![]() ![]() MIDI tracks go above and beyond this basic setup, with a page for MIDI-specific setup information. If you inspect a buss, you can choose the effect here for the auxiliary send or pick a global effect for the Main. Within the Inspector itself, both audio and MIDI tracks can be sent to the auxiliary outputs for treatment with internal effects or insert channel effects. The Inspector opens with a show/hide button to the left of the Track View, making it easy to switch between working on a single channel's settings and laying in tracks horizontally while working on bigger sections of a song. ![]() While the end user doesn't necessarily want music companies to farm out naming to lipstick makers or house-paint producers, standard and/or descriptive terminology helps. The best improvement in the Track View is the Track Inspector, which is borrowed from Cakewalk's Sonar DAW and replaces the rather unfortunately named SYN.OPS - kudos to Cakewalk for renaming this and the former P-SEQ into more eloquent and functional terms. The Buss Pane may be less flexible than the floating panel in version 1, but is more conventional and, under most circumstances, just as functional. This can be opened up to display not only the four Auxiliary outputs and the Master output, but a tempo track allowing you to draw in tempo changes over time. P5 now has an additional Buss Pane at the bottom of the Track View. The advent of audio recording is another P5 aid to keeping the creative juices flowing - no more having to open another program to drop in an acoustic line, as you do with some rival soft studio applications - and it works as you'd expect. It is also where live MIDI or audio takes appear as you record them. MIDI patterns or audio Clips can be mouse-clicked into a channel or dragged from the Explorer. The right side of the Track View contains the Arrange pane. The supplied presets only scratch the surface of what's possible. The MIDI Track Inspector with the Arpeggiator page and presets open. MIDI channels also have a button to show the channel's instrument properties page so the synth itself pops up. Both Audio and MIDI channels have a button that opens the automation tracks just below the actual recordings. If you are working fast, you can just push the button and keep the flow going instead of having to reset MIDI channel assignments. For the MIDI tracks, there is an MIDI override button which comes in handy - it solos the MIDI input to that channel only, so you aren't laying in a synth solo and having the drums playing along, too. This is basic stuff like audio and MIDI channel settings, track arming, volume, pan, mute and solo. To the left are the Track panes, where each channel is set up. The original Tracker is now called the Track View, although it looks much the same. The standard Windows drop-down menu bar lives at the top of the screen, along with the Main Control View, a bar containing the tempo, play/stop and other such master controls. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll save everyone time by referring to the main screenshot (left). P5 v2 has a cleaner look and easier workspace, several new features including the ability to record audio, and some great new synths. Instead, Cakewalk have upped the ante on what a pattern-based recording environment should be. Project 5 version 2 could have just been a laundry list of improvements with a 2.0 slapped onto the end. Cakewalk have been busy since the first release, however, and have now released an update that's so radical it could almost be a different program. It wrapped a basic line-up of soft synths and tempo-based playback in a DAW-looking package, got good reviews in SOS June 2003 and elsewhere, yet never caught on the way some of the other software did. In some ways, P5 got lost in the 'me too' crush of releases and acquired the image of being a jack of all trades, rather than a master of one. Finally, Cakewalk threw in a collection of audio loops and MIDI patterns. There was also PSYN, a top-of-the-line analogue synth emulator. All were good, if you didn't already have something similar (am I actually complaining about having too many synths?). In addition to playing imported Acid ised loops and plain old WAV files, P5 included a drum pad you could load audio or loops into and play 'live', analogue and sample-based drum machines, as well as a sampler. It shared many features with Acid, Reason, Fruity Loops, Live and the other such packages, and yet was different from any of them. The original version of Cakewalk's Project 5 was released in the flood of audio looper and soft-synth sequencer programs that came out in the last few years. Cakewalk have rethought their Project 5 loop-sequencing application, adding features such as audio recording and a Groove Matrix for triggering patterns live - not to mention a virtual Roland sound module and a powerful new synth.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |