A couple of years ago we started SONAR University with a bang by releasing a fourty-plus minute long Master Class on drum production. Since then we’ve released two more Master Classes and dozens of Get Started and Go Deeper videos. And right now we’ve got one more Master Class video in the works.
Our first three master classes were released when YouTube had limits on video length. It started at ten minutes and eventually became fifteen minutes, but we were forced to break up our Master Classes into multi-part videos since they all were longer than fifteen minutes.
Thanks to YouTube now allowing videos of any length to live on their site, and in anticipation of the release of our next Master Class, we’ve decided to refresh our original three Master Classes as single, individual videos. Now you can watch them from start to finish with no interruption. Enjoy, and stay tuned for the release of the next Master Class.
Every day that I work on a SONAR video is a good day. However, while it’s a lot of fun to create demonstration videos about a product that I’m deeply passionate about, it’s also a ton of work.
A perfect example of this is the Drum Production Master Class video that I recently created. In case you haven’t seen it it’s a five-part series of videos that goes over writing, arranging, and mixing drums in SONAR.
Despite being roughly forty-five minutes in length and covering a wealth of topics, the Master Class was originally supposed to be a simple Step Sequencer video. Being that the Step Sequencer involves so many other features in SONAR, things quickly ballooned and the video grew to unexpected proportions.
Screen capturing, editing, and doing voice over for that amount of material was a monumental task, though I didn’t realize it would be as such when I started. Thankfully the video turned out well and has received a warm reception from viewers.
Really, though, this is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve created three categories of SONAR-based videos that we plan to enhance our library with.
* SONAR: Get Started – an introductory, basic overview of a feature, group of features, or plugin
* SONAR: Go Deeper – an in-depth, hands-on demonstration of a specific feature or plugin
* SONAR: Master Class – a comprehensive tutorial of a group of related features within a larger workflow
For example, for those who want to learn about the very basics of the PX-64 Percussion Strip plugin but don’t want to sit through an entire Master Class, I’ve created a Get Started: PX-64 Percussion Strip video.
And there’s so much more to come.
Next week we’ll release Go Deeper videos on PX-64 Percussion Strip and Drum Replacement with AudioSnap 2.0, and we have a laundry list of topics to cover in the coming weeks and months. If I’ve learned anything from making the Master Class video it’s that there’s plenty of fun, and hard work, ahead.
Stay tuned.
Seth Perlstein is a Product Specialist for Cakewalk, Inc. He is also a bi-pedal humanoid residing on Planet Earth, a small, blue planet in the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy.
