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Summer 2009: Boost Your Sound Library At The Serious-Sounds Network

Cakewalk has teamed up with The Serious-Sounds Network to bring you a summer of endless sound-sculpting possibilities!

Over the next three months (May, June, July) we will be giving away free copies of Z3TA+ and Rapture, along with Craig Anderton’s New Electronic Guitars Expansion Pack. At the end of each month Cakewalk and Serious-Sounds will draw two lucky winners at random.

Serious-Sounds.net is a massive members-only community for music producers providing tutorials, help, and advice on the world of music production and more- all available for free!

TO BE ELIGIBLE to win the contest all you have to do is either log in or register at Serious-Sounds.net(registration is quick, free & easy) and answer a few simple questions located in the exclusive competition thread. Then simply email your answers along with your member username & number to the address provided within.

PLEASE REMEMBER: You must be a registered member at Serious-Sounds.net to view content on The Serious-Sounds Network. If you’re not already signed up, then register today!

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Optimized for VISTA x64: Rapture 1.2

Cakewalk’s award-winning Rapture is the ultimate wavetable synthesizer for igniting the sounds of today’s pop, dance, and electronic music scenes. Sounding like no other synth, Rapture offers brilliant sound design capabilities with patches that blend up to six different elements. Available for PC and Mac.

Out of the box you get a stunning collection of over 500 programs including Basses, Leads, Pads, Arpeggios, Textures, Electronic Percussion and Sequences. At the heart of Rapture’s six-part sound engine are powerful, multi-mode wavetable oscillators. These pristinely produced wavetables provide a virtually endless array of sonic possibilities, plus you can multiply each oscillator up to 9 times across the stereo field with controlled detuning, creating some of the fattest sounds ever heard.

New Features in Rapture 1.2:

-Envelope Generators can now be retriggerd from the Step Generator
-Internal Tempo with Tap – Rapture can now sync to its own internal t tempo
-You can now save and load presets in the Envelope Generator and Step Generator sections
-Envelope Generator now autoscrolls when entering nodes
-Knob Focus Indicator – the currently selected knob will now have edging around it
-Built-in DC Offset blocker to remove unwanted DC Offset distortion
-Up/Down selectors now have direct text entry by double-clicking on them
-New alternate ‘Zoom On View’ mode in the Envelope Generator
-Vista x64 improvements – the installer now allows you to choose to install either the 32 or 64-bit versions of Rapture on Windows Vista x64

All registered Rapture customers are eligible for the free update.

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Create & Share Your Music Fast with Music Creator 5

Cakewalk introduces Music Creator 5, the newest version of our leading home music-making software. With its brand new look and feel, Music Creator 5 is everything you need to start making music fast – offering a host of new features and a streamlined user interface.  Simple recording, editing, mixing, great-sounding instruments, and tons of effects – it’s all here in one package… all for less than the price of four CDs!

New Features Include:

•A simplified user interface that puts the controls at your fingertips. All you have to do is focus on making music

•Active Controller Technology (ACT)™ – connect a MIDI keyboard to your PC and automatically control your mix, effects or virtual instruments with its knobs and sliders

•Cakewalk Sound Center™ – an exclusive, easy-to-use tool that combines 150 different instrument sounds from our award-winning professional instruments, Rapture & Dimension Pro

•IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube X-GEAR™ – a built-in virtual guitar amp, plug directly into your computer for great sounding guitar parts

•Add your own soundtrack to your home movies and other digital video files – including .MOV, .WMV, .MPEG – before you upload it to YouTube, MySpace and Facebook

•Burn CDs with Music Creator’s integrated CD Burner and share your music online with Cakewalk Publisher

•And much more…

For More Information:

See the Music Creator 5 press release

ALSO please visit the Music Creator 5 web pages

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News from Germany: Musikmesse 2009

It’s the first day of the Musikmesse Show in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s the world’s biggest tradeshow for musical instruments, live music and the music business.

Cakewalk is excited to share some major product news from this year’s show. Follow along on the Cakewalk Blog from April 1 to April 4, 2009 to get all the latest coverage:

The New Portable Music Production Studio: The SONAR V-Studio 100 Is Here

The second product in the SONAR V-Studio line of integrated hardware and software from Cakewalk and Roland provides a compact, feature rich, music production studio that enables musicians to create, record, produce, and perform music with or without a computer. The new SONAR V-Studio 100 integrates a USB 2.0 Audio Interface, DAW Controller, Digital Mixer, SD Recorder, and VS Production Pack for Mac & Windows!

