bitflipper

TTS-1 has tambourine, congas, shakers, cowbell, woodblocks and others. None of them are great, but they work fine if percussion isn't prominent in your mix. I like to use subtle shakers and tambourine in most things, and one of the absolute quickest and easiest ways to throw those in is Skaka from Klevgrand. It doesn't have a lot of instruments (10, IIRC), but they sound good and the sequencer is very easy to use. At 50 bucks I don't know of anything cheaper other than free Kontakt libraries. I'm hoping the success of this recently-introduced product will inspire its creators to expand it by adding more instruments. If I want something fancier, it'll usually be Shimmer Shake Strike from In Session Audio. Compared with Skaka, it's more expensive, requires Kontakt (compatible with the free version, though) and is more complicated to use. However, it has way more instruments (67 with the expansion pack) and more mixing, fx and sequencing options. Sound quality is good enough to feature your percussion front and center. If you already have a fancy drum sampler such as Addictive Drums, Jamstix, Superior Drummer, EZDrummer or BFD, all have percussion expansions available for them. But only if you already have one. I wouldn't go out and spend a lot for one of these just for percussion, although Jamstix is a good value and a lot of fun. Now, if you want to expand your search to include epic movie-trailer style war drums and goofy novelty percussion, that's a whole 'nother list.

I don't think the OP is trolling. He's just frustrated because the application turned out to be more complicated than he'd expected. It makes sense; moving from Garageband to Cakewalk is a big step, akin to going from making PB&J sandwiches to preparing a 7-course meal. It's sad that Matt's response was to quickly give up, because we know we could have helped him along. But I'm guessing he's a young fellow who's never taken on a long-term commitment before. He may be back after he's older and wiser. Or Garageband may be all he'll ever need. To each his own.

I have experienced this phenomenon often. Most of my composing is done on piano, so it'll usually be the first instrument I record. That piano track then serves as the framework for the song that will subsequently be built around it. And quite often the piano gradually sinks into the background as I go. A lot of this comes down to frequency masking - the piano is a full-spectrum instrument and as such is prone to being masked by everything else because everything else overlaps with it, frequency-wise. Consequently, one trick that I often employ is EQ automation. If the song has a piano intro, no EQ will be applied during that part. Later, as other instruments join in, I'll take a whole lot of bottom end off through automation. When the piano is alone, it needs to fill the entire spectrum. But as soon as a bass is added in, it no longer needs to hold down the low end and can be high-passed to give the bass its space. If the backing tracks are lush synth pads (I, too, rely on Omnisphere a lot for such things) that may call for the piano to be thinned even further. It may seem counter-intuitive to ruin the exquisite tone of an expensive piano library, but it's all about what the piano sounds like in context. If the piano is vastly more important to the song than the pads or strings, consider thinning them instead. Many of Omnisphere's pads are very thick, designed to sound awesome on their own. But mixing is all about deciding which track owns which frequencies and carving out a spectral space for each instrument. For similar reasons, panning is another trick I rely on. Because the piano is usually recorded in stereo, I like to use the Pan Knob plugin from Boz Digital Labs. Again, if the piano is featured at the beginning it will be panned center. But as I add strings and synths, I'll slowly pan the piano to one side and move whatever elements compete with it to the opposite side. In a particularly dense mix, I might even split the piano track into two tracks and make the first portion stereo and the latter parts mono. As a general rule, mono tracks are easier to mix and keep them distinct.

I'd suggest un-freezing the track, add the new plugin and then re-freeze without freezing the fx bin. I normally don't freeze FX when I freeze a track, just for this reason: there'll always be some tweaking to fx right up until the end of the mix process. If you decide to go this route, after un-freezing the track, right-click on the freeze button to bring up the freeze options and un-check the "freeze fx" box.

So's Microsoft Edge. It's not the underlying engine that's the problem, but rather the unnecessary crap Google piles on top of it. It's like buying a computer from Dell - it's all Windows underneath, but you're also gonna get a whole lot of garbage you didn't ask for, and which will take a nontrivial amount of effort to remove. Come to think of it, all DAWs must be the same because they're all using the Microsoft C++ runtime library underneath! Well, OK, maybe not Logic. But you can see where this logic could take you...Archie comics and The Old Man and the Sea are the same because they're both based on the same underlying language. Elvis and Hendrix both played guitar. Hawaii and Alaska both have lots of volcanic mountains. Beer and Coca Cola are both 99% water. Gandhi and Freddie Mercury were both Indian. This is fun.

