Cakewalk needs new young users::.

[Starship Krupa]

7 hours ago, InstrEd said:

His son wanted to try so bad and when he didn't get good results right away he handed the airbrush back to his dad and was done with it.  I was having a good chuckle about it inside.  Thinking how long it took be to learn how to airbrush models as a teenager.  I would spent hours weathering tanks, airplanes, etc...  Seems the majority now a days want that instant result or on to the next thing.

There have been "kids these days" gripes as long as there have been kids. I can imagine Adam and Eve's children saying to their kids "whaddaya mean you're sick of apples, do you know the sacrifices your grandma and grandpa went through so that you could eat them? You don't like your loincloths? When I was your age I had nothing but a fig leaf to cover my junk."

I remember people my parents' age scoffing at plastic model airplane kits that you could put together and paint in a matter of days. "I made my models out of balsa wood and it would take a month! Can you believe the short attention span of this generation raised on TV?" Then snap together plastic models came along and people scoffed at those for offering even faster results.

One of the reasons that younger people might turn away from something that doesn't yield quickly gratifying results, and I'll take your example of the airbrush, a tool that I own and have used exactly once, to paint a gold Duco stripe on a vintage WFL snare I was restoring. For illustrations even I wouldn't try an airbrush. I only want the thing so that I can paint on objects. For anything else, I have Paint.NET and GIMP and Photoshop. They yield faster results and are way more forgiving of mistakes.

The modern tools we are blessed with do yield quick results. A hand plane looks cool but there are multiple power tools I'd reach for first.

I'm 60, and I recognize the tendency in myself to walk away from things that I'm not immediately good at. I have to force myself to power through when that happens, slog my way through tutorials, etc. My preferred way to learn is to start with a simple task I can apply the tool to and jump right in. Not everything lends itself to this approach. I've worked around it in different ways including deliberately choosing things that initially seem unfathomable and going nose-to-grindstone until I nail them. That goes opposite to my nature.

And really, sometimes I find things that click right away, and that's how I find out things that I have an aptitude for. Your friend's kid will figure out eventually that to get really good at something takes time. Maybe airbrushing looks cool so he wanted to try it, but then realized that it's one of those things that will take a long time to master, and doesn't feel a pressing need to do any airbrushing.

To anyone who thinks that "kids today" lack patience for mastering things, I suggest trying to play one of their favorite video games with them. ?

[Craig Anderton]

On 6/5/2021 at 4:12 AM, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

And my point is the Sonar/CBB workflow doesn't cater that well for the largest demographic  

Many of the artists you mentioned use Logic Pro X, whose workflow isn't all that different. And again, as the stats show, for total volume rock + pop exceed R&B + hip-hop. It's not broken down by age, so you could make the argument that R&B + hip-hop is done only by young people, but hey, of the top hip-hop artists, Eminem is 48 years old, Jay -Z 51, Drake 34, Lil Wayne 38, Nicki Minaj 38, Chuck D 60, Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) 37...not exactly kids. 

I'm not saying anything negative about the programs used for making hip-hop or rap.  I just question the assumption there's this giant demographic to which DAWs must cater if they want to get young users. If you look at a lot of the people charting with hip-hop and R&B, not just messing around to have fun, they're not kids. The other 61% of the total volume of sales need an alternative, just like those doing EDM needed an alternative to the conventional DAW, and Acid, and then Ableton Live, were born.

If Cakewalk changed its workflow to accommodate a different demographic, it would fail miserably. Bitwig couldn't take down Ableton Live. FL Studio remains huge. There wouldn't be any incentive for people invested in those programs to switch. So Cakewalk would end up with the worst of both worlds - alienating an existing core, and large demographic, while failing to attract younger users anyway. 

You also said "I've watched my own kids, their friends and my nieces/nephews make music ( they all seem to be into this Trap / Hip Hop / Pop crossover type stuff )  and they're all pretty audio/loop based in their approach and none of them have taken to Cakewalk."