Visit the SONAR V-studio 100 Website

See the full Press Release

Now Going Solo: The SONAR V-Studio Console (VS700C) for SONAR 8 Producer

In response to customer demand, the VS-700C V-Studio Console, the centerpiece of SONAR V-Studio 700 production system, will be made available separately as a standalone control surface for SONAR 8 Producer.

See the full Press Release

Now Shipping: New Line of Portable Cable-Based Interface Products

The new Audio Interface and three new MIDI Interfaces, announced at NAMM in January, are now available. These interfaces allow musicians of all levels to easily connect instruments to their computer via USB and are Mac and PC compatible.

See the full Press Release

SONAR REAC Recording System Driver Gets New Updates

The Roland Ethernet Audio Communication (REAC) Driver Version 1.1 for SONAR REAC Recording System provides Vista x64 support and compatibility with SONAR 8 Producer. The driver update also provides monitoring support through SONAR V-Studio 700’s VS-700R I/O.

See the full Press Release

New Rapture 1.2 Update

Free download for registered customers includes new Envelope Generator and Tempo features, Vista x64 support, and many usability enhancements. The free Rapture 1.2 Update will be available to registered Rapture customers ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­late April, 2009 at www.cakewalk.com.

See the full Press Release

Cakewalk® Expands Worldwide Distribution

New distribution arrangements extend the company’s reach in Asia, Australia, Latin America, the Middle East, South America, and other regions worldwide.

See the full Press Release

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Free Club Presets Available for Z3ta+1

Need new sounds for your mix? There’s a new library of club presets now available online for Z3TA+. Check out the video and grab the presets at Synthtopia !

Whether you’re looking for luch, warm pads, slowly evolving atmospheres, searing leads or sparkling FW sounds, Cakewalk’s Z3TA+, delivers the goods and includes hundreds of professional presets. Z3TA+ is an award-winning analog-style synthesizer with incredible sound-shaping capabilities. The exclusive bandwidth Waveshaping technology makes Z3TA+ one of the best and most respected synths in the industry.

As a complete instrument, Z3TA+ is oriented to the professional musician and sound programmer looking for uncompromised sound quality and features. Z3TA+ ships with DWi, VST, and stand-alone versions.

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New Electronic Band: Lal Meri Hits Primetime TV

Carmen Rizzo’s new electronic band, Lal Meri, released their self-entitled debut album through Six Degrees Records on February 17th. The release features 11 tracks, including two remixes by Carmen Rizzo and Morgan Page. Carmen, Rosey Kaye and Ireesh Laal, found early success with the new album, as their track “Sweet Love” has earned two placements on primetime TV, on the CBS show “Shark” and the ABC show “Samantha Who”.

Carmen Rizzo uses Cakewalk’s soft-synths Rapture and Dimension Pro to produce his projects.

See his Artist Spotlight feature here.

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NAMM Show 2009: Blogged by Cakewalk

Day 5: Well that’s it. The NAMM show is a wrap. Today is Sunday and while it is the last day of the show, there is definitely an air about the place that says the show is finally over and foot traffic is much lighter than it has been the whole rest of the show.

At 5pm when they finally turned the lights down, you could hear a wave of exhibitors clapping and cheering. If I were to tell you it was a quick show, I would be lying. But it was definitely a good show and we were able to reach out to a lot of people with all of our products including our new USB hardware devices and of course, our baby: The SONAR V-Studio 700.

Everyone here did a wonderful, professional job this week and I know we’re all proud of what we’ve accomplished.

As I wrap this up, I look forward to touching down at home in Boston and sleeping in my own bed. Though as much as I don’t mind the 80 degree weather in January, I think it’s the nasty winters at home that really make you appreciate the nice weather when you get it. Although, we could be another 4-5 months off from weather like this at home.

C’est la vie, thanks for reading, oh and scroll down the page to see our videos from NAMM:

Enjoy!

Ian: Out

Continue reading “NAMM Show 2009: Blogged by Cakewalk”

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Session Story: Composer Kubilay Uner

Film and TV Composer, Kubilay (Kubi) Uner, recently scored a feature film using Cakewalk’s soft-synths, Dimension Pro and Rapture. Uner created a post-punk, pop feel for the score of the new Polish Brothers’ film ‘Stay Cool’ starring Winona Ryder, Hilary Duff, Chevy Chase, and Sean Astin. The film pays tribute to the 1980’s teen movies like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club.