Glad we got that cleared up. And so far not a single CH-worthy comment connecting "Immodium" with "explosive".

This comment took me by surprise: I've been using Firewire for 14 years now, and never had any issues at all. Just lucky?

Why haven't I ever thought of that? I'm in the same area code as Microsoft, so the ruse might even seem plausible. My sympathy goes out to any actual Microsoft employees that happen to have an Indian accent. (There are many) "No, my name really is Brett and I really am in Redmond!"

One night I was scrolling through some old projects and came across one in which the strings sounded particularly good. I pulled it up to see what I had used for it, and to my surprise it wasn't any of my fancy libraries, but good ol' Dimension Pro. grannis is correct. If all you're after are subtle string pads, Kontakt is overkill. SI Strings will often do just fine, as will the strings in the TTS-1. Speaking of Spitfire, I'm really loving my latest Spitfire acquisition, Legendary Low Strings. 49 bucks, no Kontakt required, and sounds absolutely amazing.

I miss my Tranzport.

Nobody ever said the name made any sense. Maybe that was the point. How else might one describe a flanger, other than "flanger"? I can't think of any cleverer names. D16's "Antresol" is a pretty good name, even if it does sound like a prescription drug that should be accompanied by a warning about operating machinery while taking Antresol. btw, this is a very nice-sounding effect that everyone absolutely should grab.

For those not old enough to get the reference...

The neuropathy isn't necessarily forever, either. Contrary to what we used to believe, nerves do eventually self-repair. 15 years ago, the only sensation in my feet was of being cold. I am happy to report that now if I step on a nail it once again hurts like hell. Progress!

I, for one, would not drink green water.

Just as an aside, there is no good reason to oversample a delay.

This has been a mystery to me since BandLab took over Cakewalk. You'd think they'd be looking for ways to make money off their now-free product. As a standalone VST, it's not tied specifically to Cakewalk. It also happens to be one of the best LA-2A emulations around. I really expected to see several Cakewalk products offered for sale, such the Adaptive Limiter, which is also very good. At first I wondered if it's because CA-2A had been licensed from a third party, but that seems unlikely. The DLL properties say "Copyright 2016 Cakewalk Inc.". When BandLab bought Cakewalk's assets, my understanding is that included all of Cakewalk's intellectual property. That in itself does not definitely prove Cakewalk owned it outright, though. It could still rely on some licensed library. But looking at the DLL's dependencies, I see nothing listed beyond standard Windows files and the C++ runtime. No obvious third-party components. Even if it had been developed by a contracted third party like, say, Rapture, I'd think that any ongoing revenue sharing agreement could be revived. But I have asked Noel about it in the past, and all he'd say is that it was developed in-house. So it remains a mystery as to why this great and potentially lucrative plugin hasn't been made available for sale again. But I'm guessing it is not a technical issue.

Those crazy bills are based on "demand pricing". I think we can assume Bill has been demanding some electricity, no?

Does the problem persist if you substitute a different delay?

I feel that way by 6:00 AM. Most mornings I'm up at 4:00, for no particular reason. Well, actually tbh it's because I have a self-imposed rule of no cannabis until an hour before bedtime. So bedtime has been coming earlier and earlier.

My home page says 371,592 trackers and ads blocked, 5.2 hours time saved. But they could be just making that up. It's not like I've been keeping track. A more useful metric would be how many hours I've wasted watching cat videos.

No such thing as a "hot water heater". If the water's already hot there's no need to heat it. It's just "water heater". Got your utility bill yet, bb? We've been hearing horror stories about $10,000 electricity bills.

I've had some time to play with Legendary Low Strings. Didn't take long to figure it out, as it's one of those one-trick libraries that just sounds great with zero effort. And golly, does it sound good. We're talking animated Disney princess-movie good.

Oh, there are still plenty of remote, unincorporated spots to build your house without gummint interference. When the Nazis moved out they left behind some verdant, low-tax, isolated properties. At least, I think they've gone. But then that's what they'd want you to think.

The only way I'll ever beat you to the punch is if I start checking my emails more than twice a week.

You're on! I've seen a number of Pacific sunsets from the Oregon coast, mostly from Yachats, where my daughter's in-laws had a place. Also spent time in Newport, when we felt like enjoying big-city amenities such as the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum. Lots of talk here about places we'd rather live. But I've travelled pretty extensively, lived in Europe and in every corner of the U.S., have a tropical island home in the Philippines, and still haven't found anywhere that suits me better overall than the Pacific Northwest.