Teaching Aids
I am a new user of Cakewalk and need to find some sort of training assistance. I bought a book entitled The Absolute Beginners Guide to Cakewalk, but it presumed I understood MIDI. All I really want to do is to be able to record from my Clavinova to Cakewalk and put the music on a CD so I can use it as I direct a children's choir (in lieu of trying to direct and play at the same time). I have spent nearly 6 weeks getting the cabling figured out. One of the local techies at the music store has helped me with that, but even his instructions are nearly too advanced. And I thought learning to play the piano was hard! Thank you. Mary
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jose99
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RE: Teaching Aids
February 18, 04 1:01 AM
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I thought Pugeot quit making the Clavinova some years ago. And why would anyone want to hook a car up to their CakeWalk? Just kidding!?  Is your Clavinova connected by wire to your computer? By MIDI or USB? Or, do you plan to mic the Clavinova? (What is a Clavinova anyway? It sounds like some sort of musical, exploding astronomical body.) Is your Clavinova MIDI capable? If not, you don't need to know anything about MIDI. Tell us a little more and we can probably help you, or steer you in the right direction. jose99
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SteveJL
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RE: Teaching Aids
February 18, 04 7:40 AM
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Hello Mary. I'm not sure which Cakewalk product you have, but I will assume you have or are considering Home Studio 2004(or XL) or simply, HS2004. From your description, it sounds like you won't need MIDI hookup - MIDI is basically a Connection that allows HS2004 to act as a Sequencer or "Event Recorder" as opposed to an "Audio Recorder" (which HS2004 does also). Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you want to play in Real-time and use your computer and HS2004 as a glorified "tape recorder". If this is the case, you should go into the Help menu and work through the tutorials (primarily about recording audio). In a nutshell, what you will be doing is connecting the Audio Output of the Clavinova to the Audio Input of your Computer's sound card, "Arming" an Audio track in HS2004 and recording youself playing a song, then adding additional tracks (if desired), then Exporting these track(s) to a WAV file that can be put on CD. Experienced Users: please correct/clarify any inaccuracies, thanx. There is a User on this Forum known as RockMaestro who has put some Extremely helpful information on his Web page at www.peter.raffensperger.org (hope you don't mind Peter :-) that you may find useful. Hope this helps Steve steve.leake@sympatico.ca
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novelwriter56
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RE: Teaching Aids
February 18, 04 10:26 AM
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I would assume that you have to plug the clainova into an amp so it can be heard by all. I would also think that it has a headphone output. If it has a headphone output, I would use that to record through. If you don't have an interface, you will need one. I have a Sounblaster MP3 USB interface that I bought at Walmart for around $50.00. This one is for digital audio only. If you have outputs on the clavinova, I wouldn't even mess with midi, as it is more difficult to work with. Most of the Soundblasters I have seen on this forum get blasted (no pun intended) for being problematic. I haven't had any trouble with this one, but I am not looking for studio grade sound either. Most outputs are 1/4" so you will need to make your way to a local Radio Shack for the proper adapters to fit the 1/4" into the SB jack. The steps are pretty simple of digital audio. Click "new project". A box will open that will more than likely have "normal" highlighted. Use normal for digital audio. The program will open. There will be two (with HS2004XL at least) tracks available. One will have a round symbol (midi), the other will be like a red lightning bolt (digital audio). Maximize the red one. You will want to be sure things are set in order before you go any further. OPTIONS - AUDIO is the first place to go. On "General", there is a "Wave profiler" button on the bottom left. Click that to make sure things are set. Next, go to drivers (I think) to make sure your interface is showing up in the program. Be sure the interface is the top one, and not your computer's soundcard, Once this is set, you will see a level meter, but it will not show any activity until you arm the track by clicking the red "R", and the instrument is connected to the interface. If you want to use the metronome, you will have set it to the speeds you want, as well as giving it a countdown measure or two. Hit a few keys and watch the meter to make sure it doesn't go into the red at all. If it does, bring the volume of the instrument or the track volume down until it stays below the red. If it goes into the red at all at any time, it will make some nasty crackles. Hit the record button or hit "r" on the keyboard to begin recording. After you have completed your recording, hit the space bar to stop. If all went well, you see what you have recorded in the pane to the right. Click the transport to take it back to the beginning, then listen your final work. If all sounds good, you can add effects from there, or add a complimentary part, or vocal, or what ever you want by going to "insert - add audio track". This will bring up a second red lightning track that you can repeat the recording process with. Don't make the mistakes I have done in the past and forget to unclick the "R" button from the previous track, or it will simply record over the one you had recorded prior. The great thing about HS is that if you do make a mistake, you can go to edit, click undo, and everything will be back where it was. Homestudio is a great (and easy) program once you work your way through the preliminaries. It is very easy to use with digital audio. I am just starting to mess with midi. It has far more hoops to jump through to get anywhere, but I am sure I will like it just as well once I figure it out. If you decide you want to add effects, just left click the clip pane on the right side to highlight it. Go to "Process". Go to audio effects to experiment. If you don't like the effect, go to "Edit". The last effect you added will be there to undo.
Michael
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RE: Teaching Aids
February 22, 04 9:03 AM
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Thank you! Unfortunately when I used the headphone jacks I could not hear my keyboard as I was recording. I changed to the "Aux" outs on the keyboard and that worked fine through my Edirol USB connection to the computer. I recorded and then exported. Unfortunately now I'm having some sort of runtime error with Musicmatch on my computer that won't let me play the recording or burn it to the CD. Can you help here or do I need to find one of my computer techies to help with this?
I was able to record using the MIDI and then recorded those tracks to audio before. I think now that my problem may, in fact, be the Musicmatch program, whatever that is.
For simple recording, however, I think your solution will be the best once I get the musicmatch error corrected
Thank you
Mary
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RE: Teaching Aids
February 22, 04 9:39 AM
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I just figured out that if I removed the USB connection, I could then hear the piece I recorded in audio on the ocmputer. Now if I can just figure out the musicmatch runtime error, then I may be on my way. In the meantime, I e-mailed my music file to another computer and I will see if I can burn it there. That will be slow as it took forever to e-mail a small music file, but it appears that the problem is not Cakewalk, but just another dumb user.
I think that my problem may have been connections all along. It never occurred to me to remove them before recording, etc.
Thank you, again.
Mary
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novelwriter56
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RE: Teaching Aids
February 22, 04 11:49 AM
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I guess I wasn't thinking ahead. I have to use an adapter so that I can have one plug to hear the keyboard while the other goes to CW. As far as the Musucmatch problem, I have glitches from time to time, but never a runtime error. If anyone was going to have a runtime error it should be me, as one of my songs is 107 MB and another is 119 MB. Even converted to MP3 they are still very large. I've wasted many CDs that way. Your computer should have another program for burning. My HP computer has a program called Record Now. I use it whenever Musicmatch is giving me attitude. Keep an eye on this forum for issues. Most of what I have learned has come from the good people here, since the tutorials and help guides are tooled toward users that actually have an idea of what they are doing. I do not fall into that category. I am very new to Cakewalk.
Michael
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