RexRed

Hey awesome Cakewalk peeps! There is a new version of this, after much effort, though, it is still a "work in progress". Critiques are still welcome. ?

I very much appreciate your help on this song Teegarden, I am kind of limited because I bought the guitar part. It came in two samples that I was able to fit together because they were both in the same key and tempo and probably played on the same guitar by the same person, plus also recorded with the same apparatus and setup. I buy these samples because they represent a lot of skill, set into a small package. It is my job to place things around them so the song does not get tedious too soon. In this case, since this is a work in progress there are a number of elements that have not been added yet to the song. I might suggest that adding changes to the chords can sometime create jarring occurrences and work against the flow. It has to be done tastefully. In the right cases even a drone in music can be made interesting. It is the job of the producer to make that happen. I did look around with the same artist for other changes and I was unable to find other samples that would t fit into the style of this particular piece. I have not added pads yet, I would like the drums to pop in and out of the mix more. I am thinking of a Hammond type organ, Maybe some strings, trumpets (maybe a trumpet solo) and possibly some other background vocal as well, oos, ahhs, dubs and harmonies. These other elements will distract the listener and hopefully keep their interest with the subtle layers of high quality sounds and performances. That is the plan at least. ?? I might add that this song will be replaced with a much more "produced" version of the song. I like to release the song to my fans before it gets produced because some prefer a less produced song. I replace the song so my fans can get the second song free when it comes out because it is replaced and not a new release altogether. Currently this song has only 4 tracks. Vocal, guitar drums and bass.

Hey awesome Cakewalk peeps! New tune here, still a work in progress! Hope you like it. ? Critiques welcome! ?

Thank you Jack, much appreciated buddy! ?

Here we go! A new song awesome Cakewalk peeps!!! Melodyne worked very well with this project. This is an mp3 rendered from a 32 bit project at 48khz. Please let me know your thoughts peeps! All the best to you! RR

I am having trouble locating these dots. Could you please post an image of them? Thx ?

At what bitrate does Cakewalk have the effects process at? How do you set this? And when you load instruments, is there a toggle as to what bitrate they use? What exactly does this double precision engine do? Does setting that to 64-bit increase the bitrate of the effects and instruments? I am adding splice.com samples to my project, they are natively 24-bit I am not sure of the khz yet of these samples. I record my vocals at 32 bit and 96khz. But Melodyne is knocking them down at least to 24 bit. Melodyne must keep the 96khz because only one frequency rate is possible in a project. So the only reason to record at 96 would be if my effects and some of my VSTs have samples that are 96khz (I think a few of them are, the ones that take a long time to load.) It would be nice to have some 96khz pads, bass, piano (and effects processing) ... Something that helps raise up the quality of the files that are limited to 24bit 48khz. And then there are convolution waves versus algorithm reverbs. Which of the two are likely to be 32bit 96khz? And then compressors and EQs? Which of these might process in 96khz? I have 18 Intel extreme cores. it would be nice to put these to the test. Eventually it will all get mixed down as 24bit 48khz but I like to think that that snapshot of a truly higher quality file might show in the final render.

support@cakewalk.com I got sent this funny automated email response from legacy Cakewalk "Hey there! You’ve found your way to our problem-solving, band tee-donning folk. Your request has been well received so sit back, listen to some tunes, and we’ll get back to you very soon. If you left something out, simply reply to this email to update your request. Here are some helpful articles to browse while listening:"

Thanks for the heads up with the Bandlab site too, I had to log into Bandlab with my old email address and change it to my new email address there, verify with an email the sent me to my new address and do some bot images to prove I am not a machine. ?

Okay, so it worked, it took a moment to update but the new address is in my account settings here on the forum. Now to write an email to legacy Cakewalk.

Big help, thank you! So the forum and Bandlab get changed here the forum settings and the legacy site is done by email request?

I am considering changing internet providers and my legacy Cakewalk, Cakewalk by Bandlab and the forums are all associated with an email address that I may no longer have access to. How/where do I change my email address across all of the Cakewalk/Bandlab platforms?

I don't have the expertise to do this but you have given me a road map to possibly pursue this. I would think this forum would have ready answers to this question but it seems there is silence in regard to Melodyne and what it actually is doing to our files. I wonder if asking this question in another DAW forum might give a result. I am sure Melodyne is not converting the waves to 32 bit and it is not touching the khs of the wave because Cakewalk is fussy about using the same khz across the project. When Melodyne converts an entire track it is slow enough that it appears to be converting the wave simply to its preferred bitrate. It would be interesting to open a 16 bit project and see if there is much conversion or if it is instant that might indicate which bitrate it uses natively. I just did a test and when I added Melodye to a 5 minute audio wave it took the same amount of time converting the file to Melodyne as it did when I right clicked the file and bounced the Melodyne track to wave. So Melodyne is indeed converting the file and not just piecing it together. It is outright resampling the wave file. I would think the answer to this would be of interest. And when you ask Melodyne to remove itself from your wave file, you do not get the same wave file back, you get the converted wave file. If you save previous project versions then that should keep your original wave files for retrieval if needed. I might also add that a complete almost 4 minute song project with back up vocals, harmonies, ooos and ahhs, adlibs and tons of takes with 32 bit recording the project was around 421mb when looking at the properties of the audio folder. Even 1 GB per song would not break the bank of my one of my 18TB drives.

