Thanks for the reply. I guess the answer really is to just try it and see (hear) if it enhances the sound or detracts from it. Especially within the context of the entire mix. Is the Bass Expansion Pack included with the Sonar download or is there a separate download somewhere that I should be aware of. I'd like to try these Gibson bass patches out.

I like bass.
Thanks.

Thanks for the great tip.  I've actually been playing around lately with multiband compression on my bass track with side chain triggering.  I produce electronic music and want a prominent 4x4 kick, so I've got the kick triggering the compression on the lowest band on the bass synth so it ducks.  I like using the Waves C6 which happens to be on sale now, and I'm sure there's other great multiband compressors with sidechaining as well.  

Another great tip Craig. I almost always use compression when processing bass. More than just about any other instrument, apart from drums, I find it one of the hardest to tame and fit into a mix. This tip is really useful and a great insight into the way someone else uses Cakewalk and it's processors.

Craig - can you share the settings for all bands in the top image?

That "Tuned Thunder" setting really made the part sit wonderfully in the mix. I used Dim Pro's "Dull Bass 1" and applied the Sonitus MB to the bounced audio. Round, warm, sits perfectly in the mix. Thanks for this tip; I think I'll be using it all the time!

Week 165: The Modeled Guitar Tone Control
 
A lot of people think that guitar tone controls just roll off the highs. Well, yes…but…they also interact with pickups to produce a midrange peak. After all, we’re dealing with capacitance and inductance, and you know what happens when they get intimately involved with each other.
 
Anyway, rolling off the highs with a tone control can help create smoother, creamier distortion. However, guitarists are also fond of trying out different tone control capacitor values to vary the tone control characteristics, as well as using different volume control settings because they influence the action of the tone control. This involves finding capacitors, warming up a soldering iron, voiding your guitar’s warranty, and of course, remembering never to solder with shorts on.
 
But hey, it’s the 21st century! We don’t need soldering irons to change capacitors, we can create a virtual tone control and model what would happen with different capacitor values simply by changing filter frequencies…which brings us to this week’s tip.
 

 
(To see this full size, right-click on it and open it in a new tab...then click again to magnify it. Or right-click and copy the image, then paste into a paint program.)
 
The filter curve is typical of how tone controls interact with pickups. Note the additional high frequency “bump” that’s found on some guitars, which gives an even more distinctive sound. If you suspect this curve models certain Gibson guitars, you’d be right—because I was able to borrow a bunch of guitars and analyze them, which I did with the volume control turned down partway. This “tone control” doesn’t emulate any one guitar, but is sort of a composite, and taken to a bit more of an extreme than passive circuits just so that you could be somewhat amused on a Friday evening.
 
Band 1 emulates the high frequency rolloff we associate with guitar tone controls. It’s tracked by Band 2, which provides the midrange bump. The EQ folds into an FX Chain so that one control could cause the two bands to track each other properly. We’ve covered FX Chains before, and this is a simple one—after all, it has only one knob. Right-click on it, and set the start and end points for the two bands as shown in the screen shot.
 
Use this “tone control” after your DIed guitar (or synth patch playing something guitar-like) but before distortion, and you too can have that creamy, smooth distortion sound. 

never to solder with shorts on.
 
Church.

Since I assume this is a lesson for those who are not experts, I'll go ahead and ask the dumb question.  Where do you get the gold box with the tone control?

Week 166: Perk Up Percussion with Probability
 
Time for a step sequencer tip! But before you click over to something else, you might want to keep reading because we're going to make the step sequencer a whole lot more interesting.
 
Let's face it, few sounds are as boring as placing a note on every step of a step sequencer. In fact, there are rumors that you can force unwanted house guests to flee in terror simply by placing a tambourine hit on every step of a sequencer, and looping it.
 
No, the tip is not how to get rid of unwanted house guests.
 
So here's the deal. SONAR's Step Sequencer makes it easy to draw velocity curves that affect each step. If we take our tambourine part and do the following, we'll have a much better part. Here the 1 and 3 are emphasized the most, with 2 and 4 next. The level of the hits falls off a bit at the end so you're ready to start over with the emphasized 1.
 

 
However, what makes the Step Sequencer graduate from "cool" to "outstanding" is the Probability curve. The changes the probability of any given hit occurring at its appointed time.
 

 
Here, the 8th notes play all the time, but the remaining 16th notes play...most of the time. The difference this makes in "humanizing" the sound is really quite stunning.
 
But wait! There's more: timing offsets. 
 

 
Here you need to be really careful, as just a tiny offset will make a big difference. Offsets below the line push the hit slightly early compared to the beat, offsets above the line push the hit slightly late. The eraser tool can erase the offsets. The above example pushes 1, 2, 3, and 4 slightly ahead of the beat to give a sense of urgency, and it really does make a difference in making the feel more "on top" of the beat.
 
This technique of dropping out 16th notes from time to time seems to work best with percussion, but if you don't get too crazy, it can also do cool things with hi-hats. And if you're interested in hi-hats, be sure to check out the tip for Week 141, which makes a good companion to this tip.

Russ.15
I hesitate to bring this up again, but going back to week 159 - Matrix triggering: I have everything working as far as the MIDI routing with LoopBe1. The thing is, it won't trigger more than one cell at a time. So if I have a nice beat laid out in MIDI, it drops everything except for (presumably) the first cell. In other words, it's operating monophonically instead of like a polyphonic instrument. Any ideas?

It's an easy fix. Never hesitate to bring something up about a past tip, I usually do these late on a Friday and I'm not always at the top of my game...and in this case, for those who don't use the Matrix View much, I should have mentioned that the Matrix View triggers multiple clips per column, but only one clip per row (the opposite of Ableton Live, which triggers multiple clips per row but only one clip per column). Stack the one-shots one above another in a column to be able to trigger them polyphonically.
 
Also note that the in the screen shots, Cell Start wasn't on. I don't know if this makes a difference, but I've edited the original post with revised screen shots, and the above information about polyphonic playing.
 
Finally, one other addition. In Step 2, I said "Use MIDI Learn (right-click on a cell) to assign the Matrix View pads to MIDI notes. (I don’t think MIDI Learn assignments are remembered with projects or templates...if not, time for a feature request.)"
 
However I've since found that if even one cell contains data, it appears a template will remember MIDI Learn assignments for all cells, whether empty or not.

Well that probability tip sure was a dud. Onward...

A couple of projects could have used that trick. I think I'll redo them now. Another way to look at things is always good!
Michael

I don't understand why one would not want to bounce em.
Someone want to enlighten me?