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Voice Commands on DAWs


IAGL

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3 hours ago, IAGL "eagle" said:

I want to put this idea out there because I think musicians and audio Engineers need it badly.

We need to start seeing voice commands for all of the major DAWs.

I am not a musician, but over the last 30 years digital music has been my hobby. I recently spent about 6 months going hard on making music. One of the things I came away with from that experience is how hard it was on my body. (This is especially for the person that is doing most of their work and adjustments through the computer.)

About a year ago, I emailed the people working on the band lab Android app asking them about adding voice commands as a feature.

They said that it was on their development timeline basically. I was happy to hear this, but it strikes me that it would help greatly if more of us started to ask for it.

Realistically speaking, what if we could cut down on our Mouse usage by 20%  in the near future?

Lastly, I have a little bit of a hack that may be more comfortable for some people when pulling faders and knobs with a mouse and keyboard.

What we need is an extra set of keys on the keyboard side of your non-dominant hand. For me, I have a gaming keyboard that has an extra set on the left side. One could also get a cheap USB number pad and put it on the left for this following function.

You want to set up a macro on the keys, where one key is left click, another is middle-click, and another is right click.

Now, when you are editing and pulling faders and knobs, use your left hand for the click and the right hand merely moves the mouse.

This may seem like an unnecessary difference, but believe me it feels luxurious. Think about how much stress and attention goes on your dominant hand when you're using the mouse in these modes. They have to rhythmically click and hold while you move the mouse with precision which keeps your hand in a highly tense state. After a 4-Hour edit session, you are toast.

With this hack, you can distribute that load between both hands while also remaining more centered in your work and not having that little lean that we have toward our dominant Mouse hand. I also find that the movements are more precise when being handled between the right and left hand.

Also, there are cheap USB foot triggers that you can use with macros or in this way.

That is all!

 

Email Cakewalk and other DAW  manufacturers and tell them that we want voice commands.

 

all the best,

 

Scott

 

No, thank you. Clearly you want it.  That's fine, but I find it troubling that you have launched a campaign. Most people put in a feature request and sometimes bump it when they feel their request hasn't been implemented in the time frame they think it should have been implemented. "Email Cakewalk . . . and tell them we want voice commands?" 

I do some things with my right hand and other things with my left hand.  It works fine for me.  I have tried word processors that responded to voice commands.  No thanks.  I have used voice commands on a phone for very simple, non-time critical tasks.  My mind-to-hand coordination is faster and more accurate than mind-to-verbal-processing (including trying to find the "right" word).

"You want to set up a macro on the keys, where one key is left click, another is middle-click, and another is right click." No, I don't.

"Realistically speaking, what if we could cut down on our Mouse usage by 20%  in the near future?"  I use short-cuts plus a mouse.  I don't need to cut my mouse usage by 20%.  If you do, that's fine, but please don't assume what will benefit your personal workflow will make others' workflows easier and quicker.

Edited by User 905133
added a missing ")".
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Understood. I'm sure I could have put this forward in a different way. 

And, of course this is not for everybody.

I work with a lot of people who are in physical pain due to their work at the computer and I'm just trying to find some different ways to approach things. To add some variability and how we do things.

I wasn't assuming too much of too many people. I'm just trying to constructively put something forward that could help someone else.

 

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2 hours ago, Will. said:

It is a NO from me too - sorry. 

I also dont see how this will be easier on your "Body." The golden rule is to take breaks in between. 

Have to agree to.

Plus I ended up getting a trackball for my left hand and mouse in right hand.  Next is a small control surface, nothing super fancy for me. 

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16 hours ago, Byron Dickens said:

Speech-to-text can't even get it right when I'm sending a text about the groceries.  How am I to think it would work any better for operating my DAW?

And even if it worked it would force us to wear headphones all the time, because of interference between voice and music from speakers.

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Your health should always be a priority.

Yes, although composing, mixing, playing an instrument or singing is a form of meditation for some - it still puts a strain on your health. 

I always take an hour break if im more than 2 hours in the studio. 

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FWIW, I had some success with voice control using a Raspberry Pi, with a mic plugged into it and a USB MIDI interface (controlling Cakewalk via ACT).

I just flung together some python scripts to map voice commands to MIDI messages. It was a good few years ago when I did this, but IIRC the way the voice recognition worked, was you recorded your own voice up front, and then ran it through a script to "profile" the voice command.  From then on it would recognise that command. I wrote some custom code to send out different MIDI messages for each command.  Most of the code was put together from examples online.

If the mic plugged into the Pi has a switch, you could stop it from triggering commands when you didn't want it to.

To be honest, I didn't find it particularly useful in the end, and opted instead for a Korg nanoKONTROL 2 mounted on the wall next to my vocal mic, connected to the PC via a 5m USB cable.

 

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