I spent yesterday remixing "Hear the Wind Sing".
After receiving the Kawai K4 I bought on eBay, I went back to this song to fix some of the issues I left hanging after I reached a "stopping point". That must have been more than a year ago.
My big impetus was to use a sound not included in the factory preset system exclusive files made available on the Kawai support web site. It was this weird, voice-type patch that I loved. I managed to find it on a mailing list.
In the year since I first (re-)recording the song, I learned more about how to handle digital audio in Cakewalk SONAR, and I employed them with the remix. Now the song is closer to how I originally recorded it on my 4-track lo so many years ago.
To wit, I used envelopes to control the volume of my samples. I use the term "sample" loosley because I don’t loop them or assign them to a key on the controller — they’re dropped into the mix pretty much as-is. (The Japanese broadcaster, though, was reversed.)
The first time around, I pre-processed the audio portions in Audacity before importing them into SONAR. That was a pain in the ass. I would spend too much time fine-tuning cues in Audacity, then trying to line them up with the music. Envelopes make things easier.
Rather than cropping samples beforehand, I dragged the clip size to fit the measures. I’m not sure if that feature was available in Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, the program on which the song was first recorded. It’s available in SONAR, so I used it.
I had such an easier time handling audio — now that I know what to do — I marveled at how much work I made for myself the first time around. The bonus is the fact the song sounds right to my ears now.