Tip: ride those tool-switching function keys

[Starship Krupa]

I stumbled across this review of SONAR X from 2011 while trying to find cites for the Cakewalk by BandLab Wikipedia article.

It's interesting to read the impressions of a reviewer seeing what later became Cakewalk by BandLab for the first time.

Also, in typical Cakewalk fashion, I picked up a handy tip from a review of the 11-year-old first version of the product.

I've mentioned the value of explicitly switching tools rather than trying to figure out how to make the Smart Tool do everything I want. The Smart Tool is awesome, and it is very smart, whoever worked out what it does in all those different contexts did a great job. But if, like me, you sometimes find yourself fighting it a bit to get exactly the results you want, if you're doing a bunch of complex, tricky editing, switch to one of the 4 flavors of the Edit Tool (but if you just want to Split a clip or note, hit the Alt key). If you're drawing MIDI notes or automation, there's 8 flavors of Draw Tool  for that, and you don't have to double-click or drag to lay MIDI notes. If you've never figured out how to use it, the Pattern Tool is crazy useful for duplicating selections of MIDI notes or automation nodes. Spend 10 minutes and try it. It only ever has to save you 10 minutes to be worth the effort. Right-click usually takes care of the Erase Tool, but there's a Mute Tool under F10 as well.

Soooo, if you're trying to get in the habit of switching tools with the F5-F10 keys, wouldn't it be nice if right after you used one, it could automatically switch back to the previous tool you were using (presumably the Smart Tool)? Well, Cakewalk can do that. All you have to do is press the function key that switches to the tool you want to use, but don't release the key until you're done with the tool. Then, when you lift your finger, Cakewalk will switch back to the Smart Tool (or whatever you were using before you hit the switching key).

This means that you can treat them as 5 different modifier keys that return to the Smart Tool every time.

(if you have trouble remembering which F key goes to which Tool, all of my custom Cakewalk themes show the keys right there on the Tools module)