers who use AI and lawyers who don't". Same is going to happen in the music field. The ones using will be more productive.

Point well taken. But I am way past that. That already happened to me around 2010 when music libraries sprung up and every band started making there tracks available for film and TV. There are about 30,000 songs uploaded everyday already. It already bit me. Just like how I bit the old guys back in the 1980's when midi was invented and i figured out how to create tracks without a band being recorded in a million dollar studio.

I don't need a machine to tell me how to generate a chord progression or a melody or how to eq. What i can use is AI vocals to let me hear my compositions ( I am already doing this and loving it). AI will be great for making suggestions, but not for doing anything original because it can only go back and use what has already been done. I've tried writing songs with AI and if you don't have a great starting point or story it's not going to do you much good. Again it's great at making suggestions. AI for songwriting is a glorified thesaurus. Band in a Box and any drum loop program do pretty much the same thing already. We've had AI in different versions for years.

Yes! Canopus, you are one of the people I stole from (probably the main guy). So, my hat's off to you and thanks! craigb! Cool! I did not know! Very impressive. The only thing I can come anywhere close...you know when cars 1st started talking to you? I recorded the woman who said, "Your door is ajar, Your door is ajar". So I got that going for me.

Even better I love the look of the knobs

OK, so it started out I wanted to tweak one little thing and I ended up going down a huge rabbit hole. Next thing I I know I'm messing around with Themes. Very painful as i don't know what I'm doing and had a lot of bad outcomes before I finally just stopped. I'm not gonna lie, I stole a lot of things from various themes others created. Copying and pasting as I went along. Notice the personal logo under the tool bar. The idea stolen from XEL Ohh. And all its gonna take is one update to come along and this will have been all for ...nothing.

So in the late 80's I was a blue collar freelance audio mixer/music composer/keyboard player scraping for jobs around Chicago. I was like Bitflipper, I saw all these new synths that I just could not afford. Many of my competitors where buying New England Digital Synclaviers. No way I could afford that. And too scared to go to the bank and ask for loan that would have bought me house. I was doing OK with my Alesis MMT 8 which I could program drums, bass, a few synths (with a Proteus?). Sync it to a tape machine and record guitars and singers and produce a jingle. I was scraping by, but happy. Then Cable TV came along (Chicago was the center for documentary creators) and music beds were in great demand. Long story short, the MMT8 was woefully inadequate. I explained this to my old college roommate who then was working for Geetar Center and he GAVE me CAKEWALK 3.1. For at least 7 years I used version 3.1 on a laptop with a 20 meg hard drive . I still have that rig and can fire it up today. I was so busy scoring Cable TV shows I worked about 360 days a year, about 85-100 hours a week in my basement. I would not say I became rich, but pretty dang close. I felt so guilty for using a pirated Cakewalk disk I purchased every update even tho I use little more than the sequencing side and can do that with just the most basic features. In fact, the less features the better for me. I'll never forget when I started checking out this forum and people would mention the Console View. I was like, "What?! there is a really cool mixer section to this software I've been using all these years and did not know about!" Anyway I have always gotten a kick out of coming to this forum. I could always get great advice. I shake my head when someone comes on and says they can't get CAKE to work, or it's features are not pro enough...I mean I got it to work under the most primitive conditions and I am not a knowledgeable computer person to say the least. And I'll gladly compare my body of work with anyone else's using whatever software.

Did somebody mention CJ in this tread? I was thinking about him and My Ol' Pal...are they still around here?

So they are going to update staff view...:) and add AI features (like voices). That's the "talent" vst plugin we've all been talking about for years. Who needs hoover cars with that around and available. I'm not going anywhere except for my computer.

Yep, I picked up Synthesizer V and Kevin (the male vocalist) for $98, then Solaria and Asterian bundled from another site was $162. So for $260 I have a pretty good stable of singers all on my computer. Write the song in CbB, export midi into Synthesizer V (there is a learning curve! not to bad), back into CbB for mixing. Crazy.

Home Planet

+1

Or am I crazy? Ok so I tried to get to this site a couple of times and the site was down. Now that its back up things look ever so slightly different. Fonts are different? I thought for sure there was going to be an update when it came back online. I do know I'm crazy, but am I imagining things?

I was not communicating very well. I was auditioning voices for a musical. Here is the process...write the song in CbB. Export a XML file into Sibelius for arranging. Export a Sibelius midi file into a program called Synthesizer V which generated wav files of the vocals (after tweaking). Import the wav files back into CbB for mixing. I used the voices Solaria, Kevin and Asterian https://dreamtonics.com/synthesizerv-gen1/en/