The case of the mysterious take lanes. Can anyone figure this out?

[Anthony Giorgianni]

Hello All

This is a very strange thing that just occurred in BandLab Cakewalk version 2024.02 (Build 098, 64-bit). I don't know if it's a software bug, something I did or both. In my many years of using Cakewalk, I have never seen anything like this

I have been working on a song for months that includes multiple midi tracks and one audio track for voice (an additional audio track for an older take of my voice). When I opened the piece yesterday, two of the eight MIDI tracks (bass and oboe) had suddenly appeared with multiple (what I believe) were mysterious take lanes. These take lanes had multiple snippets (like linked copies) of the notes in the two primary midi tracks. (Note that I have never used take lanes, nor did I do any recent recording in either of those two midi tracks.)

Here's an example of what happened: My oboe track (Track 6) suddenly appeared with three different take lanes labeled T1, T2 and T3 below it (I think those were the numbers). I don't remember exactly what was copied, but for instance: The Oboe midi take lane T1 might have had - among other things - exact copies of midi measures 4 and 5 of the main Oboe track 6, EXCEPT for one note, which was duplicated in T2, along with other material from Track 6 (that one duplicated note actually happened). Lane T3 had yet other small duplicated snippets from the main track 6.  Again, I haven't recorded  to track 6 in quite some time. (Note that none of the take lanes had duplicated material from each other, just from the main midi track.)

It's almost like Cakewalk decided long after the fact that some of those midi notes had been recorded in different takes, which they weren't.

Thankfully, all of the original notes still were in main tracks. But if I tried to delete any midi snippet from any of the  take lanes, those notes also disappeared from the main tracks as well, as though they were linked midi notes.

I should note that the piece was playing fine, but I just couldn't delete any of those mysterious take lanes without also deleting the main track material. Very frustrating. It was the same my bass track 4, except that it had four take lanes! I haven't recorded or changed anything in my bass track for months except some of the note velocities.

As a possible work around, I tried copying part of the material from one of the take lanes before deleting it and then pasting it back into the main track.  But all that did was paste it back into BOTH the main track and the take lane I copied it from. 

This is even stranger:  As another work around, I tried cloning bass track 4 to track 5, figuring it might duplicate only the main midi track without the four take lanes. But instead of creating a duplicate of bass track 4, it created four MORE take lanes. So then I had bass track 4 with eight take lanes, which I undid using Ctrl Z.

I finally found a successful work around: I created new oboe and bass tracks, and then copied the notes  from the original main tracks into the new ones. Then I deleted the original two tracks, which also deleted all those mysterious take lanes. (I also had to recreate the track volume envelope I had in Track 6. I didn't have any other effects.)

It's interesting that in recent days, I've only made minor changes in that song - mostly by moving notes in the staff view - in my French horn and piano tracks, neither of which developed mysterious take lanes (I may have recorded a few notes into the French horn and piano tracks using my keyboard as well, but I don't think so). As I said, the only other changes were in some note velocities. I hadn't recorded anything on the audio tracks for weeks. 

Does anyone have an idea of what caused these mysteriously appearing take lanes, and how I can prevent it from ever happening again?

(Note that my midi tracks are set to input/output from/to a MidiSport 2X2 USB midi interface. My audio tracks are set to input/output from/to a Tascam US-1641 audio interface. Cakewalk is running on a Thinkpad with Windows 10. I'm also running Melodyne 5 Studio in Cakewalk.) 

Many thanks,

Anthony Giorgianni

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Misha]

Just guessing. You had track(s) armed, that were not supposed to be armed - the ones you have many takes on, when you were recording, so it picked up everything what you were trying to record on different track.

[sjoens]

Screenshots might help.  I've noticed odd Take Lane behavior from their beginning.  They certainly need cleaning up now and then.

"But if I tried to delete any midi snippet from any of the  take lanes, those notes also disappeared from the main tracks as well, as though they were linked midi notes."

