cakewalk: How we got here from there

[Robert Hale]

Found this video accidentally, and it's VERY  interesting!

https://youtu.be/5DbuAqwBpGY

[Michael Vogel]

Thanks for sharing. A nostalgic trip through my earliest digital music making history.

[bitflipper]

In the early 70's I was an electronics enthusiast who gobbled up information from magazines such as Popular Electronics. My hobbyist shop was largely equipped with gear that I had assembled from Heathkit kits, because it was the only way I could afford them. In the process, I learned how they worked and thus began designing my own stuff.

My dream at the time was to build a synthesizer. Electronics geeks quickly realized that the individual circuits used in the prohibitively-expensive Moog modular were actually pretty simple, had been around for ages, and were well-documented. I had built most of them myself, but had ongoing issues with oscillator stability - nothing I designed would stay in tune. 

So I was excited when a company came along called PAiA, which offered low-priced music-related electronic kits. They launched a magazine that could have been tailor-made for me, called Polyphony. It was published every other month, and nothing made my day like finding the latest issue in my mailbox. That magazine got sold to a proper publishing company and became Electronic Musician, so I subscribed to that as well. One of the founders and lead writers was Craig Anderton, a frequent contributor to this very forum.

Around 1987, a brief review of a new MIDI sequencer called Cakewalk was published in EM. My eyes bugged out like a Loonytoons character when I read it. But the $300 price tag would be a major investment that my wife would probably not be enthused about. I read and re-read that review many times, imagining how cool it would be to sequence my synths with it and become a creator of electronic music like my heroes Walter Carlos, Larry Fast and king of them all, Isao Tomita.

But the stars were about to align for me. I went down to LA to spend a few days training users at one of my company's customer sites, a little company in one of those nondescript industrial parks called Guitar Center.

While there I hit it off with their IT guy, a guitarist who shared my interests. We became instant pals. He casually mentioned that if there was anything musical I wanted to buy that he'd get me the employee discount of cost + 10%. First thing that came to mind was Cakewalk. He went to the database and said, "how's $75 sound?". Yikes! I could manage that by eating free chicken wings at the hotel's happy hour bar and pocketing the per diem.

So he took me down to their Hollywood store but nobody could find the one copy of Cakewalk they had. But he called another store and they had it. It was on the way to the airport, so I stopped there on my way out of town and left, deliriously happy, with Cakewalk 1.0. I spent the entire flight home studying the manual. I couldn't run it right away because my computer lacked a MIDI interface, so the next day I took a long lunch and picked up a $50 8-bit MIDI card. That was a Friday afternoon. By that night I had recorded my first Cakewalk project, recorded it onto my TEAC 3340S and then mixed down to a cassette. The first of innumerable evenings frittering away hours, joyously making music.

 

[bvideo]

Did you get such a discount for your Teac 3340S? I still have mine, but it badly needs service. I think it was expensive, and still can get high prices used. It has playback through the record heads so you could lay down more tracks in sync with the existing tracks. That only became obsolete when computer-based recording became readily available (Cakewalk 1.0?). Occasionally I use mine for capturing old family recordings, such as from 1958 or so.

[bitflipper]

Actually, I got the 3340S as payment for a recording session, from a friend who had bigger ambitions than his budget. So although the TEAC didn't cost me anything it did require three weeks of work. Everybody else who played on that record got cash. I got the better deal, I think.

I also had a 2-track Pioneer R-R, that I scored from my employer who didn't have enough money to pay me my salary. He went out of business soon after, which is how I came to play music full time in a traveling cover band doing the Holiday Inn circuit. That led me to Lewiston, Idaho, where I met my future wife. Funny how serendipity can sometimes point the way.

[giovannibuchelli]

I found these articles about the first versions of Cakewalk released for Windows (1992-93):

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/cakewalk-for-windows/9576

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/cakewalk-professional/2449

 

 

Edited April 26, 2023 by giovannibuchelli

[Starship Krupa]

On 4/25/2023 at 8:25 PM, giovannibuchelli said:

I found these articles about the first versions of Cakewalk released for Windows (1992-93):

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/cakewalk-for-windows/9576

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/cakewalk-professional/2449

Wow, right from the very start: "this software uses Windows 3.1 features which are ignored by Cakewalk's main rivals." and "If you click the right mouse button on a bar, Cakewalk presents you with a choice of editors for altering the information within that section of the track.

Cakewalk was using right click context menus as early as their first release for Windows 3.1. Dang.

I've been a fan of context menus from the first release of Windows 95. That's when they, uh, really started to click for me.

[Colin Nicholls]

15 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

That's when they, uh, really started to click for me.

