SONAR Platinum

October 21, 2015

The Evolution of Comping

Compiling or “Comping” takes is relatively new to sound recording. With the increased ability of technology has come the increased desire to comp with excruciating attention to detail, sometimes all the way down to a syllable or note, to create “The Perfect Take.”

The Acoustic and Electrical Eras (1877-1945)

When audio recording was first introduced, it was an entirely mechanical process. Comping did not exist. In fact, neither did mixing as we know it. Everything was recorded in one take, and level adjustments were made by moving musicians closer to or farther from the horn–essentially the microphone of its time.

In the primitive stages of this recording format, it was not uncommon to have copies of the same record that sounded entirely different. This was because if a band wanted to release 1,000 copies of a song, they would have to record it 1,000 different times, each take resulting in its own uniquely-performed copy.
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October 20, 2015

Five Reasons Why Patch Points Rock

By Craig Anderton

Looking for some advanced, interesting, or downright weird ways to use the new Patch Points feature? Here you go:

Signal Splitter

Suppose you want to split one track to several outputs, for example to do multiband processing. Here’s how:

The Dry track output goes to Patch Point 1 instead of the master bus. Five tracks, each of which filters a different band of frequencies, have their inputs set to Patch Point 1. The Dry track now feeds all five channels simultaneously. Placing all these tracks inside a track folder makes it easy to fold them up when you want a tidier setup.
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September 23, 2015

5 Ways SONAR's Rolling Updates Are Working For You

With the introduction of the new SONAR last January, we also introduced a new delivery model we call Rolling Updates. Essentially, when you purchase an upgrade to SONAR Artist/Professional/Platinum, you receive 12 months of SONAR updates free. Each month, you receive an update (or sometimes more) which can include anything from fixes to new features and tools, add-ons, additional content, tutorials, and more. Once the initial 12 month period is up, you can renew for an additional 12 months and continue to receive updates, or keep everything you own up to this point. Lots of folks were skeptical at first about these Rolling Updates, but since their introduction, they’ve proven their worth. Here’s how:

5) Faster Learning Curves

When we were releasing a version every year or so, you’d receive a whole boatload of new features all at once – which was pretty cool, except you suddenly had tons of totally new features you had to learn to use. These game-changing new features were often designed to speed up your workflow and make your life a little easier, but investing the time to learn how all the new things worked could be overwhelming.

With Rolling Updates, you can now ease into all these new features. Instead of piling on 10-20 new tools, we’re introducing them in bite-sized pieces so you can take them in one or two at a time. This allows you to get a real feel for how they work before diving into something new, and has less impact on your workflow.

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September 8, 2015

What Windows 10 Means for Music Creators

Windows 10 is here, and our trusted code-commanders have been working closely with Microsoft to ensure an enhanced experience for our valued Cakewalk community. Our benchmark testing has shown the new operating system to be very efficient with a lighter footprint. In general, Windows 10 has outperformed Windows 8 in all of our tests in terms of performance and efficiency. Subjectively speaking, the “look and feel” of this free upgrade is a much welcomed improvement over the “Metro” landscape of the previous operating system. But what does this mean for music creators?

1.) More responsive: Out of the gate people will notice a much snappier operating system. The tweaks Microsoft made to the kernel and other parts of the OS in general have given it a responsive overhaul.

2.) Upgrade ease: Moving into Windows 10 is a very quick and easy upgrade.

3.) Unified OS: The best elements of Win 7, Win 8, and Win 8.1 have been combined into a streamlined experience with Win 10. Store Apps and Desktop Apps seamlessly run side by side for a smooth universal experience.

4.) New MIDI API available across all devices: The new API allows multi-client access to single MIDI hardware and new jitter-free operation. Microsoft worked hard on bringing this all together for better MIDI implementation.

5.) Enhancements to the kernel: Microsoft has made changes in the multimedia scheduler and kernel components to minimize spikes – this can make a big difference in low-latency streaming apps like SONAR.

6.) FLAC and ALAC Support: Windows 10 has native support for these two codecs. Both “Apple Lossless Audio Codec” and FLAC could mean great things for Windows audio moving forward.

7.) Much faster boot-time: A lower footprint in memory combined with some new optimization techniques will get you up and running and making music faster than ever.

8.) Runs smoother on older machines: The lower memory footprint and optimization tweaks will also allow Win 10 to run more efficiently on older machines. This is great news for Wn 7 users who never upgraded to Win 8.

9.) Lower Latency: 15ms lower roundtrip latency using WASAPI (shared mode).

10.) Core isolation: Drivers and applications can now isolate and dedicate low latency audio processing to a single CPU core. This can minimize the effect of DPC latency spiking from networking, Bluetooth, or other DPC spiking processes by preventing interruptions to audio processing.

At Cakewalk, we are dedicated to staying on the forefront of technology. Our CTO (featured below) and his team worked closely with Microsoft to make sure our products run smoothly on Windows 10. We are very excited about this free update, and highly recommend it to our customers. Try SONAR with Windows 10 today for the ultimate music creation experience.

