Cakewalk MIDI Sequencing Step 1, Using TTS-1 in Multi-Timbral Mode

hello boys and girls and welcome to a tutorial on how to use cakewalk for midi sequencing i'll be using the virtual instrument gts1 and within cakewalk uh for this exercise now just remind you bandlab cape walk is a completely free digital audio workstation that you can download for windows sadly not available for macs at its current time it's really rather good and worth checking out i'm going to start off with empty projects to see how it's set up i'm also using a rather let's say low budget laptop here so i'm going to make sure that this budget i'm going to use the tts one in what's called multi-table mode that means i'm using one instance of the instrument and i'm using the different midi channels to play different instruments from different tracks within the software uh maybe i'm talking about a lot of stuff you may or may not be aware of but very briefly midi is uh quite old technology now but very clever designed in the 80s designed so that a hardware sequencer or perhaps a keyboard controller could play lots of other synthesizers and things in the studio by sending information down 16 different channels imagine a bit like phone lines so number one would go to the dx7 or something and play a playstyle number two would go to the uh jupiter and play a nice pad but we're doing this all inside the box now and i'm saving on cpu power by using one instance of the vt as well dts one is a virtual instrument that comes free with cape walk so let's look at setting that up now several ways of getting this going but i like to go by insert soft synth cakewalk tts1 and it will give you this window which is a bit of a minefield when you first look at it it took me a bit of playing around but to set this up in multi-tampon mode you need to have these options here instrument track output i want for stereo so i can maximize you to the lovely effects that built into the ttx one nothing else selected and okay gives you by default four tracks the dts-1 actually has 16 channels in it and play 16 instruments at once i'm zooming in to have a pro to look it's ranked you know set up just the same as logic or cube bass uh in terms you've got all your functionalities like mute solo automation um you click on the smaller the two instruments open the actual tts one itself there it is looks like a desk because it's got like uh 16 channel to 16 instruments and you can adjust the levels you've got up here reverb chorus panning left to right edit button to get more stuck into the actual functionality of each channel so you can change some of the synthesizer settings things like that i won't do that in this tutorial i'm going to keep it short at the moment it's set up with pianos on every single channel except for number two which is a standard drum set anybody's familiar with some of the general midi will know that it's standard that you have your drums on channel 10. so we don't need a piano on every channel but let's just listen to this piano though because it's uh hmm that wasn't me playing i wish it was that sounds very authentic that's free that's pretty good for free isn't it but to change the instruments i'm going to change this one on some of these other channels here well i've used the four we'll set up just click somewhere in that channel change the preset bit of fret spaces that sounds like the bottom there again [Music] again i wish i was me playing it it wasn't very authentic sound very nicely programmed man um what will complement that channel three i'm going to set up some different sounds some strings orchestra no i'm going to go with synth pad warm pad that's got to be good that's got to sound like a jupiter or something isn't it um quite delicious and of course we've got my standard set you change out there's various sets in there electronics said let's close the instrument it'll be still running in the background and let's go over here left hand side you've got your inspector and all sorts of tools plugged in these are like kind of effects plugins use like eqs and compressors i'll come to those another tutorial we want to actually change this to the midi view midi already musical instrument digital interface where the channels of information that's set up and we want to make sure that these tracks are going to the right instruments attract one should automatically be channeled to channel one there it is the cakewalk tts one so that should play the piano now i've got one of these [Music] so if you haven't got a keyboard don't panic you can actually set up folders on your computer let's put like the computer keyboard on and now we've got use the um letters on the computer keyboard let's check out these other channels so when you select the channel you'll see it kind of goes a beigey color and you know selected that should be the base yeah and this should be the pad yeah this last one now it won't be this will be set to number four remember that the drums were actually on channel 10 weren't made so it was change that channel 10 right let's just change the octave there to get the kick and snare that i want to record don't forget to set your bpm you'll find that nearly all digital audio works sections of that all level team always be full to 120 because somebody great i can't remember who once said natives that 120 bp game is the perfect tempo to keep people dancing so lots of 80s pop records 120 ppm i also want a metronome that's this thing here so i can stay in time if you get a setup window i want it on playback and recording so i heard it click click click i'm going to give