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Bonjour! Roland Europe & SONAR V-Studio Systems Visit France

Across the pond, Roland Central Europe has been very busy showing the new SONAR V-Studio 700 and 100 systems to potential dealers and aspiring producers. On April 23rd, Roland’s Cedric Verchere visited the world-renown school for multimedia, the SAE Institute in Paris, France.

French R & B Producer, Zoheir Mokkedem, was on hand giving live demonstrations, showing the audience how to make beats in SONAR 8.  Zoheir is most known for his work with French chart-topper, Nadiya.  He co-wrote, programmed and produced two songs on her platinum-selling, breakthrough album, Flashback. Both songs were tracked in SONAR.

Also in attendance was Loic, the founder of the first French SONAR users community, www.sonarfrance.com. Cedric was glad to finally meet him.

Like Zoheir and Loic, professional producers and musicians worldwide choose SONAR for its 64-bit audio engine, intuitive user interface, ease of creating tracks and beats, and ability to control EQ, effects and synths with ACT for their music production needs.

Roland Central Europe will make two more stops in France this spring. Check out the schedule below for more details:

Univers Clavier Percu
3, Rue du General de Gaulle
Brumath, FR
Clinic: Monday, May 25 at 3:00pm
+03 88645911

Aux Guitares
63 Avenue de Belgique
Illzach, FR
Clinic: Tuesday, May 26 at 3:00pm
+03 89464638

ALSO…  Watch for Nadiya’s new album, Electron Libre, featuring former Destiny’s Child member Kelly Rowland and the “Latin Casanova,” Enrique Iglesias.

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Money Management Group's 'One Stop Shop' 2009

This year’s One Stop Shop Producers Conference in Phoenix, Arizona will be off the chain! Hosted by Money Management Group at the Hyatt Regency Hotel from May 9th – 10th, hundreds of hip-hop producers from around the world will be representing at workshops on music publishing, artist management, studio and sound equipment, production, and artist scouting.

If you’ve got skills, join in on an extensive two-day beat battle, where the contestant with the hottest beats receives surprise gifts, music placement, the latest technology, and more. Also, Cakewalk will be on hand laying down tracks and dropping beats with the SONAR V-Studio 700 & 100 music production systems. 

Founded by Sha “Money” XL in 2002, Money Management Group has boosted the careers of beat-makers and trend-setters worldwide including 50 Cent, Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, Young Buck, Hi-Tek, and Jake One. Every year, the group’s One Stop Shop Producer’s Conference pulls together 700+ artists and producers from around the world. 

What will it take to make it or break it in tomorrow’s hip-hop scene? Stop by the conference to find out.

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ASCAP Expo 2009: Aspiring Producers & Industry Professionals Talk Trade

I guess day #2 technically starts at midnight, so I will take it from there where we were fortunate enough to land some passes to the ASCAP celebratory dinner and party at The Highlands on Hollywood Boulevard. Steve Thomas and I had a great time catching up with some CPU’s (Cakewalk Pro Users) including Vivek Maddala, Wendy Starland, Justin Lassen and Chuck Carr. 

We also got a chance to hang with our friend Jake Ottmann of EMI publishing who is overseeing our installment of the new V-100 and SONAR Producer into the EMI US Headquarters in New York City. 

ASCAP did an amazing job putting together a round of some pretty heavyweight songwriters who took turns banging out their hits in a very informal and interesting setting.  There is something so cool about hearing hit songs performed by the actual people who wrote them and not the people who you hear perform them on the radio.  It was a great night and it’s obvious that this ASCAP Expo is on its way to becoming one of the most respected music conferences in the US.

The morning came pretty quickly and just when I thought we would have a tough time matching up to the production quality of yesterday’s home studio master-class with Giovanni Lauren, in stepped Mr. Shawn Clement who scored a 30 second Land Rover spot in front of a packed house all day. 

Continue reading “ASCAP Expo 2009: Aspiring Producers & Industry Professionals Talk Trade”

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Musikmesse Day 3: Das Brauhaus

Well Day 3 came upon us quite quickly. So much has happened in the last couple of days. This was the last day of the retailer part of the show. Tomorrow is the public day, where Musikmesse is open to the public.

