Can Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 do this?

The place for Cakewalk beginners to discuss everything Cakewalk.
Guest

Post by Guest » Thu Oct 09, 2003 6:49 pm

I can't find any on-line user guide. Perhaps one of the experts here knows the answers to these...

1. Can I notate drums (via click and drag notes with my mouse), then assign drums sounds to it?...In fact can I create a musical score, just through notation, (without a midi interface), and assign instrumentation to those notes, and record the audio track?

2. Can I export individual audio tracks to a RW CD. If so, has anyone tried uploading Cakewalk audio tracks to an AW16G?

3. Does Cakewalk have any type of pitch correction feature?...like if a few notes are off-pitch (like vocals) is there latitutude to "tune" it?

4. Does anyone have experience with the old Korgs...X5? In your opinion, is the sound quality of Cakewalk HS 2004, vastly superior to a an X5?...does it depend on my soundcard...I have one of those SoundBlaster cards.

I have not purchased Cakewalk...I wish there was more detailed information about it...I may need to download the demo.

Thanks anyone who is able to answer!!!


andychap
Posts: 685
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:26 pm
Location: UK

Post by andychap » Fri Oct 10, 2003 10:15 am

1. Yes. Via the staff view or easier still the piano roll, there is always the virtual keyboard as well. You can even get programs to scan a piece of sheet music and save it as a midi file.

2. Yes re the exporting. I can't see why not re the AW16G.

3. There are plugins that can do this through cakewalk.

4. The midi sounds are entirely down to your sound card. The SB Live has reasonable midi sounds on board but better still, the facility to load soundfonts, of which there are thousands available of all different qualities, free and commercial. Most of which can be downloaded. You can also use softsynths and VSTi/DXi instrumants in cakewalk as well.

Definately give the demo a try. HS2004 is worth every penny.

Guest

Post by Guest » Fri Oct 10, 2003 2:15 pm

Andy,

Thank you very very much for the informative reply. Based on your answers, I think I'll download the demo this weekend and play with it. I can't believe how reasonably priced the HS2004 is...under $100 from what I can tell, unless I need new eye glasses.

You mentioned plugins-for pitch control, do have any recommendations...I'll also do an internet search.

Regarding my sound card, I'll need to check exactly what type of SB card it is...but I do think it's the one that you described in your response.

Thanks again!

andychap
Posts: 685
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:26 pm
Location: UK

Post by andychap » Fri Oct 10, 2003 10:51 pm

I don't use vocals much so I don't know much about this area but I believe there one by antares called autotune and doubtless there will be one made by Steinberg. I'll ask around.

Guest

Post by Guest » Sun Oct 12, 2003 5:32 am

This is classic Cakewalk...the documentation and support is really pretty lame. Just enough in the documentation to get the software installed, prove it can record something then leaves you hangin.

Come on Cakewalk...this stuff isn't cheap...can we get better manuals with the product...please?

Guest

Post by Guest » Mon Oct 13, 2003 4:26 pm

This past weekend I was going to test drive HS2004. Then I realized, that when I purchased my AW16G, it came with a demo disk of Sonar (which I think is made by Cakewalk).

Anyway I loaded it up, and went to the help section to get started. All I wanted to do was notate something, pick an instrument, and listen back to it. Man...I spent over an hour trying to just do that, and finally gave up when I couldn't.

James Peters

Post by James Peters » Sat Nov 01, 2003 8:37 pm

Guest wrote:
...demo disk of Sonar (which I think is made by Cakewalk).

Man...I spent over an hour trying to just do that, and finally gave up when I couldn't.

Sonar is the flagship of Cakewalk's multitrack products. I'm surprised you didn't know about it, especially since there is a separate forum for Sonar here... :idea: :lol:

Anyway, I guess you should try other recording software and see how easy it is to use by contrast to Cakewalk. IMO, there's a reason it was called "Cakewalk" in the first place--it's one of the most intuitive programs for this kind of thing I can think of. Compare it to Logic or even Cubase and you'll find it's at least as easy to use if not easier (sometimes it's far easier / more intuitive). The ease of use for MIDI editing one of its strongest features.

As for documentation--if you buy the product, there's plenty of that. You'll find it's common to not have the full user manual online actually. People trying to use pirated versions of the software have a harder time if the documentation is hard to get, so I'm sure that's part of the reason right there. Anyway, suffice to say Cakewalk isn't short on documentation and is actually fairly easy to set up / use compared to some other multitrackers.

If you've never used a multitrack audio / MIDI program before, you're going to find it takes a while to wrap your head around it. However if you're like me and came from more humble beginnings (using separate sequencers and MIDI devices synched to multitrack tape devices)--the learning curve is definitely worth it. And you can't avoid that learning curve with any good multitrack application. They're all the same in that regard (and some are arguably worse for this than others).

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