The Linear Canvas
This journal is about the wrongs and rights of the world, as I see them.

The Linear Canvas

My Recorded Cover Songs – Sex and Candy (karaoke)

January 26th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

alex06I am not a big karaoke fan, although I certainly see the value in using it to have a little fun.

I decided to record me singing another favorite song of mine from a karaoke disc. I just recorded The Middle using a karaoke disc that I had, last night. There are many more songs on these discs, but I am not sure I am going to record anymore of them. I probably could’ve performed the music on this real fast and ended up with approximately the same song. But when I say “real fast”, I doubt if I could have done it in less than forty-eight hours. This I did in three. Only focusing on the vocals makes things go a lot faster and I still have a bunch of fun.

Sex and Candy has been a favorite song of mine for several years. I have the band Marcy Playground’s, album with Sex and Candy on it. I think I have another Marcy Playground CD too. I like their lyrics and the coolness of the over all sound. The rest of this particular CD has that same slow burn. I am not sure about the other CD. Sometimes I buy CD’s by bands I like, but never get around to listening to them.

Sex and Candy

[audio:http://www.linearcanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Sex and Candy_m.mp3]

My Recorded Cover Songs – The Middle (karaoke)

January 25th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

axes1When I was organizing my CD’s, I found a karaoke disc that I bought several years ago. It was made by/for M-TV and has many  songs on it that I like. I guess that’s why I bought it. I hadn’t done anything with it until tonight.

As I was looking at the contents I noticed it had the song The Middle which was originally recorded by the band Jimmy Eats World. I have their CD that contains The Middle and it is one of my favorite songs. I decided to play around with it and ended up recording me singing it.

I didn’t play any instruments on this recording and there is also a back ground vocal in it that’s not me. Otherwise all the vocals are mine. I started on this really late (it’s 1:30 AM right now) and I didn’t warm up my voice at all. I also didn’t have enough water while I was singing. I hope I can talk tomorrow. As the song got near the end, I was losing my voice. Oh well, I think it came out pretty good anyway. Who needs to talk?

The Middle

[audio:http://www.linearcanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/The Middle 20120125_1729m.mp3]

PreSonus FaderPort and Cakewalk Sonar Key Mappings

January 3rd, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

PreSonus FadePortI bought my PreSonus FaderPort about two years ago. It is a USB controller for use with digital audio workstation (DAW) software like Sonar, Cubase, or Pro Tools. I am generally satisfied with it. It works mostly as advertised.

I recently reinstalled my Cakewalk Sonar v8.5 Producer on a different computer. Initially I had trouble getting the FaderPort to show up in the Controller/Surface list. But copying the correct 32 or 64 bit FaderPort.dll file to the proper Shared Surfaces folder in the Programs Files/Cakewalk folder, then registering the file with REGSVR32, does the trick. But that was the easy part. I couldn’t remember how to program the key mappings for my life.

One of the main selling points of the FaderPort was that five of its keys could be customized to the user’s needs. These Custom Key Mappings were prominent in the ad for the device, but nothing on the web site mentioned the mappings at all. And if it was in the manual, I couldn’t find it. I searched everywhere for an hour, trying to remind myself how I’d accomplished it last time, two years ago.

I decided to just play around with the controller options in Sonar. I finally looked at the Controller/Surfaces toolbar and then I remembered there was a properties button on it. I pressed the button and there were the key map settings I had spent way too much time looking for.

If I were going to change the FaderPort in any way, besides mentioning the properties page that the installation includes with the FaderPort driver in the manual, it would to be able to switch to Track View using one of the customizable buttons. For whatever reason that option has been left out of the key mapping list, while a plethora of other useless objects were included. There are even mappings for other views. Including a mapping for the console view which already is a permanent map on another key.

I wrote PreSonus and told them that once, and I got no response. It was probably because I use the FaderPort on Sonar instead of their DAW software, Studio One. That’s OK. I am just glad it works as well as it does. Next time at least I can find the answer to this problem on my own web site. Too bad PreSonus doesn’t have it on theirs.