bitflipper

There you go again, Kenny, giving useful advice in the Coffee House. Careful, such behavior could catch on. And then where would we be?

Every once in awhile, I miss some Waves plugin that I used to use. TransX and RBass were once favorites. But they'd routinely stop working because Waves would abruptly decide that my license was no longer valid (e.g. after computer repairs), and the last time that happened I just decided I didn't need Waves anymore. They are more concerned with piracy than with their paying customers. Sorry, but that teenage pirate who wasn't ever going to give you any money anyway isn't my problem.

This is the answer. Autopanners work fine in Cakewalk, including PanCake, which I've been using for years. Panners (and many other effects) are by nature stereo effects, even if the source is mono. You're literally turning a mono track into stereo whenever you use any stereo effect. Note that it can work the other way, too. A mono effect (e.g. an amp sim) on a stereo source will switch it to mono. This trips up a lot of users.

I've gone from one screen to two screens, then to two larger screens, to three screens and finally two large screens. At no point was there ever "enough" screen real estate. I suppose you could reach a point where there's too much on screen to take in all at once, but I think by then you'd have no room for speakers. The point being that you can utilize every square inch of display space and still not have everything shown that you'd like. The trick is setting up separate scenarios for each stage of the process, and only putting the most important things up as you need them. So if I'm composing MIDI tracks, the PRV gets an entire 34" monitor for itself. While editing vocals, Melodyne fills that screen. For mixing, that monitor becomes dedicated to plugin UIs. The other monitor is always dedicated to the Track View. I decided years ago that I don't need the Console View at all. (I can commiserate with the claustrophobic confines of a 17" screen. I started this journey with a 13" display. I spent $1500 on my first 17" monitor and it was such a luxury at the time!) I'd suggest getting a large display and using that as your main monitor, and a separate keyboard. Set your laptop to one side and use its display for things like plugins. Yes, Windows lets you use multiple displays as if they were one contiguous screen. However, dragging components from one screen to another can get weird if the two monitors are of different size and resolution. Best to dedicate your smaller display to things that won't need to be moved to the other monitor, such as plugin UIs, browser and step sequencer.

20 years ago I was still deep into my leave of absence from music, devoting 80-90 hours a week to coding, split between my demanding day job and my own startup. Living off gas station hot dogs and feeling like crap most of the time. I went on like that until 2005 when a heart attack changed everything. Sold a vehicle, used the proceeds to buy a synth. Started playing live again. I decided to see what Cakewalk had been up to during my absence. SONAR 5 had just been released, so I gave it a go. It filled a hole I didn't even know existed. Priorities shift after you've stared down Death.

Such an overlooked strategy! Many musicians lack the self-confidence to play quietly, assuming that they can only win over the audience by beating them over the head. Plus, lowering the volume is the quickest way to tighten up a band. When you can clearly hear one another, you're naturally going to sync up better. Vocals work better, especially getting a proper balance between harmonies. As a piano player, it means my amplification runs cleaner and what comes out actually sounds like a piano. Everybody tends to put more subtleties into their playing, and natural dynamics just happen without having to be scripted. And as everyone has noted, your final assessment comes at the end of the night when the till is counted. If staff can't hear to take orders, that's not good for the bottom line. Finally, let's not forget one important reason that people go to bars: to hook up and to socialize. The band shouldn't be like "I don't care if it's your anniversary/birthday/office outing, just sit there and listen to US!". Those who are actually there to listen will sit up front or dance. The couple in the back with their hands all over each other don't care what you're doing anyway.

I remember as a child reading in the newspaper about a guy who was 120 years old. He was a civil war veteran. When asked his secret to longevity, he said he ate a bag of peanuts every day of his life. Well, I love peanuts, so there ya go. I pretty much each peanuts daily myself. Of course, it just makes sense to learn from those who've manage to live so long. That's why I've been on both the Keith Richards and/or the David Crosby regimens for so much of my life. It's not an easy plan. For one thing, I have yet to bed a famous folk singer, and the probability that I ever will is now vanishingly low.

$19 directly from SoundIron.

MMCSS for ASIO was not an option in SONAR. It was added to CbB because a few ASIO drivers prefer to tweak thread priority on their own and thus conflict with MMCSS. Under SONAR, MMCSS was applied to ASIO by default. I suspect the difference you're looking for is going to turn out to be between the processes each computer is running, and likely it'll be something unconnected to audio directly. It's not that CbB handles buffering any differently.

Melodyne's probably your best bet, since you can fiddle with the formants, which is useful when doing large shifts. Another option, if you have it, would be Kontakt. That would let you turn your sounds into a playable instrument. But I gotta ask: how did you get a 7-octave shift with a tape machine? Best I could ever do was 3 octaves, by recording at 15 ips, playing it back at 7.5 ips and then bouncing to another machine that could do 3.75 ips. I guess you could bounce that back to the 15 ips recorder and repeat the process, but it would sound pretty bad.

