bitflipper

Unless the keyboard is your main thing and you are picky about keyboard action or need a full 88 keys, just about any MIDI keyboard controller will suffice. Something like this, for example. It's a hundred bucks, has almost all the essential features (except for a 5-pin DIN), and fits in a backpack. I have an older version of this that I throw into my laptop case when I go on vacation.

CAPS LOCK KEY SUX. WHENEVER A PROMPT SAYS "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE", IT DOESN'T DO ANYTHING.

One of the most epic performances of all time, with a huge orchestra and choir that would have had melted Beethoven's face. There must have been over 300 people on that stage. This just ticks all my boxes: lush strings, epic brass, big dynamic shifts, sweeping melodies, and a children's choir. (Anybody else a fan of Omnisphere's "Japanese Childrens' Choir" patch?) After years of searching for a proper recording of this to purchase, I finally resorted to an audio grab of the YouTube video so that I can fall asleep to this music whenever I like. (btw, the best audio capture plugin I've found for my browser (Brave) is called Smart Audio Capture). The video is easy to find online; the one I've linked below is my favorite, which has had all the talking (all in Japanese, which I don't understand anyway) and applause edited out. This is at Budokan, an arena in Tokyo originally built for martial arts competitions but its size and great acoustics have made it Japan's Kennedy Center - if the Kennedy Center was the size of a dirigible hangar. There aren't a lot of indoor venues that could accommodate as big an orchestra and still have room for an audience. The Beatles played there. Led Zeppelin, ELO and Fleetwood Mac all made live records there. Joe Hisaishi is to Ghibli Studios what John Williams is to Steven Spielberg. That's Joe conducting as well as playing piano, and the singer in white is his daughter. If you're unfamiliar with Ghibli, they make, um, cartoons. But saying they make cartoons is like saying Stradivari made fiddles. Everything they do is classy, from the metaphorical fantasy story lines to great soundtracks that stand on their own. This is the kind of music I'd create if I was good enough.

If I was building a synth collection from scratch, I'd start by asking Wookie to list out his VSTi inventory. Of course, you'd have to take out a second mortgage to match it completely, but he's the guy I'd consult. Or, just fork out the bucks for the One Synth to Rule Them All, aka Omnisphere. That'd keep you busy for a long time to come. But if money is tight, there are a number of freebies out there that are fun and useful. Here's Music Radar's list. I am a fan of the first one on that list, OBXD. It's probably the simplest one on the list, with a classic feature set that makes it a great starter synth for folks who aren't into synths.

To answer jngnz's question, what Pan Knob does is implement a proper stereo panner, meaning it treats L and R channels as two mono channels and pans each one as if it was mono. This is different from the Pan slider in Cakewalk, which is a balance control, essentially two volume controls working in opposition to one another. This works great for mono tracks, but not stereo tracks. Picture a Leslie speaker with two microphones, a true stereo source; if you want the Leslie to sound like it's on the left, you don't do that by lowering the level of the right mic because that would destroy the Doppler Effect. Instead, you feed some of the Right channel into the Left channel. I use this plugin on every stereo track. Most of my tracks are mono, but in some cases there might be half a dozen stereo tracks that need a stereo panner. True, you (almost - never say never) never want to pan very low frequencies, certainly nothing below 100Hz and in practice rarely anything below 400-500Hz. Pan Knob offers a HPF going into the pan circuits, so that you can explicitly tell it sum to mono everything below a specified frequency. The plugin therefore does just the opposite of what you're thinking - it only pans the higher frequencies. To be fair, some DAWs do provide such a feature. iirc Reaper is one that does. Plus you can do most of what Pan Knob does (and some things it cannot do) with the Channel Tools plugin, so Cakewalk does cover that functionality, albeit less conveniently. One of the reasons I use Pan Knob over Channel Tools is that I can automate panning with a single automation envelope, whereas Channel Tools requires two automation lanes to achieve the same effect.

I don't use clippers, but Pan Knob has long been an indispensable part of my kit. Yeh, even $19 might seem unwarranted for a feature every DAW already has built in, but if you use stereo tracks it can be the difference between indistinct mush and a nicely-balanced mix.

I only check it when cclarry tells me to.

Good plan. Hope you saved some of those N95 masks, you know, just in case denial isn't helping you breathe. Or you want to go outside. Hot tip: you know that big fan you used to use in Nebraska in a futile attempt to dissipate a little sweat? Don't toss it. Get a couple good-quality furnace filters and tape them over the fan's intake side. Then, when the smoke gets to the point where your living room smells like a campfire, the fan will remove just enough of it to mitigate the stinging in your eyes. Whatever it doesn't filter out will be handled by your nose hair. This is why I do not trim my nose hairs.

Brilliant move. Get one before you need it, as once the power outages hit there will be none to be had. Like tire chains. Another plus : once you buy a generator that's about as good a guarantee there is that you'll never need one. Same principle used to apply to air conditioners. I bought one in the 70's, used it for a week and never again. But that was before all the weather maps adopted today's mostly-orange/red color palette. A couple years ago we hit 115 degrees here - this in an area where states of emergency are declared if it goes over 90. Next, we need to discuss the wild fires.

That's the good news: snow rarely sticks around more than 2 or 3 days. The bad news is that in the interim it goes through a couple melt-freeze-melt cycles, leaving a thick coating of ice that makes roads literally impassible. And sidewalks unwalkable. In Portland especially, this often takes the form of ice-laden trees and power lines that then fall down, and if news reports are representative, almost always landing atop someone's new car. But that won't be until December at the earliest. Plenty of time to enjoy a pleasant summer before the wind storms arrive. They told you about the wind storms, right?

The rain ain't so bad. In fact, neither Portland nor Seattle even make the list of the top 10 rainiest cities in the US. Take a trip up to Juneau if you want to see what real rain looks like. Best of all, we rarely have to shovel our precipitation.

Enjoy your summer in the PNW! I used to hate summers in NE. Actually, come to think of it, winters weren't that great, either. Then again, they do observe a proper Autumn in the Midwest, a foreign concept in these parts.

After all these years evading the virus, I was beginning to think I was immune. Or at least very lucky. But it caught up to me at Saturday's gig. The following day I was aching, but that's normal after moving gear so I wasn't concerned. After a gig my back usually aches for a day and then I'm good. But by Sunday night I was having chills, so I went to bed and stayed there for the next three days. Today, after a much-needed infusion of peanut butter and jelly, I am feeling much better, but my brain remains foggy and I'm very tired. The worst part is I don't know what to do with my time. I can't string two thoughts together, so composing and recording isn't happening. Watching TV hurts my eyes. Listening to music hurts my ears. Can't focus to read. I have no appetite. I've been banished to the garage so no household interaction. Only posting in the Coffee House has a low-enough bar for my addled head.

Nearly every YouTube advice-giver starts with the same premise: I've found a secret that nobody else knows about...

Just reading about similarities to this solar storm and the Carrington Event of 1859. Back then it messed up telegraphs, which stopped working or even spit out sparks. That was the only electromagnetically-sensitive technology that existed at the time. Different story nowadays. Already hearing reports of issues with wireless microphones at concert venues. To make matters worse, the earth's magnetic field that protects us from that stuff has diminished since 1859. So if you've been saving up for a Van der Graff generator, you might want to hold off on that purchase. You may soon get a comparable show from your toaster.