Uner also wrote the score for a new documentary about four deaf performing artists entitled, ‘See What I’m Saying” with sign language gestures as the main percussion instrument and acoustic guitars to emulate vowel sounds. Both movies are due out in 2009. Hear samples from both scores at http://www.kubilayuner.com/.

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Artist Spotlight: Eddie King & Megatrax Productions

On Rapture, Dimension Pro & The Difference 64 Bits Make

Megatrax chief engineer, producer and composer Eddie King

By Randy Alberts

“I love the way SONAR sounds,” says producer, engineer and composer Eddie King. “Particularly in the bottom end which is tight, fat and well defined. It’s my subjective opinion that SONAR’s 64-bit processing makes a huge difference.”

Given his aural perspective comes from multiple vantage points, it can be said King’s subjective opinion distills closer to objectivity with every SONAR mix he finishes. A Mac-based Pro Tools engineer/producer by day at Megatrax-a premier production music library and recording studio for film, t.v., advertising and multimedia-and a talented home-based composer and arranger by night with SONAR on his screaming-fast PC server farm, Eddie’s bi-platform, dual DAW audio opinion carries just a bit more weight than most others’ do.

“Once I saw that SONAR runs solidly, has good functionality and then, the big one, that SONAR is the only DAW running at 64-bit,” says King, “that’s when I thought, ‘Well, hello!’ It makes sense that better resolution means things are going to sound better, too. Again, this is subjective, but I have to say that SONAR’s 64-bit resolution does, in fact, make a big difference. I know Cakewalk has done more objective, blind listening tests about this, but at least I know for sure that SONAR makes a big difference for my sound and my mixes.”

Both Sides of the Building: Mega Tracks & King’s Sound

Eddie King’s audio credentials began years before the founding of Megatrax. In 1980 he opened and for years seriously upgraded his old Neve 3 and vintage analog gear racks at Kingsound in North Hollywood, his own commercial studio wherein Megatrax-one of his clients there-first began building their respected, comprehensive music library. Fifteen years later, in 1995, he sold Kingsound to them, Megatrax made Eddie their chief engineer and the two have been a very busy team ever since.

Continue reading “Artist Spotlight: Eddie King & Megatrax Productions”

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Artist Spotlight: Baron

For prolific D&B Producer Baron, It’s all about getting the right sound:

“Dimension Pro and Rapture are just essential tools for me…”

By Oz Owen

Even just a cursory glance at Baron’s discography reveals how he’s quickly established himself as a major player on the Drum & Bass scene. Producing jump-up tracks since 2001, Baron – aka Piers Bailey – has since gone on to work with some of the biggest names in D&B. Pendulum, Roni Size, DJ Fresh, DJ Craze, Stanton Warriors…

But it was 2003 that really saw Baron come into his own as a remixer, stamping his authority on Total Science’s Nosher, and in the process turned it into an instant classic.

But just how does one of the most respected and consistent producers in the genre keep on banging out a steady stream of dancefloor bombs? Having the ideas is one thing, but then you also need the right tools to turn those ideas into reality …

“For me, Dimension Pro and Rapture are essential tools in the studio – without them I would be missing a little something. Dimension is my absolute ‘go to’ synth for any string or percussion sound.”

“To explain how best I use them you just have to listen to some of my biggest releases of the last few years – Endless Summer, Turn Up The Sun, Drive In Drive By… most of the string, percussion and effect sounds on those tracks have come from Dimension Pro or Rapture.”

“Rapture has so many different modulation and effects options, and these set it apart from most of the other synths on the market. There are a lot of people obsessing about making stuff sound like older synths, whereas with Rapture, Cakewalk have made something that sounds pretty original. It has a low impact on the processor and the sound quality alone makes it one of the first synths I reach for when I’m in the studio.”

“Why did I get into Cakewalk’s synths? First off, it was because of their reputation. And then I tried them – ultimately it all came down to the sound quality and the ease of use. I wouldn’t say that the Cakewalk plugs have changed the way I work, but they’ve certainly bolstered my sound.”

“I’ve been pretty busy for the last 18 months, mostly working on a soundtrack for the next Flip Skateboards DVD, Extremely Sorry, which should be out around now [Nov ’08]. Keep you eyes peeled for that one as there are some interesting collaborations on there. And, of course, I’ve been busy making lots of Drum & Bass, and my debut album will be out on Breakbeat Kaos soon – check my myspace for more on that!”

www.myspace.com/baronproductions