Completely lost..

[Lexi]

Hello. I have no experience in DAWs or music production and I find tutorials very confusing. I managed to find this tutorial easy to understand so I copied whatever the person was doing in the video. I couldn't go any longer in the video because whenever I tried to create a track with an instrument, nothing shows up after I record. Please help!!

[Jim Fogle]

 @Lexi, Greetings!  Welcome to the forum, to Cakewalk by BandLab and to audio production.  Unfortunately, audio production and DAWs in general have a pretty steep learning curve in the beginning.  It would help us help you if we had an idea of (1) what task or tasks you would like to accomplish, (2) your computer specifications, (3) what external hardware you have.

I can give you some general suggestions that were useful to me when I was first beginning in audio production.  Structure is very important in the beginning.  Information needs to be presented in a structured manner, 1-2-3 not 3-1-2 for example, so there is a beginning, middle and end.  There are several free, online classess that are good starting points. 

I'm partial to Coursera's Music Production classes:    https://www.coursera.org/learn/technology-of-music-production#about   &   https://www.coursera.org/learn/producing-music#about     The classes are free to audit; you just need to read close to find out how to audit.  Don't purchase a specialization program unless you want to.

Another great educational source is Groove3.com: https://www.groove3.com/all-access-pass  .  One year of access is currently $99 US or $15 for one month.  I purchased video series for Sonar, which Cakewalk by BandLab is based on, and for another program I use, Band-in-a-Box.  Both series are wonderful.

Another free source is Play With Your Music:  http://www.playwithyourmusic.org/  It is an experimental teaching website but has some REALLY good information.  It's just not organized in a traditional manner.

Finally. the Cakewalk Reference Guide is a pdf download available at the top of each webpage under the Cakewalk By BandLab tab.

[chuckebaby]

Possibly you can explain what it is your trying to do. Record a keyboard ? record a guitar ?

We can walk you through step by step and then you can work on polishing that on your own till you feel comfortable moving on to something else.

as Jim said, its a steep learning curve but once you do a few intermediate tasks, you can build on those making more advanced skills.