I have no doubt that's true. But I also teach to the under-30 crowd, and they use a wide variety of programs. Many of them still gravitate to Pro Tools. Mac people usually use Logic Pro.  Ableton Live and Studio One are also on the ascendancy.

Edited June 6, 2021 by Craig Anderton
Include ages for some of the top hip-hop artists

[Byron Dickens]

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

There have been "kids these days" gripes as long as there have been

 

You said it!

 

[garybuckels]

"I feel that Cakewalk by Bandlab has added years to my lifetime updates so therefore I'm younger!" 

[InstrEd]

6 hours ago, garybuckels said:

"I feel that Cakewalk by Bandlab has added years to my lifetime updates so therefore I'm younger!" 

Yes but we had cardiac arrest for a few months.  Good thing my ticker survived to enjoy these updates

[marcL]

11 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

If Cakewalk changed its workflow to accommodate a different demographic, it would fail miserably. Bitwig couldn't take down Ableton Live. FL Studio remains huge. There wouldn't be any incentive for people invested in those programs to switch. So Cakewalk would end up with the worst of both worlds - alienating an existing, core, and large demographic, while failing to attract younger users anyway.

I really like what you're saying! I am also convinced it would be that way!

Generally, IMO it is not a good idea to only copy concepts of competitors that have success. You have to have your own good ideas and concepts to have real success!

[InstrEd]

7 minutes ago, marled said:

I really like what you're saying! I am also convinced it would be that way!

Generally, IMO it is not a good idea to only copy concepts of competitors that have success. You have to have your own good ideas and concepts to have real success!

So update Project5 and blend it into CbB and its a go for a great product    

(sorry I couldn't resist )

Edited June 6, 2021 by InstrEd
added text

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

11 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

If Cakewalk changed its workflow to accommodate a different demographic, it would fail miserably. Bitwig couldn't take down Ableton Live. FL Studio remains huge. There wouldn't be any incentive for people invested in those programs to switch. So Cakewalk would end up with the worst of both worlds - alienating an existing, core, and large demographic, while failing to attract younger users anyway. 

I don't agree, it doesn't have to be a fundamental change to the existing workflow - They just need to add some much needed tools and update some of the existing ones

I'll give you two for starters.

Surely the long game is to convert a portion of the Bandlab crowd over to CBB ? 

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[marcL]

3 minutes ago, InstrEd said:

So update Project5 and blend it into CbB and its a go for a great product    

(sorry I couldn't resist )

Unfortunately, I don't know Project5 (I started with Sonar X3 Producer), thus I cannot comment on this!

But I am sure that if the autorisation mechanism of Project5 was used, success would be possible! (sorry I could not resist!)

[Starship Krupa]

13 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

If Cakewalk changed its workflow to accommodate a different demographic, it would fail miserably. Bitwig couldn't take down Ableton Live. FL Studio remains huge. There wouldn't be any incentive for people invested in those programs to switch. So Cakewalk would end up with the worst of both worlds - alienating an existing, core, and large demographic, while failing to attract younger users anyway.

I agree. What I and others are suggesting, rather, is that Cakewalk augment its existing workflow, or at the very least fine tune what's already there. After 3 years with it, I'm now to the point where I feel smooth creating drum parts with MIDI. For now, I've pretty much given up on seeing drum instrument names in the PRV, I've resigned myself to memorizing where they are on the keyboard.

A sad thing is, a couple of the annoyances/speed bumps are bugs or unimplemented features. You can get drum names via the Drum Map feature, but my struggles with it are famous, and then once it's all set up, the Drum Pane omits mousewheel functionality, which is something I use constantly. You can also get drum names via the Note Names feature, but as soon as you close the Piano Roll view, it reverts to the standard piano keys with standard scale. Just fixing those two would help beat making.

So I'm with @Mark Morgon-Shaw, nobody's calling for any changes to the basic workflow, which I love, I'd just like the existing tools to work better and possibly get more tools, such as a sampler. The hip hop/EDM people on YouTube seem to love Cakewalk despite its shortcomings for that style. I'll shout out @Xel Ohh, @AdK Studios and @Ewoof Music here. This has had the feel of a bunch of old dudes speculating on what "the kids" are up to, so why not ask the guys working in the popular genres?

One last thing, the killer feature that attracts first time users is Cakewalk's free subscription licensing model. This surely leads a lot of Windows first-timers to check it out. Then it's a matter of user retention. This is something that only GarageBand, with its dongle being a Macintosh computer, can touch. I'm not a teenaged kid, and my budget doesn't get up to the FL Studio level. I'm in the REAPER/Mixcraft/Waveform zone.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

2 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

This has had the feel of a bunch of old dudes speculating on what "the kids" are up to, so why not ask the guys working in the popular genres?

 I actually work in multiple genres : EDM , Electronica, Hip Hop, Pop, Trailer , Orchestral , Rock , Funk...even Dubstep ? 

All genres of instrumentals for TV shows.

[Craig Anderton]

3 hours ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

I don't agree, it doesn't have to be a fundamental change to the existing workflow - They just need to add some much needed tools and update some of the existing ones.

I'll give you two for starters.

I agree those are excellent suggestions, and I get a better idea of where you're going with this. But, I have a more universal suggestion: the industry should not abandon ReWire, but enhance it.

I use Studio One, Cakewalk, and Ableton Live on a regular basis. Each has functionalities the others don't. I don't have time to wait forever for every DAW to implement every other DAW's functionality, so I have to use the right tool for the right job based on what's available now. 

Studio One does a great job of integrating samples and slices into instruments like Impact XT and Sample One. But, there's nothing like Ableton Live's Session View. So, I ReWire Ableton Live into Studio One - done. Cakewalk doesn't do notation. So I ReWire Notion into Cakewalk. When Sonar had no significant suite of virtual instruments, I ReWired Reason into it. 

The problem is that most DAWs, with the notable exception of Live, FL Studio, and Acid Pro, are only ReWire hosts. That's what I mean by enhancements. If all DAWs could be ReWire hosts or clients, we probably wouldn't even be having this discussion. For example, I find Cakewalk's mixing environment very comfortable. It would be great if any DAW could be a client for it. When I need to mix a Pro Tools session, I usually export the tracks, and import them into Cakewalk to do the mix. Yeah, it would be nice to avoid that step - which would be possible, if Pro Tools could be a ReWire client. 

But, it looks like this will never happen, because Propellerheads is dropping ReWire support, no one else seems to be taking up the slack (I asked Steinberg because they were involved in the original development, but never got an answer back), and it's not being made open source. Although ReWire still works with Windows, even when it's not officially supported, ReWire is now officially dead on computers with Apple silicon because there will supposedly never be an Apple silicon-compatible library. So, we'll continue to have DAWs that live in the worlds they do best, not play nice with each other, have people in forums beg for features other DAWs have and be frustrated, and need  to import/export tracks & stems to take advantage of features unique to specific DAWs.

The industry doesn't realize that this kind of a move would grow the size of the market, because people would invest in more than one DAW, so that they could easily do what they want to do. And the creative options that open up by treating DAWs as modules instead of one-size-fits-all solutions are off the hook.   /rant

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by Craig Anderton
Added Acid Pro to the list of programs that can be client or host

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

32 minutes ago, Craig Anderton said:

The industry doesn't realize that this kind of a move would grow the size of the market, because people would invest in more than one DAW, so that they could easily do what they want to do. And the creative options that open up by treating DAWs as modules instead of one-size-fits-all solutions are off the hook.   /rant

It's a nice idea but being involved in production music as I am with it's short deadlines and volume of  tracks required  to make decent royalties, the one-size-fits -all solution holds far more appeal because it reduces complexity and I can write-mix-master and export deliverables all in one session ( which is considered best practice in this world )   

The thought of relying on inter-dependencies between different DAWs and the potential for something to go wrong brings me out in a cold sweat. I guess that's just my own use case though.