Actually, nobody noticed. It just meant I couldn't layer synths and had to revert to using both hands on separate keyboards. Unfortunately, it also meant I had no sustain pedal on one of the synths, since I use one pedal and pass it through to the other keyboard via MIDI. I also use MIDI to drive a VoiceLive box that lets us create 8-part harmonies, 4 real voices over 4 faked ones. It's great on doo-wop stuff.

Listen to Crosby's harmony part in this cover of Blackbird. He was a master of finding the harmonic hole and dropping into it. An inspiration to me, as that's the role I usual fill in my band; I give the others the obvious parts that are easy to remember, and then assign myself all the in-between notes they're not singing. George Harrison was another underrated harmony singer who often sang the most difficult part when they did 3-part harmony.

Got your wi-fi disabled on that laptop?

At last Saturday's gig I had a MIDI cable fail. I didn't have a spare. That's on me. But in my defense I have never had a 5-pin DIN cable fail. Ever. This particular one was 40 years old. So for the first time since the 80's I was ordering a new MIDI cable. Well, I was already on the Sweetwater site ordering a new XLR cable to replace the latest victim of my puppy. That one hurt, it was one of my extra-long ones that go between the mixer and active PA speakers. Went ahead and ordered a pack of 2.

50% of marriages end in divorce. That's a depressing statistic until you consider how the other 50% end.

Oddly, expression pedals aren't universal. I have multiple swell/expression pedals but most are rarely used because they don't work with everything. The one that does get used is a cheap plastic one from M-Audio. It squeaks and it moves around on the floor because it's so light (a constant frustration on stage). But it works with everything (switchable polarity) and can even be used as an inline volume pedal. 29 bucks from Sweetwater. When used as an expression controller, it needs a 1/4" TRS cable.

I've always been a big fan of vocal harmony, and was bonkers over The Byrds back in the day. It was years before I realized that was all Crosby and his knack for finding the best interweaving harmonies. Tambourine Man sounds huge, but listen closely and it's just McGuinn and Crosby. One of the few people in his class in that regard was Graham Nash, so naturally they made a great team. Even when backing Neil Young, who couldn't nail a harmony to save his life.

If you can insert a new instance, then the issue is that it had been installed in a different location when you previously used it in old projects (either the DLL or the sample library). I don't think there is a way to determine where it was previously installed, but if you can guess it there is a way to recreate the old path and redirect it to the new location. Looks like your only way forward is to delete and replace those old instances. As for why it fails to bounce, that's a new one to me. If CbB actually crashes, there will be a crash dump that can be analyzed by Cakewalk. Can you freeze the instrument instead of bouncing to a new track?

Yeh, he took it especially hard. I wonder if anyone ever suggested "Keith, maybe you could just play a little slower."

Tbh, I'm surprised he made it to 81 given his history of over-the-top drug and alcohol use.

My nightmare. Just being down to nine usable fingers of late freaks me out. My gear's still in the van from Saturday's gig. I'm scared to unload and potentially hurt my back even worse than it is. I've got until Sunday's rehearsal to get it done, so I guess I'll start today with the small stuff. Bapu helps to motivate me with his gentle reminders that I've promised a synth track for the latest Citizen Regen project. I'm on it, Ed. Soon.

Holy scheizer! I've been through a few drummers, but none of them actually died. Most of them were just doing their best to shorten their lives with drugs 'n booze and stressful relationships. AFAIK, none were actually successful.

So you lost your musical partner as well as your life partner. Man, that sucks. How long has it been since you played? I ask because I did the opposite: I had been mostly inactive (as far as live music; recording had become my primary outlet) before my wife's death, and joined a band afterward for therapeutic reasons. It worked. I have new friends, a reason to practice, and didn't become the bitter old hermit I feared I was headed for. Losing your partner is, of course, hard. But for me it was hard in ways I hadn't anticipated, such as feeling adrift with no purpose and having an identity crisis more typical of what teenagers go through. Getting back into live performance reminded me of who I am. Maybe you should give it a try. Not joining a band necessarily, or anything requiring a commitment. Just attending a jam session, perhaps. Or an online collaboration.

Can you insert a fresh instance of DP, into either an existing or new project?

"Speakercise". I'm going to use that. 18 gigs a month. Cheese und crackers, I can't imagine doing that now, at my age. When I was 25, playing 6 nights a week for 50 weeks a year wasn't a big deal at all. Finishing a gig and jumping into the van for a 10-hour drive to the next one was normal. Red Hot Beef 'N Bean burritos from a truckstop microwave at 4:00 AM, delicious. Now, I play out at most 4 times a month and even that's pretty draining. But it beats going to a gym. You and me both, brother. Except I'd still do it with or without an audience. A month after my wife died, I played New Year's Eve at an Elks lodge to a dozen morose old men sitting at the bar staring vacantly into their beers. It should have been depressing, but staying at home in a big silent house watching fireworks on TV - that would have been way more pathetic. Life with a little music in it is always a little bit better.