I'm new to all this production stuff but I thought it wastime to get into the 21st century , so I bought myself a Roland PRO 300 c/w Cakewalk SOnar LE 8.5 . I asked the guy in the shop if it would work on my laptop ( a Dell xps l511z with windows 7 64bit OS) I also bought a Samson G Track microphone) My objective isnt to become a producer, just to be able to layer up my worktapes a little better than just guitar vox on my phone.
I've read the tutorials and tried finding one a basic beginners video on the net , which there are a few, but what they all take for granted is that one knows the terminology and so they tend to miss out the really , seemingly obvious first steps.
So I have managed to set it all up ( I think) and I have attempted my first guitar vocal, which seems to be ok , though I havent spent lots of time on it yet as I wanted to get a drum track down first and start adding instruments before I record a vocal and start putting extra effects in. My problem is this : ( I've bullett pointed what I'm doing so someone could perhaps see if I've done something wrong):
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- I right click on the desk top icon for sonar LE and it has an option to “run as administrator” so I click it
- I notice comes up asking me if I want cakewalk to make changes to this computer so I click yes and Sonar opens
- I click open a new project from the start menu and a box opens up with a series of Templates , I give it a name and choose “normal “ and click ok
- two tracks come up – 1 is Midi, the other is Audio – I have my Roland PRO 300 plugged in so I test the keys and it plays ok
- I dont have my mic plugged in at the moment so I’m not going to test the audio just yet , though I have tested it previously and all seems fine but for the purposes of this email, I want to make sure I can enter synths from the programmes in Cakewalk at least ( I’m sure I’ll be asking more questions and studying more tutorials once I get onto adding effects but for now , I simply want to get started by putting down a drum track
- Nest , I click on insert/ soft synths/ SI Drums and a dialogue box comes up , so I Tick “simple instrument track” and “synth Property page” and “recall assignment controls” and click OK
- Si Drums opens up and a new track is entered on the track view
- I check the settings of the track – input says omni and is ticked none , output says “master” and then I notice there is a setting for “CH” and a list of SI drum kits is available , so I click on number 14 drum kit
- I then go to the drum kit panel and click soul& funk , I click classic, loop and play, I also drag “classic “ into on of the 4 pads on the bottom left hand side of the panel and the full drum kit starts to play in a loop. If I turn loop off and click the pad , it plays for around 1 measure
- I then click and drag “classic” into my track view and click play – The track plays for a full measure, BUT at around half the TEMPO and not the full kit seems to play
- So this is where I’m lost !
- I’ve tried highlighting each of the drums used in the sequence and dragging the “classic “ across, once for each highlight , Ive tried changing the tempo – If I shorted the clip to half a measure, it plays correctly but when I copy and past that or try to open it up , to say 3 measures, it plays random parts of the loop and not all the drum sequence together.
- I have tried going into my programme files and running SI Drums as administrator separately but that doesnt seem to work
That’s as far as I can get without spending hours going back and forth between irrelevant tutorials and reading the help sections and forums , restarting and opening more new projects. I've tried uninstalling and re installing. All to no avail.