bitflipper

You bestow upon me a frightening responsibility, Mr. Jones.

Skaka has become my go-to shaker maker for when I don't need all the bells 'n whistles of the likes of Shimmer Shake Strike. Ridiculously easy to use, I'd been looking for something like it for years. Just noticed it's been updated since I bought it at its introduction, with 10 new instruments added. So thanks for the post, Larry. I essentially just got a new percussion instrument for free.

FabFilter Pro-G.

Here's a transient shaper for free. Haven't used it, but it's free. I'm probably going to grab it and see if it's any good.

This is a much better deal than Transgressor. Boz's transient shaper does some very cool things, but I agree with Brian's assessment that it's too fiddly. Plus I've heard it insert some very ugly artifacts, so it's been relegated to the reserve team. I have at least a dozen transient shapers in my kit, and all of them are fiddly. I rarely use them anymore. When I do feel the need for one, it's usually the one from Meldaproduction. It's currently $36. No authorization hoops to jump through (no "installation manager" downloader required).

Better days...

We actually have a couple of bass solos. Well, not technically "solos" but bass + drum + everybody picks up a tambourine or shaker breaks. All but one potential bassist candidate jumped right in and produced energetic, if musically-disjointed thunder. The fellow that we ultimately chose did not do this. We had to explain the concept to him, as no one had ever asked him to be center stage before. Once we'd convinced him we were serious, he went home and worked up a great solo, a dynamic mini composition with a beginning, middle and end. How refreshing. The singer turned to me to gauge my response, but my head was back and my eyes were closed and I didn't notice her. Later, she said "all the pieces are in place now". I agreed.

You're lucky. Please remain ignorant for your own mental self-defense. It's something you cannot un-see.

Several interesting and unique fx here. Irid (32 EUR) is a personal favorite even if it is kind of a one-trick pony. Moodal is just strange if you're into bizarre sound design and accidental "hmm, that's different!" moments. But the only one I consider a must-have is tkDelay (also 32 EUR), which has been my first-string delay ever since I first used it. Easy to use and has every feature you'd want from a delay, e.g. ducking, blendable reverse, and micropitch modulation.

You can't put a lot of metadata into a standard wav file because the file spec it's based on (RIFF) simply doesn't provide any standardized place to put it. That's why most of that kind of information is handled at the host level, e.g. a CD's TOC or a DAW's project file. Mostly all you get in a standard wave file are essential technical information such as sample rate, word length, interleave and number of channels. Yes, the standard is extensible and can even contain ID3v2 tags, but such variants are not universal and can be problematic. Think about how many times users have come here for advice because they inadvertently imported a BWF (a RIFF-based format that does support metadata) and were confused when it didn't behave like the WAV file they assumed it was. MP3 and similar formats, OTOH, were designed specifically to have self-contained, portable metadata to facilitate music distribution. Consequently, there is almost no limit to what kinds of information they can contain. Even then, not all fields will be meaningful to all applications. Bottom line is that it's not an oversight in the DAW that prohibits you from entering metadata for a wav file. If an application does provide such features, it's probably writing a nonstandard format that other applications may not understand. The wave files that Cakewalk writes, however, can be read by any DAW and most players, making it possible to collaborate across different DAWs and platforms. As long as you stick to widely-used formats, anyway. Here's a reference that might help. It lists applications that can write ID3v2 tags to wave files. My longtime go-to for things like that are the free foobar2000. This is a very useful tool to have on hand.

Thanks for looking that up, Bill. I don't spend as much time at Tom's as I used to, so I miss little tidbits like that. Fortunately, they're talking about video drivers, which should impact almost no one. Even if you are one of the people affected by this, your DX plugins won't stop working in your DAW. For that matter, even if you're playing an 8-year-old video game on your 8-year-old computer you probably won't be affected, either. btw, I am on a 7-year-old computer myself and happily playing the latest video games on it at Ultra video settings (with a recently upgraded video card).

Every one of our regular venues from past years has either closed its doors or stopped having music. There does, however, seem to be a pent-up demand for live music. I heard that in Houston they are literally dying to attend concerts. Plus a lot of bands called it quits during quarantine, so there are fewer practitioners out there at the moment, reducing competition for gigs. We were determined to keep the band alive during the pandemic, renting a hall and building PVC frames to hang shower curtains as separators. (Which is when I found out there's such a thing as transparent shower curtains. Who was buying those before?)

