Quantize, groove quantize, Audiosnap, Snap To Grid etc

[EDT]

I think I am wholly confused about how these functions work and perhaps more importantly what I should be using each of them for and what the interrelation is between them.

Anyone out there prepared to give me a short summary of each? Or is it not feasible here? Appreciate if not.

[msmcleod]

The best explanation is probably in the user guide (you can download it from the "Cakewalk by BandLab" menu at the top of this forum).

Also, check out this course. It's for SONAR X2 (so won't cover the extra X3 / Sonar Platinum / Cakewalk features), but everything on there is 99% valid.

@abacab has kindly listed topic titles for each of the videos in this post:

 

 

 

[abacab]

I have always had the best results when learning about something specific that I am trying to do (or to a question asked by another user). Then it always makes more sense in the usage context, and I am not as likely to forget how to do it later on.

Just reading about a list of features, or watching some videos about them is useful for getting an overview of the program's capabilities (and this is a deep one), but nothing beats applying specific skills to meet one's current objectives, hands on style. One feature at a time.

Maybe the better question to ask is what are you attempting to do?

[EDT]

Well, the simple answer is it varies from project to project but I have set out a few examples:

1. Making sure that drum loops from different sources which I have in different tracks marry up and play in time. E.g. track 1 has a midi drum loop and track 2 has an audio drum loop recorded from one of my drum machines, most likely not recorded at the same tempo as the Cakewalk project.

2. Tidying up timing and note length of a midi bass track to fit with previously recorded audio tracks.

3. Using the "grid" effectively and understanding what all the different time settings mean/do in practice.

4. Drum replacement - I have one or two projects where I would like to replace the audio drums with midi drums but obviously need to ensure the midi drums line up with the other audio.

Sorry this is probably making my projects sound like a mess! But I promise I can play instruments in time I just want to tidy up imperfections and improve a few bits here and there.

It's fantastic Cakewalk has so many amazing features but I'm struggling to get the gist of how they work or even which one I need to choose for a certain task.

EDT

[msmcleod]

8 hours ago, EDT said:

Well, the simple answer is it varies from project to project but I have set out a few examples:

1. Making sure that drum loops from different sources which I have in different tracks marry up and play in time. E.g. track 1 has a midi drum loop and track 2 has an audio drum loop recorded from one of my drum machines, most likely not recorded at the same tempo as the Cakewalk project.

2. Tidying up timing and note length of a midi bass track to fit with previously recorded audio tracks.

3. Using the "grid" effectively and understanding what all the different time settings mean/do in practice.

4. Drum replacement - I have one or two projects where I would like to replace the audio drums with midi drums but obviously need to ensure the midi drums line up with the other audio.

Sorry this is probably making my projects sound like a mess! But I promise I can play instruments in time I just want to tidy up imperfections and improve a few bits here and there.

It's fantastic Cakewalk has so many amazing features but I'm struggling to get the gist of how they work or even which one I need to choose for a certain task.

EDT

1 & 2 (and maybe 3) - AudioSnap

4 - Drum Replacer (you'll need to install this via the BandLab assistant's AddOns menu, the same way as you do with Melodyne)

[msmcleod]

20 hours ago, abacab said:

I have always had the best results when learning about something specific that I am trying to do (or to a question asked by another user). Then it always makes more sense in the usage context, and I am not as likely to forget how to do it later on.

Just reading about a list of features, or watching some videos about them is useful for getting an overview of the program's capabilities (and this is a deep one), but nothing beats applying specific skills to meet one's current objectives, hands on style. One feature at a time.

Maybe the better question to ask is what are you attempting to do?

All true.

And I guess that everybody works differently.

Personally though, I found just going through the whole of Groove3's SONAR tutorials was a huge eye opener for me. Even if you only watch the first few minutes of each chapter, you get an idea of what's available, and idea of what tool does what. Then when you have a particular need for something, you know what tools to delve into it deeper.

But even with basic operations... for decades I've been using more or less the same methods of editing that I did back in Cakewalk Pro Audio 9... these tutorials showed me a bunch of stuff I didn't know was there, and has radically sped up my workflow.

[EDT]

Pursuant to the above, I have installed Drum Replacer and Melodyne  (trial version, didn't realise it was a separate paid software).

Not sure how Drum Replacer is supposed to work. Again I have looked at YouTube for instructions but I still can't see how it operates in a user friendly way although I can see from the videos how useful it might be for a number of things. First, I couldn't find it - I know this will sound off hand but for me it isn't a form of "FX"  - even that might technically be how it works - it is an editing tool. However, I eventually found it under the Region FX menu. I then looked through the menu options and clicked through them but still don't really know what they mean other than the "open editor" option (self- explanatory, even to me that one is).

I tried to replace the audio kick and snare with the bundled samples but they played out of time compared to the original audio. Nowhere can I see any instruction as to how to change it or how it works.  The adjustable bits (threshold, dyn(?)) mean nothing unless one already understands what the jargon means. 

I should add - I always work offline as I don't like the internet running in the background, so maybe I am missing whatever the help module might tell me whilst I'm using Cakewalk.

I would love to use this and fully believe it would be helpful, but I am increasingly pulling my hair out at the lack of my knowledge of some of the Cakewalk functions to those of us who are not experienced audio engineers or haven't been using previous versions of DAWs for many years.

Anyway I shall go back to YouTube and search out some more instruction videos for now!

Thanks for your help so far.

Edited August 7, 2019 by EDT
Toned down my own criticism

[Patrick H BUSHAW]

EDITED for bad example

 

Edited August 7, 2019 by NTO
see error in example

[Blogospherianman]

22 minutes ago, NTO said:

This came up for my search so I'll try for reply here!?

