Yeah I hear ya. When I had full bands and a band room to record in I did not worry about ANY of the other crap. It just went straight into the computer and I didn't even bother learning about/using effects other than EQ and a bit of gain automation when mixing.
 
Now I am on my own though so I have to do all the parts so I HAD to learn about MIDI for my drums. I also needed to keep things in sync for overdubbing and learn about proper mixing so my stuff doesn't sound like arse. It's been... yeesh... two years now and I'm only working on my second full song.
 
BUT because I've spent so much time digging around in all the corners of the program and trying things out when I DO actually sit down to record or mix something it is effortless. I should be able to finally start cranking out quality material much faster than I used to. I mostly just need a lot more practice mixing at this point.
 
And X3 is certainly a very different beast than those older versions so even the basics are likely a little confusing. You seem really quite smart though and understand general recording so it'll likely fall into place quickly.
 
Cheers.

Thanks beep, yep been recording and playing for a long time. Came very close to a life in music and a record deal with Atlantic back in 1982. Would be interested in hearing some of your work as you get it going.
 
Here are some things I've done in the past. All written and recorded by myself and two other guys. I'm the lowly drummer, hahaha. My standard joke.. what do you call a girl who hangs around the band? answer - groupie. What do you call a guy who hangs around the band? answer - the drummer!
 

The latest was the shadows of doubt work which was finished in 1993! With cakewalk midi sync'd to a 16 track tape deck. They are all copyright'd but free to play, just no using the songs or recordings in other works.

The UI with Audiosnap always perplexed me it is not intuitive. This and drummaps are the weakest areas of the X3 UI in my opinion. I can use Audiosnap but every time I have to consult the manual for an hour or something to remind me how it works, hoping X4 entirely redesigns the UI.

Agreed Alex, they need a real musician/engineer to consult with how to do that. It provides some incredible functionality, but it shouldn't be as hard as it is.
 
Even the simple things are a pain. One thing I do sometimes is take a snare part, turn the transients on, copy the transients to a midi note, past that into a session drummer track. Effectively building a session drummer snare track from my recorded snare, mix the two and it's better drum production than trying to add reverb/effects to the recorded snare. In doing that, you have to set the midi note for the transients to the sessions drummer snare note.. Of course the setting in audiosnap is in notes.. eg C3 or whatever, and in session drummer the note is something like "note 38." Arrgh, it always takes me a bit to remember the mapping between C3 and note 36 or 38 or whatever it is.. See I don't remember it now!! 
 
Just making that consistent where both places used the same thing would be a big help.
 
GB

gbowling
Thanks beep, yep been recording and playing for a long time. Came very close to a life in music and a record deal with Atlantic back in 1982. Would be interested in hearing some of your work as you get it going.
 
Here are some things I've done in the past. All written and recorded by myself and two other guys. I'm the lowly drummer, hahaha. My standard joke.. what do you call a girl who hangs around the band? answer - groupie. What do you call a guy who hangs around the band? answer - the drummer!
 
 
The latest was the shadows of doubt work which was finished in 1993! With cakewalk midi sync'd to a 16 track tape deck. They are all copyright'd but free to play, just no using the songs or recordings in other works.

Heh. Seems your link got dropped because you hadn't reached 25 posts yet (the forum won't allow links until after 25). Try again and I'll check them out in a little while. I'll be posting my current creation in the Songs sub forum once it's ready but that may not be for a while. I keep getting distracted by life stuff and I'm trying some of the wackier functions of Sonar for the first time just to wrap my head around them. I'm hoping within a month.
 

CakeAlexS
The UI with Audiosnap always perplexed me it is not intuitive. This and drummaps are the weakest areas of the X3 UI in my opinion. I can use Audiosnap but every time I have to consult the manual for an hour or something to remind me how it works, hoping X4 entirely redesigns the UI.

It really does need some work. I mentioned an updated version of AS to Bill Jackson for the next version and he seemed to like the idea so fingers crossed. That would definitely be something that would make me upgrade sooner than I currently anticipate... provided it works well.
 
I like how Reaper seems to handle that stuff. No muss no fuss.

Hahah, internet police!! 
 
The link is fun dot gbco dot us slash music dot htm.. haha that should get through!

You should be able to post hyperlinks now (unless they change the rules). You were right on the cusp with that original post. Just weird luck/timing. lol

I'll give it a try. 
 
http://fun.gbco.us/music.htm

There ya go. I'm about to do some tracking but I clicked on the first song (lots of material there... cool). Those are some nice signal captures. You must have some good gear back then. Has kind of a Bowie/Talking heads thing going on. Very nostalgic and would probably sell today with some modern mixing.
 
Glad to meet you, man. I'll definitely check out some more stuff later. Cheers.

Thanks man, look forward to hearing some of your stuff as well. I'll be around the forum now that I'm getting back into this stuff.  That's really but a sampling, we have written over 300 songs!! Now-a-days we waffle around between recording an old one we wrote but don't have a recording of or recording a new one as we still are writing things. 
 
I have a couple of new ones in the works so should be able to add a few. I need to find a place to upload them, I had a friend who had songs on reverbnation at one point, not sure if they are even still around. But need a place to upload and sell/share songs at some point.