If there's a clip in the track, there's a Take Lane associated with it.  There are no tracks with clips without a Take Lane, tho there CAN be a Take Lane without any clips in the track.

Bounce each track before duplicating or copying it.  This will consolidate all clips to one Take Lane.

A blank track has no Take Lane until 1) something is recorded, imported, pasted, or manually entered, or 2) you click the Take Lane button.

Check your settings in Preferences > Project > Record > Take Behavior.

Edited June 7 by sjoens

[David Baay]

16 hours ago, Anthony Giorgianni said:

But if I tried to delete any midi snippet from any of the  take lanes, those notes also disappeared from the main tracks as well, as though they were linked midi notes.

All clips are  effectively just representations of underlying stored MIDI events. When lanes are showing, the clip in the main/parent track at the top is a composite representation of all the events in all the take lane clips merged together. Deleting from either a take lane or the composite clip deletes the underlying stored event that both are representing.

Your desciption of the problem suggests the CbB  spontaneously created lanes on opening a project that did not previously have lanes. This can happen with a very old project that was created before lanes superceded layers; CbB will convert the layers to lanes and expand them automatically for all tracks.  But if the project originated any time after lanes were introduced (SONAR X3...?) then I'm sure they were already there when you last saved the project and you just weren't aware of it because the weren't showing and editing a multi-lane track without lanes showing is just like editing a track with everything merged to one clip.

The circumstance under which SONAR/CbB/Sonar will create new lanes for MIDI tracks has evolved over time, and may have some dependency on the setting of Non-Destructive MIDI Editing in preferences. At one time, I thought it was intended that same-lane overlaps would not be allowed by either recording or editing, but editing seems mostly to allow this now for MIDI, so automatically created lanes are usually a product of recording. Without knowing the full history of the project it's hard to know exactly how you got where you are now, but I would guess it happend gradually over time as opposed to suddenly manifesting in the latest release.

In any case, so long as you aren't actually seeing duplicate clips in lanes, Bounce to Clip(s) can be used to consolidate everything as mentioned.

 

[sjoens]

CbB actually created xtra Take Lanes in a new project I created to test Anthony's issue.  I copied a track with one Take Lane and the new one had 2 Take Lanes.

I tried it again and no xtra Take Lanes were created, so it's hit-n-miss with this.

[David Baay]

Copy-Pasting from track to track can create new lanes if the tracks have differing numbers of lanes to start with or lanes have been added/removed over time such that each track's internal lane indexing differs. I have seen and reported some anomalies around this in the past. In particular, re-using an old project or creating a template from a project that's had a lot of editing done in it can be problematic if you don't delete all the empty lanes first. Copy-Pasting between tracks that have never had more than one take in them is generally pretty predictable in my experience.

[sjoens]

Sorry, I meant "Duplicate Track..." not copy.  Duplicating a track - which creates a whole new track - should not create additional empty Take Lanes, but it did.

[David Baay]

8 hours ago, sjoens said:

Duplicating a track - which creates a whole new track - should not create additional empty Take Lanes, but it did.

Indeed it shouldn't. But it will duplicate the lane structure of the source track if you choose to include Events. I don't use Duplicate a lot, but have not seen it create superflous lanes. I would guess there was something unusual about the state of the source track that caused it in the one case you saw.

[sjoens]

I use Dup a lot so I'll have to keep an eye on it.

[user6870635003811901]

I have a similar setup with MidiSport 2X2 USB midi interface, M-Audio interface, Roland keyboard & Melodyne. In the last week I have developed the same problems of data in measures and whole tracks disappearing, along with Take Lane problems, and I have searched all over the internet for a resolution. It could possibly be a bug from a plugin (a guess). I went to a local tech who said he would have to go deep into the program to find the culprit with a hefty payday, and suggested I go with another program (one he uses). I like Cakewalk by BandLab and prefer to continue using it, but if I can't find a solution I may have to reconsider his suggestion.