R.I.P. Theming

[Starship Krupa]

With the retirement of Cakewalk by BandLab, I'd like to memorialize the pastime that I discovered and still miss. It started out as an effort to just make Cakewalk look better to my own eyes and turned into a hobby all its own with intrinsic rewards. I won't take credit for inspiring any of it, because they just bring Sonar closer to being in line with modern UI language, but when Sonar was released, it was very gratifying to see that it incorporates multiple things that I implemented in my own themes. This includes the use of Mac style turny triangles to open and close panels and hamburger and 3-dot options menus. Colin and I were especially relieved to see that the odd reversal of synth track and simple instrument track icons was not perpetuated. Unfortunately they just went with using the same icon for both, which isn't ideal, but at least it doesn't make my head spin.

Slight consolation is that my CbB themes seem to work pretty well in SONAR Platinum, so I can still enjoy them in some way.

I'd like to first thank @Colin Nicholls, without whom it would have not been possible for me to make a theme suitable for public consumption. His The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to Theming Cakewalk is a towering achievement. I suspect that there's an innate human impulse to share what we have learned with our community, whatever that may be. It would go back to our earliest social evolution, when doing so was critical to the tribe and individuals' survival. Colin's work is an excellent example of that. His steampunk theme is the one that inspired me to do a theme with a "theme," that is one that referred to something other than Cakewalk itself. Fast forward to the ones I did for Neon Genesis: Evangelion and Yellow Submarine. Not necessarily daily drivers, but fun to create in and of themselves.

Second, @Matthew White for creating themes that inspired me early on. I started out swiping some of his button images (the green and red on/off's) before doing my own. He is truly a Lord of the .STH.

Third, all of the other themers whose efforts inspired me in one way or other. Which includes pretty much everyone who's ever released a theme for public consumption. Shout out to @sjoens for tackling skins for the legacy Cakewalk effects and instruments. There's plenty of work that could be done with those.

As for the future, Colin and I and others from this forum have been relentless in lobbying the Cakewalk devs to give us access to Sonar's custom colors. I really hope that they do and that it's at least as extensive as Theme Editor's abilities to set colors. The new vector graphics buttons are able to change color without having to create a whole new image, which potentially allows a great deal of customization. And so I look forward to this forum coming to life again as we begin to share our custom color schemes.

For those who have been lobbying for this ability, and especially for those who haven't yet, hit the Feedback forum and get to pestering. I'm concentrating on color choices. From my observation, a Theme Editor like CbB's isn't possible, or at least not probable. Also IMO not necessary. I may not love all of the buttons; there are some glaring (to me) examples of inconsistency such as random use of "Fx" and "FX" to abbreviate "effects." But I can live with them if I get access to the  colors. Here's hoping it won't be too long. I like the overall look and design philosophy of Sonar, but the blandness of the stock color schemes brings me down.

[Amberwolf]

51 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Slight consolation is that my CbB themes seem to work pretty well in SONAR Platinum, so I can still enjoy them in some way

I'd like to try some of htem out on my old Splat, if you still have them up somewhere.  (I thought there was a link in your signature for them, but I must be thinking of someone else as I don't see it now). 

[Colin Nicholls]

Shucks Erik, thank you. It's amazing what you can achieve when you are between jobs and have people appreciating your efforts.

I echo your sentiments. I've been mourning the loss of theming also, but looking forward to what is coming - cross fingers - with respect to color customization in New Sonar.

However for those of you expecting a "Young Lady's Primer to Color Theming in New Sonar", please don't hold your breath waiting for it 😄

 

[Colin Nicholls]

Oh - and we can still fire up CbB and load themes as a source of inspiration, going forward. That hasn't gone away.

[Starship Krupa]

20 minutes ago, Amberwolf said:

I'd like to try some of htem out on my old Splat, if you still have them up somewhere.  (I thought there was a link in your signature for them, but I must be thinking of someone else as I don't see it now). 

I took the links out of my sig minutes before you went looking for them. Of course.😄

Here's the folder:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yo9m9yqaxnwr537tyud7s/AAR9ZDrFPPFYUZbPvowFJtw?rlkey=jcrv5eu9hyk354j8w3lyhx89v&st=gdpi1n53&dl=0

 

[Starship Krupa]

3 minutes ago, Colin Nicholls said:

for those of you expecting a "Young Lady's Primer to Color Theming in New Sonar", please don't hold your breath waiting for it 😄

If the color choices are obscure enough, and they sure as heck were in CbB and kind of are in Sonar, then I'm sure we'll step up and provide auxiliary documentation.🙄

Isn't there an appendix in TYLIP  that includes my findings from going through all of the color settings and noting what they did? The custom color sets were an important part of my themes. Oh those red measure lines and blue or green beat lines....

[sjoens]

1 hour ago, Colin Nicholls said:

However for those of you expecting a "Young Lady's Primer to Color Theming in New Sonar", please don't hold your breath waiting for it 😄

I was expecting something more like "New Sonar Colors for Dummies and Old Men with Poor Eyesight!" 

[Amberwolf]

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I took the links out of my sig minutes before you went looking for them. Of course.😄

Here's the folder:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yo9m9yqaxnwr537tyud7s/AAR9ZDrFPPFYUZbPvowFJtw?rlkey=jcrv5eu9hyk354j8w3lyhx89v&st=gdpi1n53&dl=0

 

Thanks!   I'll try them out; there are a number of Splat UI things I find hard to see/use, and was going to start experimenting, but if yours save me time with that it would really help  even if I still have to change stuff.    

 

I'm still using older versions (7, 6, etc), partly because Splat's UI is...less than useful for me, and the toolbars are pretty much all  wrong my usage and needs (I need things to be in the same places so i can just use it and not have to fix mistakes from doing things that "always" worked...don't see a way to do that in Splat, so will have to just disable all the toolbars to keep them out of harm's way and do things with keybindings).    But at least I can see how much of the UI can be fixed with your themes.   Splat has useful features not in my versions, so I can at least use them if I do it this way, and still do the majority of my stuff in the versions that work the way I need them to.

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Amberwolf

[sjoens]

SPlat also has a Theme Editor so you can tweak CbB themes to fit as some images are different or non existent.

For giggles Theme Editor even shows up in Sonar 8's Tools Menu.

  

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

With the retirement of Cakewalk by BandLab, I'd like to memorialize the pastime that I discovered and still miss.

Funny how some DAWs have quite the following for custom themes while other DAWs could care less.  Mixcraft is almost 100% user customizable and even looks designed to support it in the preferences, but it's maker and most users have no interest in it.  Seems LUNA has but one user who makes and posts skins for it.  Reaper users have been doing it from the beginning, I think.  MOTU DP has several "colorful" themes made in-house.  These 4 have image folders you can easily access.

Edited 10 hours ago by sjoens