noynekker

Who says Christmas and the blues don't go together ? Well done and fun production, Merry Christmas right back at you !

Mark . . . such youthful energy for the big 68 ! Happy B'day. There's lots of action here, popping guitar strings, nice underlying theme that recurs. Tom fills, lots of different tom fills . . . very nice. So, yes . . . G flat, not usually a guitar friendly key . . . can you assure us that no capos or alternate tunings were harmed during the creation of this ? In other words, WOW, great stuff as always.

Hi Kurt . . . great swatch of blue you've painted here ! The electric guitar work sounds very pro, and I really like the palm mute bass picking sound you've captured, especially when you play on the off beat. The things that stand out in this version of your mix is that perhaps the crash sounds overwhelm for an instrumental, and personally I prefer the kick to have more boom to it . . . unless you're catering to that mobile phone crowd, where it don't much matter. Otherwise, the relative instrument levels sound good to my ears, an enjoyable listen. You've mentioned a classic issue with mixing . . . it sounds so great on headphones, but the monitors are coloured differently . . . yikes, the room, the volume, the time of day, ambient noise, fresh ears, wasted ears . . . so many variables. I like to check final mixes on the big 5 . . . headphones, mid quality ear buds, small speakers, near field studio monitors, car stereo (mixing for club system is another skill altogether)

Hi Jerry . . . an enjoyable listen on my Saturday night ! It has great dynamics, and I really appreciate all the thought and pre-planning you must have to do, to accomplish these pieces. Since you've invited questions, I've always wondered about your create process . . . how do you start a symphonic movement like this . . . do you start with piano composition mapping the themes, or do you just start playing sampled instruments and piecing it together . . . perhaps there is a visual component in staff view ? However the method, the results are always astounding. You write in the style of the classical composers, but also introduce some electrical components, like you did in this one. Always great to hear your postings here Jerry !

Philip . . . really love the song man, that acoustic guitar riff that recurs, like after "disappearing man" is so excellent, it's the main driving factor, and the lyrics and vocal are right there as well. The drama in the lyrics and vocal that you open with is bang on, and sets the tone for the rest of the song. My mix suggestion, since you mentioned Trilian Bass, would be to use a more percussive picked bass sound to cut the bass part through to be more obvious. What might sound great to your ear in Cakewalk 32 bit floating . . . well, by the time you upload to Soundcloud, it gets mudded, unless it's more percussive in the original mix, at least that's what I've found for projects like this one.

Pretty cool Gary ! Didn't you do this one last year ? Sweet production. Poof, another year on the Cake forum. You've certainly got another gear on those low notes that not many have, just like Bing did I guess, maybe that's why they named a browser after him, LOL. Thanks for kicking off that Christmas feeling for me ! . . . a very merry Christmas to you and yours. EDIT: The snowmen are my new desktop, classic fun.

Super song, like a psychedelic memory ! Mixing the vocal out front makes all the difference, and they are very interesting. Lots of different sections that are very memorable, hooky, and downright fun to listen to. I gather since you used spectralayers to boost the vocal, that this is an older recording . . . I'm glad to see it back out in the spotlight . . . really enjoyable !

O yeah ! . . . 'nother good one Paul. You've got the social commentary going on in the lyric, some good attitude in the vocal take. Song wise it's all there, and the drum feel (yup) works well too. Personally, I would keep the "Kum-ba-ya" ending, it brings an extra smile . . . unless, of course you may fear getting sued by the folks who originally wrote that ? Who would write that anyways ? Mix wise, perhaps bring up the presence range of the vocal a *&^# hair (3k,5k,8k ?) not all the lyrics are super clear.

Hey Mark . . . you are master of that smooth guitar groove. (Hey! I can totally use this for neck exercises after a stressful day, cuz' I'm just luvin' it, makes my head swivel) Your comment up top makes me think you want to add vocal to it, make it a song with lyrics . . . well, as you know there would be difficult decisions about which tasty licks to move back in the mix. I think it would work well as a song, or a guitar groove. Of course, I would lean towards making a song from it . . . maybe a repetitive groove melody (with harmonies) could work . . . it seems to suggest that to me. After the guitar intro . . . at 0.25 I tried singing some random vocals, and I found there is a very obvious vocal groove there, easy to find, very jazzy . . . I made it about "winding down" after a long day . . . this could totally be a chill out after a long work day commute, like it was for me Anyways, you did ask for suggestions . . it's so musical, it could be sung in a lot of directions, but I heard a jazz vocal, with lots of possibilities.