....here's your coat, Erik

[Michael Richards]

I see a few of us are in the same age bracket and have similar Cakewalk and tape deck experiences. My 3340S sits proudly in my studio, but it doesn't work. I had to put it in storage for 4 years because I moved from state to state to state (and almost London and Sydney) and when I finally settled down it just refused to work. I read that not using it for years is a major cause for this. I also read that repairs are expensive. I also have a Pioneer reel to reel that sadly doesn't get used much.

I also started with Cakewalk with Windows 3.1 and have been recording with Cakewalk for 30 years. Unfortunately, I have weak electronic and programming skills, but I can write music which is what it is all about for me.

[Ted K. Ling]

Oh my goodness ... are people in my generation still around ?  YEP,  sure 'nough and I'm sure we're all glad to still be making/creating music !  So thanks for the memories guys !

Bitflipper wrote about Craig Anderton and Electronic Musician.  I met Craig at the Frankfurt Music Fair back in the early 90's and he (Craig) gently "forced" me into a  subscription to the mag !  Then there's the TEAC A3340 ... what a great machine.  My early works were very tediously done on this 4-tracker, bouncing and bouncing tracks trying to keep some sort of stereo landscape in the final mix !  Anyone remember Roland's SCC-1 card ?  This was a godsend for my early Cakewalk software and any support communications with Greg Hendershott were thru' Compuserve (G*d I'm old :-) ...

Cakewalk has gone thru' a lot of changes, some smooth, some not so (X1 !), but it is STILL my preferred DAW  and although I don't work daily on it (due to gigging live performances) it is still my go-to application.  I want to thank Meng, Noel Borthwick and the whole Baking Team for giving a lot of us the joy and satisfaction to CREATE !

[Michael Richards]

I think I had the Roland SC-55. I had it in my Gateway 486 computer. That is how I started with Cakewalk. I thought it sounded great and filled me with dreams of glory. If I could only go back 30 years with the equipment and knowledge I have today. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

[bitflipper]

2 hours ago, Michael Richards said:

If I could only go back 30 years with the equipment and knowledge I have today.

Sadly, 30 years ago you either couldn't afford the stuff you have today, or it didn't exist yet.

40 years ago I desperately wanted an Oberheim 8-voice, but it cost as much as a new car. Today a faithful recreation of that instrument sits on my hard drive and cost me, iirc, less than 50 bucks. Back then I was gigging with an electronic piano (Roland EP-30) that only kinda sorta sounded vaguely like a piano. Today I have dozens of pianos on tap, including  multiple Steinways and Yamahas, both on disk and in hardware synths.

There's never been a better time to be a music-maker than now.

[John Vere]

Yes there are many of us old farts still here much to the annoyance of the younger folks. 

To bad the guy who made the video wasn't actually a long time Cakewalk user. It would have be much better. He really didn't dig that deep. There's more missing that shown but I actually pulled a few things from it I was unaware of,  like the short bit about the Apple version. Now I know why I remember trying out Cakewalk in the late 80's. 

In my town we were all Atari users because the only computer store ( K& B Computers)  sold them as well as they had a Roland dealership.  There was this group of 5 of us who all used Atari's for live performance. One of us was Jeff Koftinoff  http://www.jdkoftinoff.com/main/Information/About_Jeff_Koftinoff/

He learned how to program and that was his life's work. I on his web site he has removed all the links to his software. He later worked Roland in the MT 32 days. The software  used to be available free on Tim's Atari midi world and I see that web site is now gone too. I'm going to have to learn how to use the Wayback machine. But anyhow,  the software was called the Pro Midi Player  ( I found a link  https://exxosforum.co.uk/atari/mirror/tamw/promid.htm )   and it was brilliant. 

 You could drag and drop midi 0 sequence files to create set lists, it displayed  Lyrics as TXT file if the names matched, remember 8 digit names= LTMYFIRE ( name that song and win a prize)  And at my request he made use of the joystick port and we invented a foot controller with 5 buttons. Start, Stop. Up, down and of course PANIC. 

We all used Dr T KCS ( Keyboard Controlled Sequencer)  and then learned how to hack/Copy software floppy's so we would share programs we chipped in on. Yep, that stuff was expensive in those days. All of this showed up free on Tims Atari world so no regrets about being a pioneer software pirate. 

That's where the video triggered a vague  memory of trying Cakewalk on an Atari. We had an Apple emulator and I remember having possibly used the first releases of both Cubase and Cakewalk. I could never figure out why I might have tried Cakewalk because I never bought a PC computer until 2003 so that would explain it, it was the Apple version.

