the one armed/hand keyboard musician

[GregC]

Karma can't wait? Funny on too many levels.
(The title of course, not the song, which is quite nice).

This is why I don't own a motorcycle. I'd ride the same way I drive and be dead in a week.

I took a sharp left into a parking lot with curbs in my Vette years ago (okay, I was doing 60), and heard 8 distinct thunks as I fishtailed sideways and each wheel banged over the curb and then back off again. Put a two inch notch in one wheel, but the only damage was to the car. Try that stuff on a Harley and they'll be scraping you off the pavement. So the lesson for me was, "know thyself."

I only use the DAW to record (Cubase in my case), so it's easy to lay down multiple overlapping parts. I could lay down MIDI for the right hand, then put the left hand on another track, then just point them both the the keyboard and press record. Not sure if you record exclusively into the Kronos or into a DAW, so layering may not be as easy for you.

Cool new toy! The demos I've seen make it look like a lot of fun. Looking forward to hearing what you do with it.

hi Chris, I am with you on the motor cycle. never been on one and it will never happen.

glad you like my last tune, thanks !

I am last man standing as to recording all tracks , 100% kronos, on the seq.

which is going to change to cubase le ai, as I have MODX.

have lots of learning curve over the next 2 months.

the larger instrument palette will be fun.

[GregC]

That is truly a total bummer.

Have you thought about a footswitch to trigger the pads, one with a sweepable pedal to change your KARMA scenes? My foot controller generates midi CC's, I went for years with my M3 where I was playing parts with my foot while doing guitar. I always had a spare so if you are interested I'll look in the closet. Yamaha MFC10, it's programmable, each button can be momentary or latched and the pedal can be constrained to 8 values for your scenes. Works great with the Kronos too. Let me know. You can borrow it until you heal.

Best of luck,
Eric

Very kind offer, Eric, thanks !. my '' foot work '' is not precise while recording . I think I can get along punching in a karma scene[s] with a button on the song track/measures.

I don't mind some tedious work while recording.

I need to slow down, and study my MODX for the next month or 2. maybe thats the silver lining.

[ChrisDuncan]

Like a lot of guys here, my recording background started with tape (actually stereo sound-on-sound before multitrack). I don't miss tape even a little, and gleefully set all my tape decks on fire and roasted marshmallows when I bought three ADATs.

I was late to the party with ADATs as this was the mid 90s, and at that point I had one foot in each world of analogue and PC as I did all my MIDI stuff with Cakewalk, back when they were just MIDI and the best in that category. So, tracking and mixing was a hodge podge between the ADAT tracks and a Mackie 24 channel mixer + rack gear, but with keyboards being sequenced on computer and then feeding the JV-2080. It worked, and it was cool, but also a bit clumsy.

Eventually I ditched the ADATs for a 24 track Mackie HDR digital recorder running ADAT light pipe / Toslink to the D8B mixer. More convenient than ADAT. When native DAWs that didn't require Pro Tools hardware became a thing I went through a few different things and ended up on Cubase, at first tracking on the HDR and then FTPing the tracks to Cubase for mixing.

Cubase (and others) kept getting better, and eventually they were stable enough to track on even with a modest PC. By then their MIDI implementation was on par with what Cakewalk used to be, and I was finally integrated in the box for keyboards / sequencing, audio tracking, and mixing. No more rack gear with Polaroid-only recall, patch cables, twitchy patch bays, ADATs with $500 head stack replacements, etc. No more back and forth between various gear. It all happens in Cubase.

Preferences vary of course, but having been through all the other technologies I absolutely love being 100% in the box. Sure, computers have their own class of hassles, but the good outweighs the bad on most days. I've never used the Kronos sequencer because for me it's so much easier to use an all encompassing environment, and just use the Kronos as the world class keyboard that it is.

Tons of great YouTube tutorials on Cubase. Yamaha / Steinberg's Greg Ondo is legendary with his short 5 or 10 minute how to videos, always well done and to the point. And if you ever get wrapped around the axle, I'm just a PM away and happy to help. It's huge fun once you get a feel for the wheel.

[holdsg]

and here I thought this thread was going to be about how to play well with others in a band (mostly RH). Sorry about your accident and injury Greg, here's to a complete recovery.

[yeskeys]

Chris - Is Cubase the DAW to get? I've been trying to live off the Kronos sequencer but I keep banging my head.

I go back to the tape days, graduating to an Otari 24 track before getting the very first Pro Tools. I used Studiovision in those days and it was wonderful, I never hand any serious issues like I've had ever since I left pro audio for a long time and came back.

I'm seriously looking at a DAW, but I hate having to use a computer after a long day of work (on a computer).

[ChrisDuncan]

Chris - Is Cubase the DAW to get? I've been trying to live off the Kronos sequencer but I keep banging my head.

I go back to the tape days, graduating to an Otari 24 track before getting the very first Pro Tools. I used Studiovision in those days and it was wonderful, I never hand any serious issues like I've had ever since I left pro audio for a long time and came back.

I'm seriously looking at a DAW, but I hate having to use a computer after a long day of work (on a computer).

I make a living as a programmer, so I hear you on staring at a computer. That said, the Kronos is also a computer so for me it's a matter of what's the best computer to use for a given job, and DAWs have a lot more features and screen real estate.

"Which DAW to use" is somewhere between preference, need and religious attachment. To a very large degree, they all do the same things.