DX is a software spec. It doesn't require any specific hardware support. It's not going obsolete. DX isn't just for music production. It's used by thousands, perhaps millions of business applications that Microsoft isn't going to suddenly kill. The "X" in X-Box has the same meaning as the "X" in DX. Bottom line is you needn't worry about your DX plugins suddenly dropping dead on you. As long as Cakewalk continues to support them, you're good. rev, what preceded this failure? New computer? Re-install of Windows? Did you get a crash dump? You may just have to re-register the Sonitus DLLs. By "re-register", I don't mean re-authorize, but rather letting Windows know they exist. This normally happens as part of the installation, but you can also do it manually if needed. Another possibility is that some dependency is missing. If that's the case, it will become apparent when you try to register the DLLs.

Right-click on each of the clips and see if the "convert to stereo" option is enabled. If it is I'd take that as an indication that CW knows it's a mono file.

Well, ain't that somethin'. No, I did not know about that. Clever fellow, that Azslow.

I dunno if I'd lay out 80 bucks for this, as cool as it seems. That's $80 to save maybe an hour's work. Perhaps if I had a few dozen more VIs it might pencil out better. Do they have an installer that lets you choose which maps you want, or do you have to add 7,000 unneeded files to your drive?

Not seeing that here. I get one mono clip as expected. I tried it with both mono and stereo interleaves, and either way I get a mono clip. How about a screenshot?

Success! We have found our new bass player. His timing is good, he can sing harmony, isn't a drug addict, alcoholic or general flake. He's a Reaper user, but I can overlook that. It was a long day. I sang and played for 9 hours straight, something I haven't done in a very long while. Now comes the slog of working him in in time for the next gig, which fortunately is nearly a month away. I am beat. But it was a good day today.

Ironically, it was one of the few ways a musician could make a living back in J.S. Bach's time. If not for the church, we wouldn't have the Toccata and Fugue in Dm to enjoy today. It was either that or give lessons to some rich guy's kids. Which is how we got the Brandenburg Concertos. We often hear complaints about how hard it is to monetize music today, but we actually have more - and more reliable - ways to do that now. Today, we don't have to depend on the generosity of rich guys. Now, we get paid thanks to guys trying to get their potential girlfriends drunk enough to find them attractive.

When I said Diamond is basically Concert Strings+, I should have said specifically "Concert Strings 2", which is what I have. I have not used CS3. My impression of CS3 vs. CS2/Diamond is that the former sounds better overall and adds a couple articulations (but loses at least one, the Bartok Pizzicato doesn't seem to be there anymore). It gives you more tweakable settings for each articulation. It has a somewhat simpler UI. It also addresses an issue I've had with CS2, which is that it's much better at slow articulations than fast ones. My solution has been layering solo instruments from other vendors over CS2 to clarify the melody. It seems likely that CS3 would eliminate that need. In either case, I'd only recommend this kind of library if you intend to dive deep into some serious orchestration. If you just want nice-sounding strings behind pop/rock songs, there are cheaper and simpler products for that.

I saw something rare today, something I haven't seen in years. Something so unusual I would have whipped out my camera had I not been so stunned by the sight of it. What I saw was a bass player who sets up, plugs in, and before we start - get this - he tunes his instrument! I know!

One step closer to filling out the band's bottom. Auditioned two players today, both good. One sang well, but the other was locked in tighter to the kick drum. Leaning toward the latter. Four more coming over tomorrow. This may not be as painful as I'd feared it might be.

"Sir, in the box labeled 'Religion' you wrote 'Vegan'. I'm sorry, but that's not a religion" "You've never met a vegan before, have you?" (That's a joke my dad told me back in the early 70's. In the original version, it was "vegetarian", as that word was known back then. "Vegan" is of more recent coinage.) Actually, the term "Vegan" is quite old. It's an ancient Navajo word meaning "bad hunter". I once considered becoming Vegan, but soon realized it would be a big missed steak.

I was considering this, as it really is a great deal. I reckoned I'd have room for it after I'd deleted Kirk Hunter Concert Strings. Then I realized that this is basically Concert Strings with some added instruments that aren't as good as the strings. Oh well. I'd still recommend this one if you don't already have an orchestral library. Yes, it's old and soon to be retired. But it sounds great and has a good selection of articulations.

Before somebody complains about that limitation, I pulled up the most complex instrument I have (Kirk Hunter Concert Strings) and it has 30 keyswitches per instrument. Plus it's unlikely that I'll ever own a 255-key keyboard. Because I'd have to buy a longer van.