August 28, 2015

5 Tools To Get "That Analog Sound" From SONAR

With the advent of digital audio, some feel a certain quality associated with the analog signal path has been lost. While that may have been true at one point, analog emulations have come a long way since first introduced. Let’s find out how to add that “analog sound” using some of SONAR’s plugins. (Note: Many of the following examples use features are exclusive to SONAR Platinum, so if you don’t already have this version, you can try a free demo by clicking here.)

#5 – ProChannel Tape Emulation

Tape does some pretty magical things to audio, so SONAR Platinum includes tape emulation as a ProChannel module. Best of all, you can use it as much as you like without having to clean the heads!

Here’s how tape emulation enhances the sound:

Emulates the “head bump” of analog tape to enrich the low end, adding subtle warmth
Smooths response by slightly rolling off lowest lows and highest highs
Increases sustain by smoothing peaks
Saturates the signal in a non-linear, analog manner
Optionally introduces high-frequency hiss

For a basic application, insert the Tape Emulator in the Master Bus ProChannel. You’ll immediately hear a more cohesive mix. Increasing the REC LEVEL increases the overall saturation. The REC LEVEL knob, TAPE SPD switch, and BIAS switch all interact in unique ways, so try out different combinations to hear how they affect each other.

After hearing how the Tape Emulator affects your sound, try applying it to individual tracks (your drums will sound particularly fabulous). This will be a more subtle effect, adding a sense of depth to the overall mix.

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August 21, 2015

HOW ILAN BLUESTONE APPROACHES HIS CHARTING EDM TRACKS

SONAR Platinum artist iLan Bluestone’s career trajectory is moving fast. The jet-setting EDM producer is touring the world, but was kind enough to share not only his time with us discussing his music production techniques, but also his new single collaboration with mogul-producer BT titled “All These Wounds.” We caught up with iLan in Chicago at the Spring Awakening Festival, and then again down the road at Sweetwater’s Gearfest:

August 10, 2015

How Norman Matthew and Murder FM got their Recent Record Deal (Sony/RED)

Congratulations to SONAR user Norman Matthew and his band Murder FM for their first major-affiliated record released just last week. Entitled Happily Neverafter, the 12 song full-length album was tracked mostly in SONAR over a period of time. As many commercial records these days, this recording project started out as a demo and then as fate would have it, ended up in the hands of a label and a real-deal mixer (Famous/Sony Red and Beau Hill).

Murder FM have been on the fence about signing with different labels over the years since they debuted a video on http://www.revolvermag.com that shot out of nowhere. In 2013, the track/video “We the Evil” took over the top spots surpassing major label artists next to Rob Zombie, and projected the band into the public eye as well as the industry eye. The video alone had 150k views within a short time of it being released and is now up to 320k globally.

Finally, and recently, the band found the right label partner with Famous Records Global (Sony/Red) and the final touches were made which includes a death-defying remix of the focus-single-track by Tommy Lee of Motley Crue. Interestingly enough, many of the tracks mixed by Beau Hill on the record were created by Norman in his SONAR studio stemming from demos he created over the years.

“SONAR allowed me to capture a lot of great moments where there was really no need to go back to the drawing board.”

Already sharing stages with bands such as Black Veil Brides, Orgy, Halestorm, Powerman 5000, Young Guns, Korn, The Used, The Birthday Massacre, Sick Puppies, Trapt, Rob Zombie, Deftones, Avatar, Five Finger Death Punch, and The Pretty Reckless to name just a few, they embark on touring in support of the new record for the rest of 2015. As MFM supports their first official global release distributed by Sony/Red, the future is wide open and arena rock will live and breathe again in the fiery form of Murder FM!

For more information on Murder FM visit http://www.murderfmmusic.com

The all new SONAR comes in 3 different versions and can truly help you to create your own artist story. Click here to try SONAR for free

Last week’s interview on 97.1 The Eagle/Dallas

We the Evil Official Video

August 4, 2015

Using Cakewalk Drum Replacer: The “Right” Way and The “Other” Way

The “Right” Way:

There’s more than one way to use Drum Replacer to trigger your drum sounds. Which of these you choose will depend on the material, as well as your preferred outcome and workflow. First, let’s take a look at some of the intended, more traditional uses of Drum Replacer.

A mixed drum track or loop

A fairly standard Drum Replacer use is to augment or altogether change the drum sounds on an already-mixed drum track. The examples below play an unprocessed SONAR drum loop, followed by the same loop reinforced by Drum Replacer.

