A Beginner's guide to Cakewalk (by Bandlab) for Composers

hi it's Simon from composing Academy and today I'm going to walk you through the basics of Cakewalk by bandlap a free Daw which is available for Windows in this video I'll show you step by step how to use the basic functions which you'll need in order to compose a short piece using nothing but free orchestral sample libraries despite being free Cakewalk which used to be known as sonar is a fully fledged Daw which I feel makes it ideal for beginner composers looking to dip their toes into the world of competition without the Hefty investment of a Daw such as logic or Cubase once you first open the program you'll be presented with the Cakewalk start screen here you can select options such as finding your recent projects or starting new ones click on new project and then empty project here we see in the main user interface of Cakewalk up here in the center we have the timeline area which is where the main musical data for your piece will live with the various extra panels dotted around the sides and up above here before we begin you'll want to firstly make sure that Cakewalk knows where you've installed your various free VST Instruments to do that go up to edit and then preferences before coming down to VST settings under the file category here then just make sure the folder or folders of where your VST Instruments such as BBC discover are listed here in your VST scan path next we want to make sure that you'll actually be able to hear audio coming out of the program while staying in the main preferences window scroll up to the top where you should have devices under the audio section here make sure your main audio interface or outputs are selected finally if you have a midi controller that you'd like to use to play notes in edit devices and then under midi make sure your MIDI controller or midi inputs are ticked okay so enough with the housekeeping let's start to actually make some music firstly I'm going to add a new instrument track which will load a new virtual instrument onto its own dedicated track or Lane to do that you can either right click in this track list area here and select insert instrument or click the plus button in the top left hand corner choose instrument and then select your chosen VST instrument from the list I want to start by loading some long strings so I'm going to select orchestral tools sign player you can see here that it's added my track into the track list area it's a little small so I'm going to hover my mouse over the bottom here so I can then extend it down a little where some more buttons and options will appear to load the specific string sound I need to go into the actual virtual instrument I can do that by clicking this small keyboard sign to the left side of the track name here in the actual sign player user interface I'm just going to scroll down and find the sustained string patch from the free Helix strings Library with the sound loaded I'm going to first of all save the project before I set bounce recording some midi data in using my MIDI controller I'm going to start by just checking that the track is receiving incoming midi data from my controller [Music] okay great I can hear the sign player being triggered next I need to make sure the track is armed for record I can do that by clicking on the red record icon here on the track header at the moment the default Tempo in Cakewalk is set to 120 BPM I want to have it slower for the idea I have in mind though so I'm just going to double click up here and change this to 80. next I want to make sure that I'll be able to hear the metronome when recording to do that I need to make sure that this button with the circle metronome during record is enabled I would also like a two measure Counting so to do that I need to click on the metronome settings button and to make sure the record counting is set to two measures I'm going to click apply and then close okay so finally I'm ready to record some notes I'm going to start by playing an open voiced chord held for a while in the low strings once I'm ready all I need to do is make sure the playhead is on bar one if it isn't I just need to click and drag it back to the beginning then I'm going to click the main record button at the top [Music] to stop recording I can then either press the stop button at the top or spacebar so here is the midi clip containing the notes that I just recorded I can play it back by pressing spacebar making sure the cursor is back at the beginning first at the moment the notes last for about two bars but I want to extend them further to do that I'm going to make use of the piano roll editor by double clicking on my newly created midi clip which will open in the bottom half of the screen here one of my favorite Cakewalk key commands is shift plus d which will toggle the display so the editor takes up the whole screen so here in the piano roll I can zoom in and out by clicking alt and then by using my mouse scroll wheel to start editing I'd recommend having the smart tool on which can be found at the top here I can then select all three notes by right-clicking and dragging around them if I then hover my mouse on the end of one of the notes you can see these two arrows appear with this I can then click and drag out as far as I need to go add these are long strings I want to add some musicality in the form of expression and modulation midi data to add the midi CC data first of all I need to make sure the controller Lane is enabled by clicking the small arrow down in the bottom left hand corner then I can click the small plus icon this will add a new controller Lane I would like both modulation and expression data to be displayed the first I'm going to click ok to add a modulation name then I'm going to do the same again but this time selecting expression from the menu here now I can set about drawing in some midi CC data for both the expression and modulation Lanes firstly I'm going to make sure that the draw tool is on before going in and selecting the line tool here I'm also going to make sure that the snap button is turned off this is going to make sure that we have a very fine resolution and are not limited to chunks of data say every eighth note or 16th note so with the line tool I can simply draw in these ramps which will create the varying Dynamics I'm going to aim to have the modulation and expression controllers mimic each other and to also keep everything as smooth as possible making sure that there are no sudden unnatural jumps let's take a quick listen [Music] to close the piano roll editor and return to the main window you can go up to the top view menu and select track View or alternatively press alt plus one next I want to add a new instrument I'm thinking as Celeste so again I'm going to right click under the previous track and click on insert instrument this time I'm going to go to Spitfire audio and select the BBC Symphony Orchestra which will load the free discover version I think I'm going to have a part made up of eighth notes which will