I have replaced the song with a newer version. Lots of changes hopefully getting closer to a finished song. ? I wrote this song for what I term as, "impetuous youth". Young people who think that love should come the instant they begin to desire it. For the "hook up" generation. This can often lead to disastrous consequences. Love takes time. ❤️ Hopefully my song will help someone who is feeling unloved and "impetuous". Give love some time...

I am not sure about this song. It is a jump from my usual stuff and it may take me a few more days work to get this song right. Critiques and comments welcome awesome Cakewalk peeps. ❤️

I Just noticed that when you add Melodyne to a clip up in the play transport Cakewalk displays a progress bar and says "Mixing Down Audio".

This 32-Bit recording is EVERYTHING! Today, (a few minutes ago) I turned off the padding switch on my mic and sang/recorded a vocal. This particular vocal I am singing Journey style vocals, very high pitched and very loud or "dynamic". You all recall having a song that you wanted to change your recording gain so the verse had a higher gain than the chorus... I am sure you do. But when you do that then the verse sounds somewhat different in proximity/tone than the chorus. A huge dynamic range is necessary for recording a vocalist in their true epic form... So, in Cakewalk it clipped, WAY above the track envelope. I thought this vocal take is surely ruined! But, I just switched to clip gain, lowered the gain envelope on the clip and there was my vocal performance with no distortion whatsoever. I will NEVER go back to 24 bit recording. I might also add, when you record in 24bit when you get close to the clipping range you reach what I might "theoretically" call the saturation point. Where the file wants to clip and the 24 bit struggles with hearing the high end of the recording. This vocal I just sang was a mammoth of a vocal, and the 32 bit handled a tiger like it was a kitten. When I think of other "mammoth vocals" I think of Mister Mister and the song, "Kyrie" a full-throated, belted out vocal. Bits do matter. ? Yes, you can turn your gain down for 24 bit recording, but who wants to amplify dirt?

This is a great review of this device.

Natural Vocal Pitch Editing Plug-in https://www.synchroarts.com/products/repitch-standard/overview Anyone heard of or tried this?

I guess what bothers me the most is that ARA2 and Melodyne are COMPLETELY silent as to what is really going on under the hood. Google is silent about Melodyne if you search Google for Melodyne answers you will encounter my own Cakewalk forum thread inquiries which have gone mostly unanswered. And let's not forget that Celemony refuses to have a Melodyne public forum, you have to email them to ask questions and make requests. Thus, the answers are not public. This vexes me because I have a LOT of questions and requests. And getting an email back telling me I don't need 32bit recording or 96khz recording also concerns me. How low is Melodyne resampling my waves to? I am actually afraid to ask. It is like Bill Gates saying, no one will ever need more than 56k of RAM. Melodyne works with my 32 bit files but I am told by Ulf it does not work with 32 bit files. I am told that ARA2 and Melodyne are not resampling my files, so how is Melodyne working with my 32bit files if it is not resampling them down to a bitrate that it can recognize? And, what is that bitrate? Why am I even recording in 24 bit if Melodyne is down sampling my voice to even 16bit? I can hear a difference when Melodyne is placed on my tracks even if nothing is edited. There is an information vacuum online and Melodyne is the only real game in town. I adore Melodyne, while I am also concerned about how it is being developed. It does tons of stuff I don't need at all and the stuff I need seems unimportant to them, like colored blobs... I have been waiting for years for different colored track blobs. As for "quality", when I analyze a line that is sung consecutively, it flows into other lines. When I punch in "like the old performers used to do". the line can sound disconnected from the previous and following lines. This is why fixing a simple bit of pitch deviation is better than re-singing the line . It is a "quality" issue where preserving the quality of the line is greater than re-singing it for a perfect pitch aspect and in turn losing the quality or, "one take" aspect. But in order to fix that tiny bit of pitch deviation I need to place something on my file that is degrading the sample rate and "quality" of it. As I indicated, "quality" is one of the pillars of good music. Pitch, loudness, duration and quality... (You will find those four in any fundamentals of music text book. Yes, I read and studied them.) I like to know how things work. Just like I have my prepositions memorized, so I know how grammar works. I used to have all of my Euclidian assumptions, postulates, axioms, corollaries and theorems memorized for the same reason. And this is why I can excel at 3D vector art. I don't like things that come in and "resample" my work without me knowing it. Because someone says I don't need higher depth or frequency files. Or, I don't need colored blobs. Well it is hard to tell which blobs are from which tracks when they are all piled on top of each other. Melodyne does pitch, loudness, duration and even formant but it is the "quality" aspect that seems unimportant to its developers. That quality issue is very evident to my ears. I feel like I am at a standstill with Melodyne. I am recognizing quality issues with the way it is working and I am told to "work around" those issues rather than Celemony addressing them and fixing them. I mentioned variable bitrates. If Melodyne threw more bits at the transients when it resampled the waves this problem could be solved. If a dialogue box popped up and asked us how we wanted our waves converted (like every other program in the industry does). Melodyne could take these wave files and apply variable bitrates to the conversion process so the transients and sibilants would get more bits. This is how video is done, when you have an explosion or detailed action sequence, you either raise the bitrates to an ungodly amount or you apply variable 2 pass bitrates. The computer searches through a scene and detects a part is complex and will throw more bits at that section. While I am thinking that due to latency that Melodyne and maybe even Cakewalk are actually throwing less bits at the beginnings of sounds. I am constantly pointing fingers at what the cause of these quality issues are from. Thus the 32 bit interface, but the quality issues still persist in Melodyne. The proof is in the pudding and the transients, and sibilants and pitch bends are lacking terribly and completely un-editable in Melodyne. Some blobs you cannot touch in any way or they implode in quality. And the answer to this problem should not be, "work around it". If there is something I am missing here please enlighten me. I don't mind being wrong, that is how I learn. Let's get this out in the open please.

