Verrrry newbie....

[kromedome]

WOW...As I review previous posts, I see that I am vastly underequiped to be pestering this audience. But, faint hear ne'er won anything, so...
I am an old guy who has been using CakeWalk Home Studio 2004 for some time. I have a Korg M1 and a Technics 88 key keyboard. I have a 3.0 gig CPU computer with 1 gig of RAM, an M-Audio 1814 Firewire outboard and a MidiMan 2X2 USB. I usually just compose on the keyboard, and sequence what comes out and don't do much in the way of editing. Now, however, I have some material that I'd like to edit...it's the MIDI track on CakeWalk and I've looked at the "Help" menu, the manual I got when I bought the program...but I cannot find out how to SELECT AND DELETE user selected portions of the MIDI track. For example, I did a spontaneous 3 minute solo on the piano, overall it was good but in the middle, there were a few bars I'd just like to cut out and throw away.
I know I am seriously brain-deprived, but I don't know how to SELECT the offending MIDI section in the track I composed and just cut it out. I can delete the WHOLE track...but that's NOT what I want to do.
I also record live FM broadcast of the Boston Symphony and I'd like to be able to isolate and cut out the commercials. I use CakeWalk AUDIO ONLY format to record.
Any help, please...or can some one just direct me to a Tutorial for Dummies.
Thanks and I apologize for invading a site with such advanced musicians...
Kromedome

[Brian2112]

Hi Kromedome!:D

Well, I don't know if I can help much, but I'll try. I use Sonar 6 PE, so my memory of previous ways of doing things may be flawed.
As far as midi tracks, there are many ways to do this. One is to right click on the track and hit “Split” at the beginning of the bar/bars that you want to kill. Split it again at the end of the bar/bars that you want to remove. That should leave you with a slice in the middle. Now, you can just delete the slice (which leaves a blank space), or you can delete it and then drag the rest of the clip back up to where the original split was (in other words, it doesn’t leave a gap).
Audio is the same way. Though, bars and beats are not going to help much for your radio shows. If you right click on an audio track and bring up the audio editor, I believe you can just hold the <Alt> key and drag the mouse over the audio you want to delete (to highlight it) and then just use “cut” or “delete” I forget…
I use SoundForge for that kind of stuff so I never really use those functions for audio in Sonar.
I hope this helps. If not, you can try the Sonar forum at Cakewalk’s website.

Best Regards,
…2112:)

[FireRaven]

in cakewalk home studio double click to select your track then either double click it or click the piano roll button to enter the piano roll.

once it is open all your notes may be selected by default. hit the S key to change the cursor into an arrow (if it's not already). then click and hold on the piano roll and move the mouse around to form a "box" around the notes you want to delete. when first clicking to make this box make sure you click on a space where there are currently no notes otherwise you will just be moving the note around. after selected you will see the selected notes appear a darker color than the others and just hit the DEL key!