give me the chance to make use of tools such as quantizing and editing of velocities the first I want to start by renaming the track so I can easily distinguish it from the strings track above I'm going to double click where it says BBC Symphony and type in Celeste next I want to make sure this track is armed for recording whilst disarming the previous string track all I have to do then is to make sure the playhead is back at the beginning and then press the main record button here at the top to start the two measure Counting [Music] so once I've finished recording I can again press the spacebar to stop you can see Cakewalk has created the new midi clip with the eighth note pattern in here now I want to go in and edit the midi I've just recorded I'll need to tighten up the timing and maybe play around with the individual note velocities which will help add some variety and musicality to the notes to access the notes in the piano roll or midi editor I need to make sure that the smart tool is selected again at the top here before double clicking on the new clip that was just created again I'm also going to press shift plus d to enlarge the editor if I zoom in using alt plus my mouse scroll wheel you can see that my timing wasn't perfect some of the notes are not lined up with the grid lines to tidy these up I can use the quantize feature a function that is found in just about any Daw before I do that it would be useful to change the grid here in the piano roll to show eighth notes or Quavers at the moment it's set to 16th notes to change the grid resolution first I'm going to click on view at the top of the piano roll and then down to grid resolution add to the bottom here I can then select the resolution that I would like in this case eighth notes now to the actual quantization first of all I need to select all the notes that I want to quantize I can do this by pressing Ctrl a next I simply hit the queue button on my keyboard this brings up the quantizing options I want to set the resolution to eighth notes so I need to select them here next I'm going to click OK and look what happens to all of the notes they get shifted forward or back in time to the nearest eighth note grid line let's take a listen [Music] so after hearing this passage some of the individual note volumes are sticking out a little I can see down here that the velocities are quite varied a higher note velocity generally means a louder sound for a smoother performance I'm going to edit some of these so they are generally more even first of all I want to make sure that all of these notes are not selected anymore I can do that by just clicking with the left Mouse button anywhere where there isn't an actual note to change an individual note's velocity all I need to do is hover the mouse near the top of each velocity you can see that then these two little arrows appear I can now click on the bar and drag it up or down to increase or decrease the velocity so I'm just going to go through and lower some of the higher velocities [Music] let's now take a look at how you can input notes using the mouse which is particularly useful if you don't have a midi controller to hand I feel like I would like to create a simple harp part next so I'm going to begin by again right clicking underneath the tracks here and then clicking on insert instruments where I'm going to again use BBC discover for the harp now I have the sound loaded I want to draw in notes manually using the piano roll editor again to access the editor without anything recorded I just have to double click in an empty area in line with the track again I'm going to use the key command shift plus d to toggle the piano roll editor into a full window so to manually enter notes make sure the smarts tool is selected at the top here if you have an idea of how long your notes are generally going to be change the note draw duration buttons here to reflect the note value you think you're going to use I'm going to set mine to quarter notes or crotchets to enter a note just click where you want your note to begin and drag to the left for your desired duration if I want to delete any of these notes I can just right click on a note to delete it if I wanted to change the pitch I would just select that pitch by left clicking on a note before then dragging the note up and down to change pitch or dragging left to right to change its starting place if I wanted to split a note in two all I have to do is hold down the ALT key while left clicking on a note okay let's move on to some very basic mixing functions firstly I want to make sure I can see what's called the track properties to do that click this button with three horizontal lines towards the top left of the interface here I'll be able to change various parameters of each virtual instrument including its panning General volume and adding insert or send effects so I wanted to change firstly the panning for the Celeste I can select the track which is to be edited by clicking on the track name down here and selecting Celeste then I can tweak the panning by changing the knob here I also want to turn down the overall volume of the track so I can of course do that with a simple adjustment of the fader finally I want to be able to export the track as an MP3 or WAV file so I can listen to it outside of Cakewalk to begin with I need to Define which part of the timeline I want Cakewalk to render I can do that by setting a loop region the green part just above the main timeline I'll start by dragging the left hand side to where I want the track to start and then dragging the right hand side to where I want the track to end next head to file export and then audio this will open up the export audio window which at first can look a little complicated start by giving your file a name and choose a location where you want the file to live here I'm going to call it first piece and I want to export it to the desktop next I can select the file format down here I want to render an MP3 so I'll select that from the menu here then under what to export select Hardware outputs and make sure your audio interface or sound card is selected with the default outputs then click export you'll see I then have some MP3 export options I'm just going to click OK and then Cakewalk will export the audio so to finish off here is the short 30 second piece that I carried on after I had finished the main recording for this video all of the sample libraries I'm using are free and you can find links to them down below in the description [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] foreign

Channel: Composing Academy

Views: 14,641

Keywords: cakewalk, cakewalk 2023, cakewalk tutorial, cakewalk tutorial for beginners, how to use cakewalk, how to use cakewalk 2023, cakewalk tutorial 2023, Cakewalk 2023 tutorial, cakewalk tutorial for beginners 2023 cakewalk by bandlab, cakewalk by bandlab tutorial, how to use cakewalk by bandlab, How to write Music, Begin composing music

Id: DDZR4I2s6tg

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 11 2023