New To CW. How do i add a synth track? Does the addition figure out the key/chords and 'play along' a bass line (what i'm lookin for)

[rayray]

-- I have used it for mostly tracking and "fixing things"/mastering.   but never played with more than adding eq, splitting tracks, etc.

i guess i don't know how to use or how synths or how to apply them and what they do,

thx

RR

[User 905133]

2 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

Start HERE  with an excellent series on the basics of the application.

Edited May 5 by User 905133
Deleted unnecessary wording.

[OutrageProductions]

Start HERE  with an excellent series on the basics of the application.

[JoeGBradford]

1 hour ago, OutrageProductions said:

Start HERE  with an excellent series on the basics of the application.

Excellent advice! 🙂 

[rayray]

really,  so i get advertisements for $79 dollar course just to figure out how to use a synth track.  

smh

[User 905133]

17 minutes ago, rayray said:

really,  so i get advertisements for $79 dollar course just to figure out how to use a synth track.  

I was under the impression that Mike has made his video series freely available to all.  

I edited out a rather lengthy post I did trying to explain about tracks.  Since I had to assume you were a "newbie," it was very wordy and left out a lot.  So I felt that Mike's Creative Sauce series would better meet your needs. 

Sometimes I save old posts when editing them (especially when I have spent a lot of time writing them up). Maybe I saved my original post and maybe that will meet your needs after all.  I'll take a look. 

GREAT NEWS [I hope]: I found it.  Since it is a pdf, I will have to edit it down to the way it looked as originally posted.  (BTW, if it turns out not to be helpful, I apologize in advance.) 

Edited Monday at 04:06 PM by User 905133
added some "GREAT NEWS"

[John Vere]

Anyone who has to come on a user forum to ask how to use software that has a complete users manual built in and literally hundreds of free tutorials on you tube is obviously out of touch with how things work! Simply Google your questions and you’ll get 500 pages of instructions and answers. 
The forum is handy when that somehow fails to answer tricky questions but regular users get pretty bored by trying to answer questions that are searched for “How do I turn on a lightbulb “? So you will be directed to RTFM .  
So I apologize on behalf of the internet for not supplying you with a detailed explanation of the question. 
The AI. 

Edited Monday at 04:19 PM by John Vere

[User 905133]

Quote

How do i add a synth track?

Assuming for the moment you are talking about adding a track to use software synths (as opposed to hardware synth), there are a number of ways to add a synth / add an instrument.  Let's also assume you have software synths on your computer (probably VSTs) and you have done a VST scan, mainly because autoscan is the default VST scan mode and you probably didn't change it to manual scanning.

Some people like to use the Menu Bar >  Insert > Soft Synth . method which calls up the list of the soft synths you have installed. From there its just a matter of following the steps, one of which calls up dialogs that let you set various options/choices for inserting the track(s).

If you've added FX plugins using the Browser [default shortcut key = B], you might want to use the Browser to add Instruments that way. Choose the plugins tab in the browser then the Instruments button to access the list of soft synths you have installed and scanned.

Personally, I automatically just right click in the TV [Track View], select Insert Instrument and the use the Add Track Wizard.

Obviously, I am leaving out steps, but since you seem to know how to chose FX plugins to insert, these three basic methods of Inserting a Soft Synth/Instrument should get you going.  There's more, but these will get you going to add Instrument Tracks.  As you explore, be sure to pay attention to various items in the menus/lists/dialogs.  For example, if you want to change to a different synth, there's a replace feature.

Standard methods to add Instrument tracks have both an Audio Instrument Component and a MIDI Component.  You can Separate the two and under some circumstances you can combine a "synth only" Instrument track with a MIDI track.  For multi-timbral synths with different sounds being played via different MIDI Channels, you could choose to have several MIDI tracks pointed to one multi-timbral instrument with a different sound on each channel.

There's a whole lot more but from the sound of it, once you get Instrument Tracks, you'll see tons of options.

Hope this helps.

Quote

i guess i don't know how to use or how synths or how to apply them and what they do

Read the manuals, watch videos, explore, ask questions.  Each synth is different. So how to use one and what they each do will vary quite a bit.

Edited Monday at 05:10 PM by User 905133
(2) fixed typo (one --> once); (1) fixed a sentence that somehow got mangled

[JoeGBradford]

7 hours ago, rayray said:

really,  so i get advertisements for $79 dollar course just to figure out how to use a synth track.  

smh

You have dismissed the best free Cakewalk tutorials available because you got an advert for a (actually very good) course? Perhaps you haven't met the internet before?

Go back and watch those videos - they will bring you up to speed with the basics of what you need to know about using Cakewalk. Along with the advice here they will help you achieve your goals!