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How To Use Cakewalk by Bandlab - Tutorial For Beginners


Jake

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In this tutorial, I go over what you'll need to know about using Cakewalk by Bandlab. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

One bonus tip I didn't mention in the video; you can use your computer keyboard as a MIDI controller by going to the menu bar at the top > Views > Virtual Keyboard > Computer Keyboard.

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  • 3 months later...

That's a really good video.  It looks as though you put a lot of thought into it.  It's difficult to determine what to cover versus what to leave out, isn't it.

Silly question but inquiring minds want to know    Did you record the audio track separately from the video?

I'm asking because while there is a nice ratio of silence to voice over the speed each word is spoken is quite fast.

 

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Thank you very much @fogle622, it did take a lot of curation of information to get it down to this.

It's funny that you ask, a lot of people say I talk really fast but I don't increase the speed of the audio playback. I do, however, record the voiceover separate from the video and cut out mess-ups, pauses, and other things to keep things straight to the point.

It's quite the tedious process but I don't have an audio interface to allow me to record clean audio as I record so it's really the only way I can make videos as of right now.

Thanks for asking, I'm glad you enjoyed the video.

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@Jake

I have a difficult time assimilating information.  I consider myself a perpetual beginner so I am always looking a videos that reinforce my knowledge.  I like that your video doesn't dwell on installation or setup.  I also like that your focus is more on midi rather than audio recording.

Two slices of information that would help beginners and users new to Cakewalk by BandLab are the availability of the virtual midi keyboard and what steps are required to make the TTS-1 the default midi sound module.

I hope you will consider slowing down the speed words are spoken in your sound track.  Listen to the soundtracks of commercials to get an idea of a speaking cadence that allows the listener to absorb the message.  Here is a useful rule-of-thumb:  one printed page equals about 1 minute of dialogue.  I think you may find that speaking at a cadence doesn't add time to a video but does increase comprehension.

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@fogle622

I genuinely appreciate you for taking the time to give me such honest and constructive feedback. I will definitely try to learn from commercials and find a good speed to speak at. After you made your first reply, I played back one of my videos at 0.75 speed and it really helped me appreciate how going so fast was actually making it hard to fully grasp what I was saying.

Thank you very much, I'm glad you mentioned all of this. I hope to be much more mindful of my cadence because of our conversation.

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  • 1 month later...

I know making videos like this are time consuming, so kudos for undertaking and doing the project. 

You seem to be open to constructive feedback, so let me (1) echo earlier feedback about speaking rate and (2) add a few minor comments.

Speaking rate: My listening style means that I have to either constantly stop or constantly stop and rewind this video.  My patience level means that if listening to/watching a video requires too much mental energy to decipher the information, I move on to something else.  For me, its not just the overall vocal rate, but the rate of rapidly uttered phrases.  Possible suggestion: Start off slower and with less rapid phrasing.  Once the listener/viewer has gotten accustomed to the overall (words and sentences) and internal vocal pacing (slbls),* you can pick it up a bit.  JMO--others may disagree.  *[slbls = rapidly uttered syllables that require additional mental processing--"wait, what did he say?"]

Content level: I have seen this in other videos--a discrepancy between the level of explanations.  Some explanations are clearly for beginners (which is what you intend). Some explanations presume some knowledge that beginners might not have.  "Plug-Ins" seems to me as a triffle specialized.  Possible suggestion: Instead of having parenthetical asides that don't add how-to knowledge of the product (e.g., the part about CW used to cost money ["free" seems sufficient to convey your real point], and the part about third-party plug-ins and then the same comment about Cakewalk plug-in), a beginner might be better served by a short parenthetical expression for "plug-Ins" -- e.g., "(additional tools you can add)"--but not as an overly rushed, choppy statement.

I am sure this video (well conceived and prepared, for sure) will be good for many listening styles and various levels of beginners.  I offer the above because I think the video might reach more people with some minor tweaks.

Again, JMO offered because you seem to appreciate feedback intended to be helpful.

Steve

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@MusicMan11712 (aka Dr. Steve) Hey Steve, thank you very much for the feedback. I appreciate you for breaking down what your thoughts are on the video while at the same time explaining a possible solution to it. With your polite honesty, I find this is good advice and given in a great way.

I completely agree with you though on the speed, I look back at my videos and think it's just a bit too fast to fully understand and absorb the information. I think I will have to keep the entire video at a slower pace instead of picking up though, I might lose some people by doing that.

Best,

Jake

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Hmm, I'm not really sure what could cause this. Try doing it without opening the plugin, the track may need to be the last thing clicked, I'm not sure though.

You may also need to change your driver mode in the preferences menu under MIDI > Playback & Recording. You will need to close all your projects before you can change it (while still keeping the DAW open). To do that there is an "x" button below the main "X" button on the top right.

