Cakewalk tutorial

[S Roy Choudhury]

Hello friends and fellow enthusiasts

 

I am completely new in professional audio recording arena. I do not do any recording or editing on commercial basis, and I do not intend to. I have been a serious amateur of 'vocal music' and I record at home using equipment donated by one very generous friend of mine. 

I have been looking for free DAWs and I was pointed by him towards Cakewalk and Pro Tools. As I have almost no knowledge of audio recording and post-production, I am eagerly looking for a free tutorial series (preferably video) to learn audio recording and post-production in Cakewalk. A tutorial which would offer me some project works for every step to practice my skills. So my aim is to become a 'non-commercial but with professional skills' as I enjoyed whatever little experience I had with the whole process of recording using an audio interface and post-production. I tried some YouTube videos, which are no doubt great, but does not give me a clear idea of the workflow I need to follow and the skills I must acquire at every step.

 

I hope I have clarified my requirements. Still, if any further clarification is necessary, I would be happy to provide.

 

Thank you in advance.

[JoeGBradford]

Hi and welcome to the forum. My favourite tutorial series on CbB is that put together by Mike at Creative Sauce. Well explained and a friendly guy. He has lots of other videos based on Cakewalk too. There are a number of others including those by Robert at Home Studio Simplified and Xel Oh. People here will always be happy to help too. Enjoy your exploration!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[S Roy Choudhury]

Thank you for your reply and warm welcome.

 

I have been through some of the tutorial videos of 'Creative Sauce' channel and those are pretty good.  But I am looking for more comprehensive and complete training course which would be helpful for me to learn the basics of recording and post production using Cakewalk. In case I missed something in the Creative Sauce channel, do point that out please.

 

I have found this playlist: Cakewalk by Bandlab. Are you referring to this playlist?

 

Quote

There are a number of others including those by Robert at Home Studio Simplified and Xel Oh

Could you please share the link for the above?

 

Thank you again for your assistance.

Edited May 12, 2021 by S Roy Choudhury
Found more info

[JoeGBradford]

Yes that's the one. Check out Creative Sauce's other tutorials too. There's a series on recording and releasing a song

Here's Robert's playlist

 

Here's Xel Ohh's 

 

 

[msmcleod]

This series  by @Creative Sauce is probably exactly what you're looking for.  IIRC he uses Cakewalk for the whole process:
 

 

[S Roy Choudhury]

Thank you so much @msmcleod and @JoeGBradford.

 

Am I allowed to post a link in this forum to the material complete for your and other members' valuable feedback?

Edited May 12, 2021 by S Roy Choudhury

[scook]

41 minutes ago, S Roy Choudhury said:

Am I allowed to post a link in this forum to the material complete for your and other members' valuable feedback?

Yes, the Songs area was created for this purpose

[S Roy Choudhury]

22 minutes ago, scook said:

Yes, the Songs area was created for this purpose

Thank you.

[Chuffey]

I'm a great believer in music lessons, and it would be cool to find a teacher who's laid out a study program. I've gone down many of these kinds of paths on guitar,  and found that to be valuable for me. Right now I subscribe to "ArtistWorks", and am able to study guitar with an A-list player who has a huge career, and who happens to have a great handle on how to teach guitar. I can't believe a guy at this level actually teaches, and I went back to the very basics of playing guitar to learn his approach. All this leads me to wonder if something like this exists for people who want to learn how to use Cakewalk. I've gone through some of these YouTube tutorials and they are very helpful, but I'm wondering if an actual course exists. 

[msmcleod]

4 minutes ago, Chuffey said:

I'm a great believer in music lessons, and it would be cool to find a teacher who's laid out a study program. I've gone down many of these kinds of paths on guitar,  and found that to be valuable for me. Right now I subscribe to "ArtistWorks", and am able to study guitar with an A-list player who has a huge career, and who happens to have a great handle on how to teach guitar. I can't believe a guy at this level actually teaches, and I went back to the very basics of playing guitar to learn his approach. All this leads me to wonder if something like this exists for people who want to learn how to use Cakewalk. I've gone through some of these YouTube tutorials and they are very helpful, but I'm wondering if an actual course exists. 