myself a counting of two measures or two bars if you don't set a pre count then as soon as you better call your recording and you'll miss the first couple of entries and apply that and then close and right the next thing to do is make sure you arm or record enable the track that you want to record on and because i'm not a computer only nearly a genius i'm going to use something called the input quantize here switch that on now quantize is where the computer works out where you really want to play your notes as opposed to where you actually played them so if you make an error you'll put it into the nearest measure for you uh so when you set the 16th if you're drama you'll know exactly what that means it's like one two three four digital all right so it breaks it by 16th notes you can have it on eighths quarters halves you can have dotted rhythms um whatever you want i'm going to leave this on sixteenths we know it's enabled because the the um the army of the track and record enablers put a little q in there now that be input quantizers on it's much easier to quantize as you go for press record now i should have two bars of cameras in and then i can start recording so okay no okay i hit one wrong note in there but that's okay you see down here we don't have a way for uh because we haven't actually recorded the audio what we've recorded is information triggers but double click on this get a closer look at what's called the piano roll with yellow bars as information has to this note starts here finishes there it's played with this velocity and it's playing this note which is bedroom just fingers it's kind of like recording my um what i'm pressing as opposed to recording in the audio there's a mistake somewhere there it is didn't want that in there you can select it delete it it's gone all right so you can use this piano roll for editing let's put some piano in and it's another interesting quirk because sometimes i can't hear what i'm actually playing on this one so um i think it's because it's the mast track and this computer can't cope with being the master information track and playing the piano and record at the same time find on a higher power computer it should work don't forget disarm the last track i'll record on that one as well select the track you want to record on so you're picking the right track i'm going to put quantize back on again i'm going to arm the track change the octave and octave on my keyboard something very simple right so let's record some piano over these this that drum groove you may or may not be able to hear it to see what happens no god [Music] right here both the drum from the pianos have that little quirks out with the quanta hasn't quite worked out i'm going to leave it in the piano but um i hadn't noticed that in the drums i'm going to work out where that slightly off groove was and fix it um that one there you can see it okay so easy just put in the time nudge it across all right this is gonna let me go back to trap view yes good so i've disarmed chat one yeah well label these don't we like a little easier double click so this is going to be base now i'm going to take the quantize down for this because it's something a bit more simple and put the quantize on again enable it [Music] i was getting my velocities a bit not quite right there but obviously i can fix that in the piano roll let's have a little look and see what's actually recorded there so [Music] just change the blossies there [Music] so um one of those was slightly out so i think it was at the beginning wasn't it i want that actually there i think [Music] same there and you might like some of the areas you get actually quite often i'll use quantizers and something comes up we go oh hello into that let's go back to track view [Music] very simple [Music] right who's boy the mistake i made there in on the right track like easily done really easily done so learn from my mistake don't want that bass [Music] you can undo you yeah it's non-destructive all right i'm not sure i really need quantizing on this one so i'm playing very simple parts again [Music] there we have the very basics of a multi-turbo midi sequence it's just a loop at the moment you can go into a function and um and also one of them up at the stage is you cannot balance things out and at this point in the recording the audio completely failed and corrupted so i'm simply over dubbing this last bit so it doesn't make a lot of sense with the images uh but at this point we've now got a simple midi loop using multitambral uh sequencing with one instrument and i'm just showing here in the picture that you can also use the tts1 because there's a mixer on it so you can start to balance out the sounds a little bit like you were on a mixer so i think i brought the strings down there piano down to get the groove out a bit more and even do a bit of panning left and right you can increase decrease the reverb take the reverb off the base you don't reveal one bass do you that sort of thing but that's essentially it folks i'm going to do another tutorial another point to show where to go from here i need to roll this one out pretty quick for my students so um yeah i may replace it one day but hopefully this is useful for you right now and i'll speak to you again soon try for now

Channel: Sound Advice

Views: 1,743

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: BTEC, Level 3, Level 2, Music Technology, Music Practice, Rock School, Music Production Techniques, Unit 25, UAL, Sequencing, Music Production, Bandlab, Cakewalk

Id: uURpyijHZdg

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021