bob young said:
Thank You James and Paul !
I have figured out how to record some tracks.
Anytime, old man...
Glad to hear you're getting somewhere... You'll be there in no time, and forgeting your old Alesis even existed...
bob young said:
I can make the piano appear...I can change the midi out assignments to make my outboard sound modules work..I can get my outboard drum machine to work with the track..I figured out note-editing from the staff and from data..I can change the internal patch assignments on tracks..the audio is no problemo !
So you go fine with MIDI. That's a great great news!!! Here you may learn some terms we use in Cakewalk as we go. It is important for you to get familiar with them, and we're gonna do it step by step. I am representating most of us here in this forum probably have newer version of Cakewalk, so we may forget the procedure in older Cakewalk, so... please bear with these "young man" here... Easy boy....
The first window when you open the program initialy is called
"Track View". You'll find yourself work with this view most of the time. Track View is devided into two pannels, left one and right one. On the left pannel you can add a new track -either MIDI or audio track-, and make track adjustments. On the right pannel, you'll see the bars (or also known as
measure) where your data being recorded following their particular tracks is shown. The number of bars (measures) determines how long is your song. I think you get the idea. We'll talk about this view latter...
Right click (click right mouse button) on the right pannel of Track view, and select "Piano Roll". This will open what we call
"Piano Roll View" or we sometime call it simply "PRV". It has "Piano" that appears on your left hand side. You can click the keys to audition the sound of particular key. When the track is assigned to MIDI channel 10, it will appear as name of drums note (eg. Kick, Snare, Hihat, Toms, etc...). In the lower part of this window, you can see the velocity (note strength) of the notes above it. It represent numbers between 0 to 127. The higher the number, more strong the note being hit. It usualy correspond to note's level.
As you have found it, the
"Staff View" consists of musical staff written on standard music fonts. You know... emmhhh... I rarely use this view, but it's good when you need to print the staff of your composition. If you're good on writting in staff view, then you can use it to enter and edit MIDI notes into particular tracks by "writing" them using "pencil". However, it's abit difficult to do editing details here compared to on Piano Roll View. If you want to print the staff, then open this Staff View, click File, and select Print.
bob young said:
My controller is a cheap yamaha keyboard with basic midi capabilities...enough to keep me going until I can replace my beloved Korg X3 and 01WFD that I lost in the fire.
It's too bad to hear. I know how to deal with both those Korg with my eyes closed. Anyway, any cheap keyboard that has MIDI In and Out connection will do just fine for inputing MIDI data into Cakewalk. We can always edit those recorded MIDI data later...
bob young said:
Here's what I CAN"T figure out.
As I said on an earlier thread, when I'm composing on keyboard, I write in 8 bar sections (usually)
I will create a basic track usually with piano, bass and drums.
Then I will experiment combining that section with other sections to create longer phrases, additional verses etc. until I have mapped out a song.
So, I may record an eight bar section, then a totally different 16 bar section and try the 16 into the 8 or vice versa.
My sequencer was an Alesis mmt8, and the process was very easy.
Also on the mmt8, I could take 8 tracks to get a piano part just right.
Then I could edit each of the 8 tracks and then merge them into one track.
Now, I'm sure Cakewalk can do the same thing but they don't call it "merge".
So...I can't locate that function.
My drum trax on cakewalk are on two tracks...I can't find a way to combine them into one (or merge,using the alesis terminology) to free up a track for another instrument.
You can do similiar work ith Cakewalk. You can record 1 piano track to track 1. Add new track, make necessary adjustment (MIDI out port setting, channel setting, bank and patch sellect, etc.) record piano 2 on track 2... and so on, until you have 8 tracks of piano or... uuhm... hundreds of them if you like
Then you may like to do editing on each tracks one at a time in Piano Roll View. To do so, select the track in Track View. Right click on the right pannel. Menu will appears, select Piano Roll View. It will open Piano Roll View for selected track. You may then edit the MIDI data of the track. Do same procedure on each tracks until you're satisfied. You can ask in this forum if you have any difficulties on editing the MIDI data. Then you can "Merge" them to free up the tracks (or to make it easier to control them at once). To do so, after you finished MIDI editing, close the Piano Roll View. Maximize the Track View window, and on the left pannel, select tracks you want to "Merge". In older Cakewalk, we call it
"Copy-Paste to one track" or in the newer version we call it
"Bounce to track". It has similiar function, only different procedure and purposes. We can discuss about this function later, for now, lets get focused on your current situation.
After all tracks (you want to "merge") have been selected, you can see on the right pannel all selected data is being highlighted. If you want to skip particular track in between selected tracks to "merge", simply hold the
ctrl key on your qwerty keyboard, and click the track you want to skip on the left pannel. The track will be un-selected. You can take a minute to try it to know what I'm talking about.
After all necessary tracks is selected, then on the right pannel, click your right mouse button. Select "Copy". You may also use roll down
Edit menu on the top of the window to select copy function.
Now you have copy all those tracks to clipboard (temporary storage). Pick one MIDI track as destination. You can add one first if necessary, then select it. On the right panel, click your right mouse button, and select "Paste to one track". Click it.
If you do it right, then you'll see the data is being "merged" to the destination track. If it doesn't work, or you have difficulties, back here and ask, we'll help you out...
bob young said:
Also, these "markers" are driving me nuts..
I can't figure out how to use them...I can make them appear but I can't make them go away !
Is any of this making sense ?
Umh... those markers are there for several purposes. As for me, it makes me easier to remember particular points/part/posotions of the song. You can add/delete/edit by using
View roll down menu on top of the window, and select "Marker". There you can delete it if you want to. Select the marker, and press delete button.
Be back after this commercial...
Jaymz
But your response was funny 
D) here that have spent their lifes doing recordings and can handle computers (Dachay being one of them although recording is a hobby, isn't it Dachay?).