Remember that I mentioned our European counterparts rocked out a bit more during their product demonstrations? I found some evidence online today as I was typing this. MusicRadar shot some video on their handycam of one of their pre-demo performances in our booth. Sorry for the audio quality, but it was shot from the show floor. Edirol did some professional filming with audio from the board and we’ll get those online soon. For now, here’s a taste of ‘Rockstar’:

*Video edited on 4/8/09*

We had a second meeting with more of our new distribution partners. Brandon, Robin and I welcomed them to the Cakewalk family giving them an introduction to our product line and our marketing resources. This second group was just as enthusiastic as the first and I am very excited to have such strong representation in so many new areas of the world.

Pictured here with Greg Hendershott of Cakewalk are Kwan-Ki Min of Cosmos Corporation (Korea), David Leo of PT. Citra Intirama (Indonesia), Frank K.T. Lee of Tom Lee Music (Hong Kong), Pham Van Kim of Viet Thuong (Vietnam), Ali Sungurlu and Mehlih Aytug of Zuhal Dis Tic (Turkey), and Kittipong Techayuenyong of Theera Music (Thailand).

Later in the day, Gina Garda and I had a meeting with our new strategic marketing contact at Intel, Kimia Poursaleh. In case you missed it, Intel is currently running a big feature on Cakewalk and SONAR on their new Content Creation microsite. It was a real pleasure to finally meet Kimia in person.

As the day ended, the entire Cakewalk and Edirol crew along with some key people from Roland Japan set out for a traditional German dinner at Alt-Oberurseler Brauhaus to celebrate our successes at the show. The food and beer was amazing (maybe the beer was too amazing) but was even better, was having everyone together for a celebration. Here are a few pictures highlighting the evening’s festivities:

The taxis start to arrive and our friends gather outside the Brauhaus.

Robin, Brandon and Michael make their best attempt at a band photo.

Michael Hoover of Cakewalk and Simon Lowther of Edirol Europe.

Robin and I enjoy a couple of the Brauhaus’s finest.

Cakewalk’s Gina Garda and Roland’s Masahiro Minowa get ready to enjoy a good meal.

Despite the fact that I’m a vegetarian, I can’t miss a good photo opp.

Roland’s Managing Director Mr. Kondo gave a rousing toast. He’s flanked by Edirol Europe’s Managing Director Massimo Barbini and Cakewalk’s Founder and CEO Greg Hendershott. Phil Palmer and Dan the VJ look on.

As the night wore on, much hilarity ensued. I suppose you had to be there, but I can tell you that we got a special visit from the pretzel man!

That’s it for now, tomorrow is the BIG public day.

Gute Nacht,

Carl

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Musikmesse Day 2: Continued

Day 2 of Musikmesse started out real well. I opened up the tradeshow daily to see that we had gotten a write-up on page 2 about the fact that the V-Studio console was going to be available to SONAR 8 customers as a stand alone control surface.

I think one important point that was missing from the article, and I couldn’t expect it be written there, was that this is another example of Cakewalk listening to our customers. Some SONAR 8 users told us that they have spent quite a bit of money on their I/O and that you really only need the best control surface possible for SONAR.

We listened, and with just a little bit of work on our part, we will now be able to give them what they asked for, starting this summer. I still personally feel that if anyone had the full experienceof using the entire SONAR V-Studio 700 system together with the I/O and Fantom Synth, they would rethink their decision to only buy the console, but I guess I’m biased.

I kept reading the daily and I also found this nice photo of Ben Klempel and Massimo Barbini posing with the V-Studio 100. Massimo is the Managing Director of Edirol Europe, our distributor in Europe, and a really inspiring guy… I’m gald he’s on our side.

Brandon of course, was in his usual form, knocking out the crowds with his V-Studio 700 Demos.

There’s another good video from the show online. In this video, which should play after an ad, Sonic State interviews Julian from Edirol Europe about the V-Studio 100 and the VS 700C.

Also, the video I wrote about in the blog a couple of days ago, that Craig Anderton shot is now available online at Harmony Central.

When you get to the page, click on ‘Preview Video’ to watch Craig’s pre-show coverage. Alex, Steve, Brandon and I stage a mock argument about what’s important about the V-Studio 100 at around 4:20. You might get a laugh from it.

Signing off,

Carl Jacobson

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Create Digital Music Uncovers SONAR V-Studio 100

Create Digital Music is one of the industry’s top blogs featuring the latest news, tips, product reviews, forums and articles on digital music making. Yesterday, CDM was among the first outlets to introduce SONAR V-Studio 100!

“The V-Studio 100 is set up in a way that appears to come close to what I think a whole lot of us need as laptop musicians. And despite the Cakewalk name, it’s actually aimed at users of a variety of Mac and Windows tools…”

See what else they had to say about Cakewalk’s newest product, the portable music production studio for Mac and PC.