With the built-in filter mechanism, it’s easy to isolate each piece of the drum kit and replace it individually. For this particular loop, focusing the filters to 67 Hz for the kick and 673 Hz for the snare ensured replacing the right sound. I wanted to soften this already-punchy loop by replacing the kick and snare sounds with something a little more “airy,” then blending these with the original. I chose the included WholeLotta Kick and WholeLotta Snare samples for their lighter, more pillowy qualities and blended them roughly 70/30 with the original drum track. Combined, they create a pleasantly complex, tight-yet-sustained sound.
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July 23, 2015

What SONAR Platinum Pro Artists are saying about their Recent Upgrade

At Cakewalk, we are fortunate and proud to have some great cutting edge professional artists who rely on SONAR daily to write, record, and deliver world-class tracks. We are constantly getting feedback from many users to improve our software, so in our recent pole we decided to ask some artists to tell us about their Platinum upgrade experience in their own words:

iLan Bluestone:
International Electronic Producer/DJ
London, UK
Anjunabeats

[Currently touring internationally and working on new tracks]

“Upgrading to Platinum was a big deal for me. I basically transitioned from SONAR 8.5 and was toggling back and forth between that and X3. Platinum really put me over the edge to move forward. Once I was over the initial learning curve which was actually enjoyable, the system became more like a writing partner. The tools and workflow are like no other – and there are so many options to approach music in different ways, so getting creative ideas flowing is the best thing about Platinum. This is what really keeps my custom sound always on the cutting edge.”

Javier Colon:
Winner of NBC The Voice
Recording Artist: Concord Music Group

[Currently touring and finishing a Holiday EP while also gearing up for a new full-length record 2016]

“I went from SONAR X2 to Platinum and the new features have been a Godsend for me. When I have a system that works well I usually just stick with it until I am forced to upgrade. The difference between X2 and Platinum for me personally meant discovering new ways to make my demos sound way better and more pro. I often have to send demos from my home studio to my label (Concord Music Group), and since getting onto Platinum, a lot of my tracks sound really polished. For me and my style of music, the combination of the comping tool and VocalSync meant the difference of actually using some vocals for my new record that I cut on my own – could have never done that with X2.”

Sean Murray:
Composer of Music for Film, TV and Video Games
Los Angeles, CA

[Currently working on a new film and new video game both TBA shortly]

“I upgraded from X3 to Platinum right when it came out. I usually stay behind new releases but had heard that Platinum was the most stable release to date – and it certainly is in my book. It’s rock solid and super snappy (the only way I can really explain it). The features included in Platinum are hands-down better than any release Cakewalk has had in the past. There are so many ways to explore music creation and that is what keeps my productions sounding fresh. I find myself using things like Strum Session 2 and Addictive Drums 2 a lot. The upgrades to the ProChannel have been really useful as well. And I absolutely love getting the updates now – I look forward to it every month.”

Murray Daigle
Producer/Songwriter/Mixer/Musician
MDS Recording, Toronto

[Just finished writing and delivering the main theme song for the Pan ParaPan Am Games]

“I went from SONAR X3 to Platinum and I was a bit reluctant at first since I’m constantly in the trenches every day with people counting on me to deliver music to labels, artists, publishers etc. This was by far the smoothest transition I’ve had with upgrading my SONAR rig. Whatever the code-kings did, this version of the program has been absolutely rock-solid. The biggest thing for me by far has been VocalSync. With the style of music I write and produce, I have to have big vocals to stay in the game. VocalSync gives me so many options on how I place vocals in mixes. I can quickly embellish a lead vocal track by tightening another to it, and then processing it in a whole different way for different effects in the mix. Time really is money for me, and the tools in Platinum have never been more creative or professional in any prior SONAR release.”

Yogi Lonich
Producer/Songwriter/Musician/Solo Artist/Live and Session Guitarist
(Has worked with): Shakira, DJ Zedd, Koshi Inaba, Chris Cornell, Buckcherry, Wallflowers, Fuel, Melissa Etheridge, Five For Fighting, Meredith Brooks
Los Angeles, CA

[Currently working on music for various forms of media and performing live with various artists]

“I upgraded not too long ago from SONAR X3 to Platinum and have noticed a big difference in the program. First of all, it’s much quicker and seems to be way more efficient than X3. To some, that might not mean much, but for what I do it’s important. Besides playing guitar for some great artists and doing my own music (you can read more about that here http://yogimusic.com/bio/ =), I write a lot of music for commercials and libraries through agencies – this is where time is a factor and Platinum is really efficient. The ability to totally customize the program to my workflow gives me the ability to deliver more music, and better quality music in way less time. The upgrade to Addictive Drums 2 is worth it alone not to mention all the other new features and tools.”

Click here to upgrade to SONAR Platinum, and start creating your own artist success story.

July 16, 2015

Speed Up Your Workflow With 5 (Rather Hidden) SONAR Features

SONAR has a LOT of features. So many, in fact, that it’s easy for some of them to fly right under the radar. The list below contains five of my favorite SONAR features that can really speed up your workflow! Download the latest SONAR Free Demo and follow along.

#5 – Clip Coloring

Let’s say you’ve recorded a couple of guitar tracks, and the guitar player changed tone in certain parts of the song. You may want to identify these parts easily during the mixing process. Markers can work, but I typically use those to indicate sections and turning points in the song, and the tone change doesn’t always line up with arrangement changes. Instead, you can change the clip color in these sections to make the parts easier to find.

Here are the clips in their original state:

Make some splits where the pickup change happens:

Now, select the parts with Shift+Click where the guitarist changes his tone, and using the Foreground selector in the Clip Inspector, color these red:

You can now see all the sections where the guitar player used an alternate tone by the red waveform, which can come in very handy while mixing.

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