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hello,


i wish the next version of PowerTracks includes VST, VSTi, DX and DXi automation.


thanks

Hello! and volume, pan, and all the other automations!! Nice simple node system we can use like the one in cakewalk MC5

This is pretty standard fare now with DAW software - even in the price range of PTPA and one upgrade. I guess I thought it was already there (can you tell I haven't upgraded in awhile?).

Piano roll lets you draw volume, fades, panning, aftertouch, AUX send ... lots of stuff.

I played with that last night Bob, and you are right it does have basic simple automation. I would still like to see that refined to somewhat comes in Sonar or even MC5, with a node system. The existing one is a bit funny with all the little sticks and such.

Ideally, you will want your DAW to be able to inherit all of the controls offered to it by a VST or VSTi in your signal chain for a track, and offer graphical envelope controls of these via the DAW. I use this quite a bit to add texture to synth and guitar parts; mainly through filter automation of cutoff and resonance values in filter effects, but also to feedback amounts and so forth with delays and reverbs.

Examples from my recent February Album Writing Month songs:

You will hear me mess with filter settings on the guitar parts in this song, "Rest Ye, Orion", which I did by randomly drawing in filter cutoff and resonance values that morph throughout the song. http://fawm.org/songs/12367/ The filter VST I used was the freebie Frohmage.

You will note there is no technical wizardry in the playing of this very simple tune. It's the automated controls of various things, mainly the filter parameters and feedback on the delay (and a bit of the aux send to my favorite reverb VST) which give the depth and movement to this piece. This was about a 2 hour effort from soup to nuts; without proper automation, I'm not even sure that I would have the same result.

Same trick applied to this tune, 'Raining Fire'. In fact, I think I used the previous song as a template and just re-recorded various tracks - I inherited the automation curves from the previous song and let the randomness of the automated filter settings do their own 'japanese watercolor' action on the simple lead guitar line.

http://fawm.org/songs/13115/

(You'll be wanting to forget the poorly hand-programmed drums. ;-) ) Again, these are 1-night efforts at trying to record and somewhat put some intentional production ideas of a mental picture of a song/soundscape. However the automation is central to the thought process from the very beginning. Eventually, I come back around to these songs and redo the actual playing if necessary as is the case with this one - however, the automation is already there for the picking.

With more experimentation with automation, you can get very interesting textures. These examples are very simple but take rather mundane playing and bring a 3rd dimension to them that is difficult to do without either a TapeOp or a 3rd hand on various effects boxes to get the dynamic changes introduced by the automation.