Groove3 has a SONAR Platinum course. It's very good, and covers at least 90% of Cakewalk.

SWA Complete SONAR X2 is also pretty good, albeit a bit older:  

There's also a  follow up which includes the Pro Channel:
 

 

 

[S Roy Choudhury]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

Groove3 has a SONAR Platinum course

Thanks for this information, but it appears to be a 'paid' course. Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

Quote

All this leads me to wonder if something like this exists for people who want to learn how to use Cakewalk. I've gone through some of these YouTube tutorials and they are very helpful, but I'm wondering if an actual course exists. 

Exactly my thoughts.

Edited May 12, 2021 by S Roy Choudhury

[murat k.]

I think SWA Complete SONAR X2 is perfect for beginners. I learned Cakewalk with this video series. It explains almost everything. Only some new features are not available but you can find new feature's tutorials from other videos. I totally recommend it.

Edited May 12, 2021 by murat k.

[Jim Fogle]

Welcome to the forum and to Cakewalk by Bandlab!

The first thread in this section, "Getting Started", by Morton Saether is the first thread in this section and is a wonderful place to start learning about Cakewalk by Bandlab.    This thread includes links to a series of videos that will help you learn Cakewalk step-by-step.

Audio Production Beginners is a thread about resources to help beginners learn audio production.

Good luck and have fun learning!

Edited May 13, 2021 by Jim Fogle

[S Roy Choudhury]

16 hours ago, Jim Fogle said:

Welcome to the forum and to Cakewalk by Bandlab!

The first thread in this section, "Getting Started", by Morton Saether is the first thread in this section and is a wonderful place to start learning about Cakewalk by Bandlab.    This thread includes links to a series of videos that will help you learn Cakewalk step-by-step.

Audio Production Beginners is a thread about resources to help beginners learn audio production.

Good luck and have fun learning!

Thank you so much!

[S Roy Choudhury]

@Jim Fogle I have been going through the links you have kindly shared.

As I am very new to this side of the creative world, I think following tutorials based on the old 'SONAR' interface will create a sort of steeper learning curve for me with unwanted confusion. Actually my learning, IMHO, can be broken down in two phases, period! I need to learn about the Basic Audio Production (including recording using a Audio Interface) and how Cakewalk can be my means to achieve that production. So, a basic tutorial which involves Cakewalk as a medium may turn out to be more suitable for me. Of course, my assumption may be wrong.

Experienced members are requested to comment on my above thoughts.

 

Thank you again.

[Jim Fogle]

When it comes to installing an audio interface or the act of recording the steps are identical for both Sonar and Cakewalk.  The Creative Sauce video linked to earlier demonstrates the same information as the Sonar video.  The difference is the Creative Sauce video was created after Sonar's name change to Cakewalk.  How To Use Cakewalk is another good video.

If I may, what kind of audio production do you want to do, electronic beat generation or recording?

[S Roy Choudhury]

19 hours ago, Jim Fogle said:

When it comes to installing an audio interface or the act of recording the steps are identical for both Sonar and Cakewalk.  The Creative Sauce video linked to earlier demonstrates the same information as the Sonar video.  The difference is the Creative Sauce video was created after Sonar's name change to Cakewalk.  How To Use Cakewalk is another good video.

If I may, what kind of audio production do you want to do, electronic beat generation or recording?

Thank you for your reply Jim.

 

I am primarily a vocalist. I use pre-recorded background music tracks to go with the vocals. Sometimes, I also play an instrument with my vocals. Another secondary use of 'audio' is recording voice-overs for my travel videos. I do all these on purely non-commercial basis and I intend to remain so in future. In short, I would like to consider myself 'very serious amateur'. I received a gift of 'Audient' audio interface and two high quality passive microphones from a very kind friend of mine who lives in the US. I must make sure that his gifts and his belief on my ability to learn this new creative endeavour does not go in vein. As I have a full-time day job I can not enroll myself in a full-time training and these online trainings are pretty costly when converted from US $ to my currency. Hence I have determined that I am going to learn the techniques of this 'trade' with the help of materials available free online like the ones shared by @Creative Sauce.