When K&B computers closed down in 1992 I took over the Atari and Roland dealerships. Cactus Music had it's perks in that during that decade I got my gear at cost. I still have a lot of it! Later on in the 90's The Roland sales Rep gave me a Copy of  Cakewalk Guitar Studio. I didn't have a PC to run it on but I kept it and that's about when I joined the old forum in 2004.  I still hate PC's.....

Edited May 10, 2023 by John Vere

[Lord Tim]

It's funny, my first exposure to Cakewalk was a non-starter. I'd just bought a Roland MC500 MkII sequencer and really bought into the hype that it was 'the most powerful MIDI sequencer in the world" (which, to be fair, at the time it was pretty impressive). A couple of years later I was in a music store chatting to the sales dude and he's telling me about this computer program called "Cakewalk" that was more powerful than any hardware sequencer - this would likely be one of the DOS editions.

Well, me - who knew it all, clearly - put my fingers in my ears, went "la la la not listening, you're wrong" and entirely wrote this "Cakewalk" thing off until the late 90s, instead sticking with the 2 line LCD display and sloppy MIDI jitter of my rapidly aging hardware unit. Needless to say, when I eventually actually used it, I clicked with CWPA and weirdly started working at studios that were running it - surprisingly quite a few - and never really looked back.

Thankfully the years have taught me to be much more open-minded than that dumb kid I used to be back in the day...! 😒

[DeeringAmps]

12 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

that dumb kid I used to be back i

If I only knew now what I thought I knew then, I really would be a bloody genius!

[Base 57]

2 hours ago, DeeringAmps said:

If I only knew now what I thought I knew then,

Yeah but,

Bob Seger had it right. "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."

[whoisp]

The "first" Midi Daw ever that everyone copied is the reality. Steinburg pretty much ripped Cakewalk and called it Cubase.

Makes me laugh when people using other DAWs "believe"  Cakewalk is for beginner's when they are using DAWs that called a bus a group, they be calling it mix group instead of mix bus next lol  Cakewalk is one of the best things in my life, is the reality 

https://whoisp.co.uk/product/cakewalk/Black

Edited May 11, 2023 by whoisp

[Jimbo 88]

So in the late 80's I was a blue collar freelance audio mixer/music composer/keyboard player scraping for jobs around Chicago.  I was like Bitflipper, I saw all these new synths that I just could not afford.  Many of my competitors where buying New England Digital Synclaviers.  No way I could afford that. And too scared to go to the bank and ask for loan that would have bought me house.

I was doing OK with my Alesis MMT 8 which I could program drums, bass, a few synths (with a Proteus?).  Sync it to a tape machine and record guitars and singers and produce a jingle. I was scraping by, but happy.

Then Cable TV came along (Chicago was the center for documentary creators)  and music beds were in great demand.   Long story short, the MMT8 was woefully inadequate.  I explained this to my old college roommate who then was working for Geetar Center and he GAVE me CAKEWALK 3.1. 

For at least 7 years I used version 3.1 on a laptop with a 20 meg hard drive . I still have that rig and can fire it up today.  I was so busy scoring Cable TV shows I worked about 360 days a year, about 85-100 hours a week in my basement.  

I would not say I became rich, but pretty dang close.  I felt so guilty for using a pirated Cakewalk disk I purchased every update even tho I use little more than the sequencing side and can do that with just the most basic features.  In fact, the less features the better for me.  I'll never forget when I started  checking out this forum and people would mention the Console View.     I was like, "What?! there is a really cool mixer section to this software I've been using all these years and did not know about!" 

Anyway I have always gotten a kick out of coming to this forum.  I could always get great advice.  I shake my head when someone comes on and says they can't get CAKE to work, or it's features are not pro enough...I mean I got it to work under the most primitive conditions and I am not a knowledgeable computer person to say the least.    And I'll gladly compare my body of work with anyone else's using whatever software.    

Edited May 11, 2023 by Jimbo 88

[AB7]

In the old days I liked the idea of mixing midi instruments without putting them on tape first.  So I had a tape deck with vocals, drums, and the like synced to the computer,  with the midi instruments triggered by Master Tracks Pro.  The mixdown deck was originally tape, but then changed to DAT, and now a computer.   Anyway, when I wanted a DAW, I still had this idea in mind (i.e. not recording the midi instruments into tracks), and Cakewalk seems like the most obvious choice because it was so great with Midi.  Anyway, I can still open up Cakewalk files from a couple of decades ago, with the latest revision (and earler revisions as well.)  Now that DAWs can handle so many tracks, perhaps it is wise to record all those midi instruments into tracks.

And I have tried other DAWs throughout the years, and Cakewalk is the winner by a longshot for me.   And this forum helps as well!

 

Edited May 12, 2023 by AB777