David Rubenstein

Of course I realize it. I have used Sibelius ever since it became available for Windows, and more recently Dorico, for many years. But, while I often compose in Cakewalk/Sonar, I find that seeing the score is more useful for composing, than the piano roll view. Then, to make my music production sound better, the piano roll view becomes much more useful.

In staff view, there are layout options for 8va Treble and 8va Bass. Unfortunately, they do exactly the opposite of what they should do. They should both act to reduce the number of ledger lines above or below the staff. For example, 8va Treble should lower the appearance of the notes, thereby reducing the number of ledger lines required. Instead, 8va Treble increases the number of ledger lines. Below I show an example. The first image shows two measures with the Treble/Bass layout. The second image shows the same two measures with the 8va Treble layout.

A minor problem in staff view; sometimes the staffs are not numbered correctly. Here is an example, showing the track view (with tracks that are numbered correctly) and the corresponding staff view (with track numbers that are incorrect). The track view shows tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, while the staff view shows the staffs labeled 1, 2, 4, 5, 6. I think that it is the folders that are messing up the track numbers.

In Track view, I press the "+" button to bring up the "Add Track" dialog menu (see attached snapshot). Under the "Instrument" tab, there are some radio button options, like "Record Enable", "Open Virtual Controller", and under "Advanced" there are additional radio buttons; "Create Folder", "Instrument Track per Output", and "Split Instrument Track". When I click on any of these options, the radio buttons do not light up, so I am not sure what is happening. Likewise, under the "Audio" tab, the radio button options do not light up.

The Erase tool icon has a poor design; it is ambiguous as to where it points. In addition, the Erase tool is buggy. In staff view, depending on precisely how I place the Erase tool over a note, sometimes, 1) I place the erase tool over the last quater-note in a measure, and the correct note is erased, or 2) I place the erase tool over the last quater-note in a measure and the first note in the measure is erased, or 3) I place the erase tool over the last quater-note in a measure and both the first and last notes in the measure are erased.

I have been actively assigning new keyboard shortcuts to cakewalk functions that I use often. However, many functions are not assignable. For example, SHIFT-R turns step-record on/off. But, there is no function to close the step-record menu. This function requires using the mouse. It would be great to bring more (unassigned) functions into the Keyboard Shortcuts menu, to allow users to assign more key bindings.

Do you use Windows 10? I ask because it has a built-in video record function. It is intended for recording video games, but it works for me, for all sorts of purposes. The shortcut is Windows-Alt-R to record. Also, the shortcut Windows-Alt-G brings up a set of menus for screen captures and other things.

Right now, the duration of a copyright is something like 75 years after the death of the author. Every so often they are lengthened, so that Disney can keep its copyrights forever. Copyrights should be shortened.

I found a possible answer to this problem in the old Cakewalk/Sonar forum here: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Export-Audio-issue-m3747886.aspx I was having freezing and export problems; Long MIDI notes were shortened, and the result was unsatisfactory. Increasing the Mixing Latency/Buffer Size to the "Safe" zone did not help. Instead, this suggestion by scook helped: Try increasing BounceBufSizeMsec in Preferences > Audio > Configuration File My default value of BounceBufSizeMsec was 0 ms. I changed it to 20 ms, and the problem was solved.

John, I've been trying your articulation maps on several of the instruments. So far, they look good. Thanks--very helpful! --David

I have been having a problem with both freezing tracks and exporting. I am using the 2020.11 version of Cakewalk by Bandlab. When playing the music inside Bandlab, it sounds fine. However, often--but not always--when I export a track, some of the instruments do not come out in the WAV file sounding correctly. Long-playing notes only play as short notes, sort of staccato. This happens regardless of whether the reverb plug-in is in the individual track or a bus. In order to mitigate this problem, I have tried freezing the problematic tracks. But the same problem occurs when I play back the frozen tracks. Another thing I have tried, is to turn off the "fast-bounce" option when either exporting or freezing a track. This often helps, but of course it is time consuming. I have also played around with various options in the Export Audio menu, such as bit depth, 64-bit engine, and sample rate. There are many possible combinations of options, but I haven't found a combination that is fool-proof. Any advice on what is happening? Thanks for any suggestions!

Thank you, Scook. This is great news! This new feature may really speed up workflow, and also be much more intuitive than using keyswitches or separate articulations per Midi channel.

I LOVE Cakewalk by Bandlab. (I've been a Cakewalk user for 24 years!). However, as an orchestral composer, I am really jealous of Cubase users, because they have a powerful feature called "Expression Maps". There is no similar feature in Cakewalk by Bandlab, although it has been suggested a number of times. instead of using Keyswitches, a VST Expression Map makes changing articulations much easier and faster. The link below shows a video tutorial about how Expression Maps work with Cubase. What are VST Expression Maps

It would be really nice if Cakewalk developers could add an expression map capability--a capability that worked whether or not there are key switches available in a VST instrument.

Here I will throw in a bit of my own experience. I started using Cakewalk Home Studio about 25 years ago, using so-called "Sound Fonts". I progressed to Cakewalk Professional - 9, got an external synthesizer/sampler, and composed a lot of music with it. It wasn't simple--the external synthesizer/sampler was complicated, and required a lot of integration with Cakewalk. Now, many years later I started to use Cakewalk by Bandlab, and purchased some VST instrument libraries. This was a whole new ballgame, and I could not figure out how to make ANY Midi-generated sound come out of it at all! The voluminous documentation did not help at all. So I started looking at YouTube tutorials. After watching many many videos, I happened upon ONE online tutorial that showed in detail, every single button press needed to work with VST libraries. I carefully wrote all the steps down, and -- it worked! I was back in business. Since then, I explored alternative approaches that somewhat simplified the whole procedure. The point is, that this is complicated software, with a very steep learning curve. It was steep for me, even though I was very familiar with Cakewalk in the pre-VST days. One approach that has been suggested, is to add a new Workspace option that is even more basic than BASIC. But I would suggest, instead, a very simple Quick-Start users guide. Such a guide would show how to go from a brand new installation, step-by-step every single button-press needed to produce Midi-generated music. Also a section on how to record audio from a microphone or guitar.