I can't understand why I'm not getting the snap I set in the PRV.  I checked the video mentioned above, and the specific was not clarified.  (Looks like great assistance though, and I will strive to watch all segments?).

I have Edit > Preferences > Snap to Grid - set to 'Extreme' and using the 'Magnetic Test there seems to works as expected.  However, in the PRV, I'm getting all these 'in-between' steps.  What am I missing?

TIA

 

Uncheck the Midi sign and marker sign next to the 1/2.  Having those checked will snap to midi events and markers. Pg 809 in the reference manual. ?

Edited August 7, 2019 by Blogospherianman

[Patrick H BUSHAW]

Thank you Blogospherianman

You were on this before I could realize my error and delete the example.  Good to know, I'll need more help!

[EDT]

What does setting the snap to "extreme" do?

Surely it doesn't make a difference if there is a grid as the grid doesn't move. Is it relevant only if using the thing to snsp to some other reference points?

Sorry...confused!

[Patrick H BUSHAW]

Can't help.

Came across it while fighting snap in the PRV, before noting my switch problem.  Dialog is on Page 1510 of the reference, but not detailed actions.

[Grem]

Snap To The Grid

[Grem]

16 minutes ago, EDT said:

What does setting the snap to "extreme" do?

Makes it snap 'To' the Snap setting. The more 'relaxed' this setting is the less it will snap to the grid (what ever the snap setting is).

[EDT]

2 hours ago, Grem said:

Makes it snap 'To' the Snap setting. The more 'relaxed' this setting is the less it will snap to the grid (what ever the snap setting is).

I'm guessing, but is that to facilitate a looser more human feel? 

Any tips on how that fits with the quantize function(s) (there appear to be more than one quantize function)?

[EDT]

I am also trying to create some different tracks using some of the inbuilt samples and loops. I created a new blank project, but the Snap to Grid settings have carried over automatically from another completely different project. Is there something I can do to stop it doing that? I always want to start with a blank page.

For some strange reason, I also want to change the project tempo from 100 to 120, but when I do that in the top/middle all it does is alter the length of the first kick beat in the track not the others. I have the four beats highlighted. No idea why this is happening...help?

Edited August 8, 2019 by EDT

[David Baay]

Creating a project by New > Blank Project will leave snap settings wherever they were in the last project you had open, because Blank Project isn't a 'template' per se, and  doesn't apply different settings.

A tempo setting  will pertain until another tempo change is encountered.  There will initially be only the one initial tempo in a new, blank project, but if your copy-paste setting are including tempo changes, you'll have a redundant one inserted every time you copy-paste a clip , and that will prevent you from being able to change the whole project tempo just by changing the initial tempo. Use Paste Special > Advanced to un-check tempo and meter-key changes to prevent that. Using Paste Special permanently changes the paste options for all subsequent paste operations until you use Paste Special again to change them.

[EDT]

2 hours ago, David Baay said:

Creating a project by New > Blank Project will leave snap settings wherever they were in the last project you had open, because Blank Project isn't a 'template' per se, and  doesn't apply different settings.

A tempo setting  will pertain until another tempo change is encountered.  There will initially be only the one initial tempo in a new, blank project, but if your copy-paste setting are including tempo changes, you'll have a redundant one inserted every time you copy-paste a clip , and that will prevent you from being able to change the whole project tempo just by changing the initial tempo. Use Paste Special > Advanced to un-check tempo and meter-key changes to prevent that. Using Paste Special permanently changes the paste options for all subsequent paste operations until you use Paste Special again to change them.

Thanks David, I didn't know that about blank projects or the tempo settings. I thought there was a global tempo setting which would alter the whole project.

All I was doing was loading the pre-recorded one shots in fact, from Cakewalk and then pasting them as beats 2,3 and 4 of a bar but changing the project tempo only changed beat 1.

[Grem]

1 hour ago, EDT said:

changing the project tempo only changed beat 1.

Did you have the Now Time Marker located at the first beat? Maybe the way you performed the Tempo Change only inserted a Tempo Change for that first beat, and left the rest alone, at the previous tempo.

Are you new to this DAW software? If so, may want to check out some tutorials and get familiar with it. Cakewalk is a very powerful and feature rich program. To get the most out of your experience with it you will want to do some reading of the manual. It is setup to give you very good info on the things you would like to do with the software. It also gives us some common ground so that when you come to ask questions, you can refer to a section of the manual and we will know exactly what your talking about/trying to do. And from there we can guide you to the best way to do what your trying to do.

HTH

[David Baay]

7 hours ago, EDT said:

...changing the project tempo only changed beat 1.

Looks like I neglected to mention; go to Views > Tempo to see and delete the extra tempos that got inserted by copy-pasting. Once you've deleted them, the intial tempo at 1:01:000 will persist through the whole song, and changing it will affect the whole song. Be aware, however, that clips longer than one beat may not follow tempo changes by default unless they're 'REX' or 'Groove' clips. The start time will follow the tempo change, but the clip will go out of sync  with the project tempo as it plays. Most 3rd-party audio 'loops' will automatically follow tempo, but any 'normal' .WAV file you've imported or recorded yourself will not. There are many ways to get such a clip to follow tempo changes (and get it synced to the project tempo in the first place if it isn't already), but it takes a little knowledge to know which one is best for a given situation.

I should also mention that while Cakewalk can to do pretty much anything when it comes to stretching and syncing audio and producing loop-based music, some other DAWs are better optimized for composing with loops and samples, and make it easier in various ways. Cakewalk has traditionally been aimed more at users who record live input in real time.

Edited August 8, 2019 by David Baay