That sounds great! I plan to analyse the sheet music and see if I can identify common patterns, which can be saved and inserted into the piano roll as needed. Then I can work on each violin part in isolation and save to audio. This is not a very natural way to work, but if it saves processor cycles it’s worth the effort.
Edit: I also find I have to trim my fingernails more frequently now, to make it easier to make precise fingertip contact with the touch screen.
One limitation I’ve found is that my current hardware is running a 32-bit version of Android. The processor is 64-bit capable but runs more reliably with 32-bit Android so that’s what gets installed. One major component of Zenbeats is ZC1, a software synth that implements Roland’s cross-platform Zen-Core engine. I wondered why ZC1 wasn’t showing up as an instrument. It turns out that ZC1 requires 64-bit Android.
Without ZC1, Zenbeats is still a very good DAW, but ZC1 really is an absolute beast. The demos are stunning. Anybody with Android considering trying this should try installing the free version. If ZC1 doesn’t appear as an instrument in the track creation dialog, it’s probably because your hardware doesn’t support it.
Now here’s a weird thing. I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 which runs 64-bit Android 10, but still ZC1 isn’t showing up in the instrument browser. I’m still pondering this.
ZC1 suddenly showed up on my Samsung tablet, and it really knocked my socks off. I’ve no idea why it wasn’t showing up at first. This really is a stunning software synth.
A really major free update to Zenbeats has just been announced.
Ah, this is beginning to pay off. The relatively clean user interface of Zenbeats has helped me to understand what I can do, and the other day when I went back into my other DAW (Studio One, runs on my notebook in Windows) I was able to find my way around easily. Transferable skills!
Glad to watch your journey! DAWs are great tools to learn.
I’ve never used a DAW before and downloaded SoundBridge the other day. I’ve poked at it a bit but need to find some tutorials.
Soundbridge looks a little new. If you’re looking for a free DAW there are a few to choose from. The Prime version of Studio One is free and fully featured and it’s a well supported product with lots of professional users.
Quite rapid progress on laptop now that I have more energy and spare time. There is a free version of Zenbeats for Windows so I’ve installed that just to save me from switching to the tablet.
I’ve been mucking around with my Neutron and my Crave, and part of that is finding how to drive them from the DAW. I managed that on Studio One, which is no longer a big heap of scary stuff mainly thanks to my learning experiences with Zenbeats. I haven’t taken that much further.
I’ve also been messing with the Orba. You can take MIDI from the Orba and send audio through the Orba’s built-in speaker, which is like having a highly responsive and lively musical instrument that has all the resources of a professional DAW. It’s much more fun to play than a keyboard, because it’s so small and fast. This is by far the best way to use Orba as its built-in synth is nothing to write home about.
I thought of recording a video selfie playing solo fiddle on the Orba very, very fast, but I chickened out. Maybe tomorrow.
One really great thing about Roland is its free content and software. If you register free on Roland Cloud you get Zenology virtual synth, which I run in Studio One. There’s a heap of free Roland content including Jupiter 8 presets for Zenology, and currently a free test run of their TB-303 virtual synth. I lost about an hour this evening just mucking about with Acid bass lines on the latter. I’m not particularly interested in producing that kind of music or using that kind of technique, but it’s still fascinating, like a nickelodeon with a billion tunes. One problem with a nickelodeon is that whatever it plays still sounds like a nickelodeon, and I think that’s generally true of these 303 bass lines.