Visit Create Digital Music Now.

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Musikmesse Day 1: Ich Bin Ein Frankfurter

Well, it was such a good first day of the show, i’m not really sure where to begin. I guess starting at the beginning of the day is a good place.

Things started to look good first thing in the morning when I received the Messe Show Daily, and saw that the editors had decided that SONAR V-Studio 100 was one of the hottest announcements at the show and it deserved front cover placement on day 1.

Alex Westner, Cakewalk’s Director of Product Management is pictured here with the Show Daily…

The show floor was humming with excitement. Our European Distributors Edirol Europe did a great job with the booth. And they take a more rock & roll approach to our produce demos than we usually do in the states.

They hired an amazing group to do SONAR V-Studio 100 product demonstrations that showed how a band would usually use the product. I thought their demos were a lot of fun. Chris is here explaining to the audience the benefits of having an audio interface, daw controller, digital mixer, and SD Wave recorder all in one compact device.

I imagine it looked something like this.

But the audience clearly enjoyed themselves.

Craig Anderton, came by and shot a very entertaining product video with Alex, Brandon Ryan, Steve Thomas, and myself about the SONAR V-Studio 100, I don’t want to give any spoilers, but keep an eye out on Harmony Central for the video.

MusicRadar.tv also came by to get the scoop on the V-Studio 100. They interviewed Alex and the video is already online. You can check it out below.

Not sure if you saw the announcement yesterday, but we have extended our distribution into a bunch of new markets. I got to meet some of the new distributors today and talk to them about our products and our marketing. They were really a great group of people and I think we’re mutually very enthusiastic about working together.

Greg, Brandon, and Robin are pictured here with our new friends Subhash Khandelwal of Rivera Digitec (Mumbai, India), Roy Viljoen of Paul Bothner Music (South Africa), Magdey El Bouhy of ADawliah (Saudi Arabia), George Triantafillou and Nikos Stamoulis of Venediktos Stollas (Greece), and Ron Nevo and Ilan Murad of Halilit (Israel).

Steve, Alex, and I then attended the Lesser Awards Ceremony put on by PPVMEDIEN, one of the biggest publishers of music magazines in Europe. Two years ago, Kinetic won the Lesser Award for Das Bestes Groove Tool and SONAR 8 was nominated for an award this year. We didn’t win but it is always an honor to be nominated and we had a good time at the event.

One change for the Award Ceremony was that the Surf Rock band was replaced this year by the Justin Nova Band. I liked what I heard and expect good things from this group.

Well, quite a bit for day wouldn’t you say? I’m looking forward to see what tomorrow brings…

Signing off,

Carl Jacobson & Alex Westner (pictured and filmed above)

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Artist Impression: Shayna Zaid and the Catch on V-Studio 100

A few weeks before the launch we got to sit down in the studio with Shayna Zaid and the Catch. Their live shows have been packing crowds in NYC and colleges up and down the east coast. They’ve shared the stage with Norah Jones, Harry Connick Jr, Raul Midon and The Roots.

Their music has gone on to see much success with 8 songs licensed to “Young & the Restless”, 4 #1 singles in Shayna’s Native Malaysia, a 1/4 million Myspace plays, and Finalist in the 2008 International Songwriting Competition, among many other honors. As you can see, they know what it’s like to be a touring and recording act so we asked them for their impression of the SONAR V-Studio 100. Watch the video to see what they thought.

“Brilliant!  Finally something that encompasses everything we need to professionally go mobile.  With killer mic pre’s, an onboard SD recorder/player, an audio/midi interface and a DAW controller, the V- Studio 100 lets us create on the road – and at home.”

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Artist Impression: RADIx's Quite Nyce on V-Studio 100

Quite Nyce is one half of the emerging Hip Hop duo RADIx.  They’ve recently been featured on MTV2 and in URB magazine. And have toured with Das EFX, Onyx, the Beatnuts and many others.

Their debut album MONSTAPLEx is set to be released this April and features Afrobatik on a guest track. Quite Nyce also has a side project called Champs vs. the League, which just toured the UK and Germany with Akil from Jurassic 5.

Quite Nyce is a man who needs a complete solution that he can take on the road, so when he got a sneak peak of SONAR V-studio 100 last month he described his reaction as “speechless.”  Contrary to that comment, he ended up having alot to say about the V-Studio 100. Watch the video to get his impressions.