Pro Tools still has the image of being the "industry standard," but that's mostly because they were there first and not because they're any better than the other options. I don't use PT because of a) hardware expense and b) now, subscription model. I got burned by the Adobe Tax and said never again. The pluses are the fact that it's widely used and has good ego acceptance, so if you're delivering to pro studios it's an expectation.

Cakewalk was the best of the best for MIDI, and so they were my first DAW when the added audio. But throughout Cakewalk Pro Audio / Sonar (name change only, really), it was the buggiest of all DAWs, and the clumsiest user interface. When Cubase and others beefed up their MIDI implementation they lost their only edge and I ditched them. BandLab is now free and I've checked it out. Great stuff for free, but still the same old Cakewalk stuff. I'd rather pay for something I feel is better for my needs.

Studio One, FL Studio and Reaper are some of the new kids on the block. They're not quite as mature feature wise, but again, all DAWs at heart do the same things. Studio One has excellent integration with Presonus mixers. Reaper has a less than elegant user interface, but has a reputation for being massively customizable if you don't mind serious geekness to do it.

Ableton Live does support a traditional multitrack view of recording, but that's not really where it shines. It's designed for beat / pad based music and is the first real innovation DAWs have seen in ages. Not relevant for my needs, but if you did that kind of music it's a very clever approach.

As for Nuendo / Cubase, I bought the 2.x version of the former. It was trying to get a foothold in video post production and was $800 versus around $500 for Cubase. However, it only has a small subset of features that Cubase doesn't have (post related), and there were constant complaints that Cubase got the new audio related features before the more expensive product did.

Then they did a 2.1 release that was half a feature and a handful of bug fixes, but the price jumped from $800 to $2400 because they wanted to be taken seriously by the post community and as everyone knows, more expensive is better. That's when I jumped ship to Cubase (there may have been profanity).

You can line Cubase up with all the other suspects and it will have areas where it's better and areas where it's worse. There is no "best," each brings its own strengths and personality to the party. Pro Tools seems to retain the "industry standard" sheen for tracking and mixing in "pro" studios, and Cubase seems to be the leading preference for composers. They often still have to interact with Pro Tools sessions because Industry Standard, and thus do their composing in Cubase but sometimes deliver in PT.

I have a project studio and don't do this for a living, so I have the freedom to use whatever I like. There's no such thing as software without bugs, but Cubase is far more stable the Sonar ever was, and I've always felt the user interface was a vast improvement over my time with PT. For keyboard players, the MIDI feature set is excellent.

If you buy a $200 UR-22 audio interface (or any others from Steinberg), which are very good quality, you get a free lite version of Cubase that's the real deal minus extended features. The basics for recording are all there.

I've been with Cubase for over a decade and always keep an eye on new software in the DAW space, because GAS. I've never seen anything that made me want to switch.

That said, price may also be a consideration. PT is some kind of subscription extortion, Nuage simply isn't worth the money, Cubase is around $600, Studio One $400, FL Studio $200, Reaper $60 and Cakewalk by Bandlab is free.

I'm able to pay for the features I want and the frustrations I want to avoid, but if you just want to get a feel for the wheel on what DAWs are these days, you might start with Cakewalk. It may well be all you need and an experience you enjoy. If not, then you can spend money on something else, but at that point you'll also have a sense of what you want to improve on and thus what's worth the money to you.

[yeskeys]

THanks for your detailed synopsis.

PS - I forgot to mention that I also went the Mackie HDR/D8B route as well. Both ended up in the trash, literally. I got my D8B from that cretin Pat Robertson's studio, they thought the mic pre's were broke but it was just a switch in the wrong position. I paid like 200.

I would never go back to ProTools for sure. I've tried several of the others. I just want the simplest one, as my scoring to picture and locking to TC days are over. I have a PC in my studio solely to run Omnisphere, I'd just like a simple sequencer on there too.

[ChrisDuncan]

I gave my D8B and HDR to a good friend when I switched my mixer to a Yamaha TF5, which also serves as a 32 i/o USB interface. The Mackie stuff was rockin' for its day, but that day was in the 90s. But $200? What a deal! I try not to think of what I paid.

I don't believe that the word "simplest" can be used for any DAW. They all compete on the basis of complex feature sets.

For me the criteria was stability first, as I want to make music, not spend all night fighting with my computer. MIDI was the next big thing for me. Whether I sequence manually or play via a keyboard, there's a huge world of what you can do in that realm and I wanted a good imlementation. Lastly, which is highly subjective, I like the user interface in Cubase over the others.

Naturally because I prefer Cubase, that's what I recommend to friends (plus I can then help them because I know it better than the others), but I tried to be as objective as possible on the other stuff.

And since you've obviously been kicking around as long as me, you already know this - no matter which one you pick there will be frustrations here and there because it's a computer. And there is, I believe, an equal learning curve on each of them. But also lots of YouTube tutorials.

Hope the rambling helped. And next time I want to buy expensive gear you're the guy I'm calling because you obviously live a charmed life.

[nitecrawler]

Greg, get well soon. By the way, "Karma Can't Wait" is cool.

[GregC]

Greg, get well soon. By the way, "Karma Can't Wait" is cool.

thank you, Eric ! likewise, I am enjoying your tracks, good work !

[dfahrner]

After an accident on a local bike path (broken collarbone, no two-handed piano playing, or cycling, for several months, long story), I asked my older brother, a corporate attorney in San Francisco, how I should select a local attorney to represent me in subsequent legal actions, and he said, in his best attorney’s voice, that I should pick a one-armed lawyer...What?...he replied, “Well, when you ask most lawyers what you should do, they say, ‘You could do this, or on the other hand...’ “

df