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Hey @Jake I reall enjoyed watching this video. Im actually transitioning from FL12 to Cakewalk and I think it looks really cool and its surprisingly fast compared to FL12. I think that would be because its a pirated version of it (im poor and im sorry for that lol). I didn't hear about cakewalk until a couple months ago and I thought it was pretty cool. So I went and got it Friday I think, and I also started to familiarize it and try to understand it. Im very thankful for this video as it showed me the basics on what I should know on it, so thank you so much for the video.

That aside, I do have one question. How in the world do I set up my microphone? I have been trying for about an hour now and I cant get it to work. The microphone I use is Blue Snowball (until I get a new one in the future)

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Hey @Tony Race Graham, you know, admitting to pirating something and apologizing is a good thing to do. I hope you can get away from pirating entirely (if you do more). AND you decided to leave it for a legitimately free option, so good for you!

I'm glad you enjoyed the video, I hope you enjoy Cakewalk too.

As for your mic, you would need to go into the preferences menu > Audio > Playback & recording and set your Driver Mode to MME (32-bit), which should support your USB mic. If not, try the other ones, they may work and it will tell you if it's not supported.

Then, go to the playlist and make an audio track. Go to the input options (the option below "Clips") and to MME Devices. Select whether you want MONO or Stereo and then press the record button on the track, then when you're ready, press the main record button on the transport bar on the top of the DAW.

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@Jake Yeah im done with pirating. Its just too much work to follow the steps and Im done with taking the risks and all. Now that the mic is set up I can properly do some musical experiments.

I have a soundcloud with some stuff on there that I made with fl12 and I wanna try to make edm on cakewalk. I do believe its possible once I understand cakewalk a bit more. Definitely gonna get into it after work.

www.soundcloud.com/xanderfield my stuff is right there if you wanna have a look at it. No rush, just check it out when you feel like it. As I type this I feel like I should make some hardstyle... hmmmm

Thanks a bunch for the help!

Edited by Tony Race Graham
Needed to thank the man!
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  • 1 month later...

Jake-

 

Appreciate you making this available,just downloaded Cakewalk by

BandLab yesterday and this is the first video I've watched...

 

Wonder if you could point me in the direction of others you'd recommend-

 

My specific areas of focus are-

 

Combining 2 (or more) mono tracks to  create a stereo track

 

EQ

 

Compression

 

Plug-ins that are already part of the unit and accessible as well as info

about how to add others

 

Stereo imaging/widening

 

Importing reference tracks to A/B mix against

 

If you get a chance,you can email me directly about this @

 

gary@garyshorecomposermusician.com

 

Again much thx for making this video,very educational and easy to understand....

 

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Thanks Jake for the excellent video - I've used Sonar 8LE and then Cakewalk by Bandlab for a while now but still consider myself a beginner - I hadn't fully grasped the usefulness of the multi dock until I saw the video so that was really helpful. Hope you'll consider doing some more. Agree with other commentators re speaking speed - I always used to find myself speaking too quickly when I gave presentations for work so maybe it is a similar phenomenon! Not a huge problem but if you can make it a little slower that would certainly help. Learned a lot in 10 minutes though!

Cheers

Joe 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Jake-

Thx for replying..for some reason I didn't get notified about it although I've been getting notifications about another thread I have here...will have to check this out...

Anyways I happened to review the video again today and scrolled down which is how I saw you'd replied last week...

I've been studying a ton of YouTube video tutorials about using CbBL as well as the Ref Guide/documentation...found out that most of the Sonar Platinum info applies to the new version(as well as some of the older versions which have features they've continued on into this new one) so w/all the combined tutorials available I've been able to put together a pretty good sense of things..but I still would appreciate being able to run things by you as they come up...

As far as my original post above and the specific things I was mentioning,any info about these in the context of CbBL would be great,i.e.if you know of tutorials where they're focused on...

Saw you have a video on the Transverse Audio site where you give links for free stereo widening plug-ins,thx for this....what about this kind of stuff re-CbBL?...saw that you can get into mid/side panning/mixing w/it using included plug-ins etc,,what about extending this to binaural panning techniques-would this require adding a 3rd party plug-in?

 

Thx again for replying man...

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Jake-

Thx for replying..for some reason I didn't get notified about it although I've been getting notifications about another thread I have here...will have to check this out...

Anyways I happened to review the video again today and scrolled down which is how I saw you'd replied last week...

I've been studying a ton of YouTube video tutorials about using CbBL as well as the Ref Guide/documentation...found out that most of the Sonar Platinum info applies to the new version(as well as some of the older versions which have features they've continued on into this new one) so w/all the combined tutorials available I've been able to put together a pretty good sense of things..but I still would appreciate being able to run things by you as they come up...

As far as my original post above and the specific things I was mentioning,any info about these in the context of CbBL would be great,i.e.if you know of tutorials where they're focused on...

Saw you have a video on the Transverse Audio site where you give links for free stereo widening plug-ins,thx for this....what about this kind of stuff re-CbBL?...saw that you can get into mid/side panning/mixing w/it using included plug-ins etc,,what about extending this to binaural panning techniques-would this require adding a 3rd party plug-in?

 

Thx again for replying man...

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