Well written song Paul ! . . . smooth feeling and groove, excellent guitars . . . vocals always a stand out. Especially like the guitar in the intro part. Heard a few early versions of this project, and I like where you've taken this to, well done to follow it through to this.

Hey Wookiee man . . . enjoyed this one so much ! One of my favourites of your many here recently . . . just something about it.

You could also try toggling the Global EFX button when you want to do your midi editing, might help, but you are asking a lot from your computer system !

Hi Max . . . I can't recall from the 1000's of Cakewalk by BandLab users which CPU you have, and which audio interface ? . . . let's assume they are really new and powerful, with ASIO drivers and buffers set up correctly, and you have lots of RAM to load the samples. Now, what other CPU hungry plugins might you be using, with lookahead capabilities, compressors, limiters, perhaps on the master bus ? It could be just one of those causing this.

Antler . . . very well done ! Convincing, in that it stays in your face the whole time, hopefully those judges will see it like that. ( The video is very attracting as well)

Wow great pro recording ! Sounds like pretty classy Pop / R&B through the first part, I should say I'm not much into the video, these kids these days, maybe it's older me . . . but wowsers ! . . . when that lead guitar and sassy vocal kick in later, just won me over right there . . . maybe old Dad had some influence there ? Great stuff, lots of fun, I was very entertained, mostly sonically.

yes, too bad, same here, wants me to register on Spotify . . . I just want to hear it, the title sounds interesting . . .

Hey Gary . . . both mixes capture the power and beauty of this piece. I am moved by it very deeply either way. Super clearness in all the instruments. The AAMS (2nd) mix (on my close headphone listens) seems to make the lead vocal have slightly less edge, a bit rounder, smoother. Gary, the vocal performance is among the most expressive, emotionally, that I have heard in a long time online here no matter how you mix it. I hope many more will get to listen to this. The fidelity of the recording is of a very high standard here.

Yes . . . he did return once to explain his frustrations with modern audio technology, why are we still talking about him like he's still here ? We're just here to help, right ?

I just click my mouse wheel, and it brings up the Tool Hud . . . "H" for me is Hide Tracks

@sjoens @User 905133 @Heinz Hupfer Hey everybody, thanks for the great tips and insights ! . . . I simply got into some bad PRV editing habits recently . . . I knew about the Smart Tool, but didn't really know about how to create and edit notes properly until I played around with it more . . . YES, that does what I want, the real trick of discovery for me was to double click to create the notes, then the other 3 edit tools are right there depending where you put the mouse, nice, I get it now. For many years I did most drawing of notes in the Staff View, but the bakers changed some things, and I could never adapt to them. Seems that the draw tool is more useful for macro note creation using pattern and line settings . . . so much more to discover, as I move from Staff to PRV for inputting notes. Thanks again for your responses.

I'm trying to change the default workflow for drawing midi notes in PRV view, is there a way to do this ? Where I am trapped is: Draw some midi notes in PRV view . . . hover the mouse on the notes, I get the glue tool, right click on the notes I get the erase tool . . . both seemingly useless to what I always want to do next . . . EDIT LENGTH, AND MOVE THE NOTES ! Yes, with a few mouse clicks I can go to the Smart Tool to do it . . . but I'm wondering about the logic of why the draw tool goes to "glue" or "erase" after inserting new notes ?

Bjorn . . . very interesting 5 minutes I just spent, a lot of thought went into this piece, lots of great imagery to follow along with your spacy synth collection. The narrative in your video is very insightful, and kept my interest along the way . . . of course I've heard all these theories before, but your spin on it (set to music) was really well done I thought. I watched an episode of NOVA this last weekend about black holes, the centers of galaxies, and it kind of wrecks the brain when trying to grasp what they are finding out about our universe in recent years.

Fascinating piece Treesha . . . kind of a hurricane parody musically, but lyrically, it sounds like the real hurricane is at your door, but you've seen it all before, so no big worries . . . at least that's what I got from it . Nice clear mix, hurricanes are very NOW topically, at least where I live. Hope you're safe and keeping dry ?

Thanksgiving for Cakewalk, yup

CoolEdit 2000 ? . . . I still dust it off and use it occasionally 21 years back, not a multi-track DAW by comparison . . . but glad you got your music done with nice results. (remember what those beatles did on 4 track tape, wow, what they could have done with free cakewalk would be off the charts)