Your answer is very close and this goes not only for singing but other instruments as well. I was attending college for music before I left high school. And I was reading college level textbooks for music as a youngster. Though my knowledge of harmony is spotty, I took harmony and theory classes in college as well. ...and I had some GREAT teachers. As well as singing in 500 voice choirs, I was also chosen to sing in the elite 50 voice choir that toured several states, and the prestigious 14 voice madrigal choir. That was at the university of Maine at Orono and I also attended the University of Maine at Machias. At Orono I was a performing major and all I had to do to achieve that status was sing for the professors. Many years on the road singing in front of audiences in little towns and big cities getting home at 3am and I performed in these place live, just me and my guitar. A lady once threw a diamond ring in my hat. She said, "I have to do it, it's from Switzerland". And one club wrote on the marquee, "The man who knows a thousand songs". Now I have written and recorded near to a thousand songs as well. I still own 2000 vinyl records, my collection used to be 4000 but I had to get rid of some. But, I can still learn new things, occasionally. That is why I am here. On a break at a gig I once told three women that I had a love affair with a blank piece of paper and a pen. They all reached into their purses and gave me their fountain pens. And they were very nice ones. My stories of the road are as long and winding as the road itself. The answer is, "quality". And no, Melodyne cannot give you that. So a line can be sung perfectly in pitch, duration and loudness but as you sing that line over and over, quality can diminish with time. You have a small window to obtain all 4. Do you go with the quality line and fix the pitch or go with the pitch line? And, how much time do you have to devote to a single vocal track, or a line? When you need to, write the lyrics, compose the music, make the video, record yourself, fly the drone, play all of the other tracks, mix, master, publish, make the album art in 3d programs, Photoshop, build you own PC... and respond to hundreds of comments on your YouTube videos each month and make your own webpages etc... Well, that is why were are called "artists" in this era of music democratization, because we alone make that call. One of the greatest things I have learned is that people just want to have a good time...

I turned 60 in February of 2023, I started out singing in church at about 7 years old and started my first rock band at age 12. I would have thrown in the towel long ago if I could not sing in tune. Leonardo da Vinci was not a REAL artist because he used a straight edge to draw a line... lol Singing a line properly not only requires timing, proper loudness and pitch but also one other element. Anyone know what that other element is? And yes, I am classically trained as a vocalist.

A tropical place sounds nice, a beach with some sunny surf! I struggled with the reverb in this song, consequently, I may have under used it. Your observations are very welcome Bjorn, suggestions like this are how I improve on these songs. Best always! ??

I think you are right about the bass, it could be distorting, maybe in the channel or the brick wall overall limiter. It is a Rickenbacker bass so it does have rather gritty attack. The guitar is forward as well, I tried adding a bit of reverb to it but it got muddy. Maybe I should have left a little bit of it. Thanks for the critiques they are very helpful! Very best to you Andy! ??

The guitar arpeggio is another clip that I bought from splice.com It seems like a simple plucking pattern but it is actually full of a lot of hammer-ons and slight variations that I am quite amazed by the guitar player's skill. And it is played on a nylon string guitar that I have been favoring a lot lately over the steel guitar. That guitar part inspired the whole song. Splice is a great resource indeed. Thanks for the compliment Andy! ???