I trialled  most of the alternative DAWs when I thought SPLAT had gone the way of the Dodo but came to the conclusion that the best DAW is the one you know which is why I continuously campaign for it to improve and pull in more non-legacy users.

Edited June 6, 2021 by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[Starship Krupa]

Wow, that's awful, I didn't know that ReWire was falling out of favor. I agree with you that interoperability and treating DAW's as modules is a great way to grow the market.

Don't need to look any further than MIDI. There were companies that believed they should try to keep their customers locked inside their own ecosystems in order to sell more of their hardware. Then some brave people came up with MIDI and it grew the market unmeasurably. I say unmeasurably because how many people only got interested in making music electronically after they knew they could sequence via MIDI? How many current DAW's started out as computer MIDI sequencers?

You were there at the birth, Craig, you remember. I met you not long after the start of MIDI (Electronic Music Expo, 1985, San Francisco) and bemoaned my lack of funds for starting to work with it (I was on starvation wages at Orban at the time, making less than the janitor). You grinned and said "get a CZ101!" I took your suggestion to be that with MIDI, you could start out with the smallest, cheapest synth and then add other toys as the disposable income trickled in. The Casio would not become an obsolete investment until you were tired of its sounds.

[Starship Krupa]

59 minutes ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

I actually work in multiple genres : EDM , Electronica, Hip Hop, Pop, Trailer , Orchestral , Rock , Funk...even Dubstep ? 

All genres of instrumentals for TV shows.

That's awesome. I'd love to get some music in movies or TV. My genres are EDM, electronica, post punk and indie rock (like The Replacements or Pavement, not that overproduced swill that goes by the name "Indie Rock" today).

I come up with stuff and think "this sounds like what you'd hear when the detectives are poking around in the darkened warehouse." I don't think I could do well making it to order, though.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

I come up with stuff and think "this sounds like what you'd hear when the detectives are poking around in the darkened warehouse." I don't think I could do well making it to order, though.

It's pretty competitive , I do about 100 tracks per year now  

[Craig Anderton]

6 hours ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

It's a nice idea but being involved in production music as I am with it's short deadlines and volume of  tracks required  to make decent royalties, the one-size-fits -all solution holds far more appeal because it reduces complexity and I can write-mix-master and export deliverables all in one session ( which is considered best practice in this world )

Well, back in the 2005-2010 time slot, I was doing audio for literally hundreds of (admittedly short) videos a year. The reason I went for the workflow I did, and I agree it's not for everybody, is that I found over time that doing workarounds in one DAW slowed things down more than the export/import shuffle.  So it was a lesser of two evils situation, not a "this is great, this sucks" situation.

However, I also never had problems when using ReWire, except when Propellerheads was slow moving from 32- to 64-bit OSes. That threw me a curve. It was an interdependency with no decent workaround, but it was the only one I experienced. 

[rfssongs]

I've been using Cakewalk for 30 years - is that young enough ?

[kzmaier]

All it takes is a few big name producers/artists to give a shout out and bang!!!

I do think BandLab is taking us into the future with online features!!  With their online content new users will be happy.  Imagine loops, instruments, and plugins online at the artist fingers.  Online collaboration, exposure, and marketing also could also be huge.

 

Only tomorrow knows!!

 

[Noel Borthwick]

On 6/5/2021 at 1:19 AM, Craig Anderton said:

Top 5 Pop Genre Artists

1. Billie Eilish – 1.676 million album sales, TEA, and on-demand SEA

Did you know that Billie Eilish is the neice of an old ex-cakewalk employee - Jamie O’Connell?