I hope I have cleared my intention and capacity both.

If you need any more information please feel free to ask.

 

Thank you again.

Edited May 14, 2021 by S Roy Choudhury

[Jim Fogle]

@S Roy Choudhury, Thank you for your reply.  You have a very good, kind and generous friend. 

Audient makes some great audio interfaces.   Please visit their product support website to verify the interface is running current firmware and you have the latest audio interface driver.

You want to do what I would consider traditional recording.  Cakewalk does that really, really good.   In this (Tutorials) section start at page 6 (the oldest posts) and work your ways to the newest posts.  When this forum first began there were a lot of posts about how to get started with Cakewalk.

[S Roy Choudhury]

12 hours ago, Jim Fogle said:

@S Roy Choudhury, Thank you for your reply.  You have a very good, kind and generous friend. 

Audient makes some great audio interfaces.   Please visit their product support website to verify the interface is running current firmware and you have the latest audio interface driver.

You want to do what I would consider traditional recording.  Cakewalk does that really, really good.   In this (Tutorials) section start at page 6 (the oldest posts) and work your ways to the newest posts.  When this forum first began there were a lot of posts about how to get started with Cakewalk.

Dear Jim

Thank you for your kind words and guidance. Yes indeed, he is too generous and he himself is a sound engineer. I met with him on one of the fora like this and awestruck by his generosity.

I have been gifted Audient iD22. Are you referring the 'driver' available on their webpage for iD22 as 'firmware'?  Audient iD22 Driver Download

 

Secondly, could you please share the link of the tutorial from where you would want me to start?

 

One more request (to all members): If I understood correctly, my basic workflow is this- Recording the song on Cakewalk---->Mix (Edit)----> Export to the desired format.

Could you please tell me what steps should comprise the 'Mix' stage of the above workflow applicable in my case?

 

My apologies for sounding so naive, but I am rather very new in this world and still trying to chart the path.

 

Thanks again.

Edited May 14, 2021 by S Roy Choudhury

[John Vere]

A few thoughts.

I have to agree with @S Roy Choudhury about the lack of any up to date tutorials. I spent an evening a few weeks ago watching a lot of them. The collection of  official Tutorials regarding Cakewalk is actually all about Sonar. And even some my popular series like- Making a midi backing track  was done on Home Studio so has become dated.   

And it's easy for an experienced user to say that they should be fine because Cakewalk is based on Sonar but I think that for most newcomer it would be confusing just to even look at the screenshots. A LOT has changed in the workspace since X2 and even the last release of Sonar.  A lot of the new features make workflow faster so why teach a new dogs old tricks. 

But it's a very time consuming process to make tutorials.  For me to re do my Backing Track Series would take weeks. You have to make sure every little move you make is easy to understand as well as conform to best practices. I usually have to re do my videos 3 or more times before they pass the proof watching stage.  And then to make a professional presentation you need to be advanced in your knowledge of Video editing.. another complicated piece of software to learn. I gave up on that part and just keep to basics. 

  Most of the latest tutorials, including mine, are task or subject oriented. The reason being that's how people seem to learn these days'. They get stumped on a process and they use Google to search a topic _ example"  Cakewalk- how to add reverb"  This will bring up a dozen or more videos you can sort through and find the "best" one that suits your learning abilities.  If you liked that persons video you subscribe. That person, if they get enough subscribers, might see a little cash flow someday for their efforts which encourages them to keep making videos. It's all about knowing how to look for stuff using Google in this day and age. You won't find mine when you search because I only have a very small subscription count. 

So for a professionally produced, linear course on Cakewalk to happen someone would need to pay someone to do this or promote the independent creators so they get the paid level of subscription count. . Cakewalk is free, so Bandlab has no real incentive to spend money on tutorials like Roland or Gibson did in the old days. They leave that up to the volunteers and the user group. There seem to be a lot of tutorials. You just have to find the right series. 

 

Edited August 8, 2021 by John Vere