Cakewalk In the News: SONAR 8 Producer & Cable Products

Sound On Sound (UK) has followed the SONAR product family since the beginning. Featured in this month’s edition, is an extensive review of SONAR 8 Producer. SOS debunks the myths about the upgrade and sheds some light on the new enhancements; including Beatscape and TS64 Transient Shaper, the 64-bit / VISTA compatibility, and the overall value of the digital audio workstation. Thought I’d share a few quotes from the article:

“The Producer Edition… has an amazing collection of free virtual instruments, signal processing, and MIDI processing plug-ins that give real meaning to the term ‘added-value’.

‘The TS64 is creating a lot of excitement, and rightly so. Though primarily designed for drums and precussion processing, this plug-in offers such precise control over the dynamics of an audio track or mixed audio that it will certainly be used on anything.”

See the SOS website for an article excerpt and more information.

The Video Theater at Harmony-Central is chock full of clips and highlights of this year’s NAMM show. The playlist features Cakewalk Product Specialist Samara Krugman giving a close-up look at Cakewalk’s new line of USB MIDI and Audio Interfaces: UA-1G, UM-1G, UM-2G, UM-3G. Also hosted on the playlist is an overview video of Craig Anderton’s Electronic Guitars Expansion Pack for Rapture, Rapture LE, SONAR HS 7, and SONAR 8.

Session Story: Composer Ray McNamara

Composer, performing artist and professor of music Ray McNamara recorded the award-winning album Oceans Made Fun using SONAR. Oceans Made Fun is the winner of the 2005 Parents Choice Award, bringing the sea to life while teaching children ages four to 12 years old language and science through music and visual aid. The recording was published by MCD Curriculum, which teaches youngsters active participation, creative writing and language development outside of a classroom environment. Hear the songs about the Shark, Penguin, Octopus and more at http://cdbaby.com/cd/mcdcurriculum.

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/.

Cakewalk's Session Stories: 2008-2009

In an effort to simplify our blog and make it more accessible to our RSS subscribers, we are moving our ‘Sessions & Stories’ page as well as our “NAMM 2009 Page” to this main page of the site. Please excuse any discrepancies in code. From now on, all of Cakewalk’s artist stories and event content will be featured here on the main page. If you have not yet subscribed to our blog, grab our RSS feed now. New content is posted on a regular basis!

Jon Lee, an accomplished composer for feature film and tv, has been hard at work in Santa Monica, California scoring MyNetworkTV’s reality series’ Street Patrol and Jail. From the producers of the hit-series Cops, Street Patrol (airs Tuesday, 8-9pm) follows police officers on duty, responding to calls across the country. While, Jail (airs Tuesday, 9-10pm) shadows the lives of prison inmates incarcerated for serious crimes, across the USA. Lee is also credited for his work on the video game, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (Sonic Fuel Music) and producing records for hip-hop artists across the country. Take a listen to the Street Patrol theme song and visit JonLeeMusic.net for more information.

Seasoned composer, Doyle Donehoo, has produced music for a variety of award-winning computer games. Currently, he’s scoring Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (Relic Entertainment) with his DAW of choice, SONAR. A Cakewalk user since the DOS age, Donehoo’s PC-based studio has a master DAW rig, seven slave computers, and an endless array of sample-based instruments – his “Frankenstein” virtual orchestra. In a recent interview with Music4Games.com, Donehoo states that his musical influences range from the classical composers to today’s feature film and video game scores, including Marco Beltrami (Resident Evil, Max Payne, 3:10 to Yuma) and Bill Brown (Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, CSI:NY). Their dark, dramatic motifs are reflected in Donehoo’s latest score. Due out in early 2009, Dawn of War II shows what it’s like to “lead an elite strike force on a mission to save the galaxy.” Visit the Dawn of War II website to hear Donehoo in action and watch the game trailer.

Concert pianist, composer, and recording artist, Kevin Kern captures emotion with his warm, entrancing compositions. Born legally blind, Kern is aided in studio by SONAR’s accessibility and Dancing Dots’ assistive music technologies for the vision impaired. In conjunction with SONAR, Kern uses Cake Talking Scripts by the Academy of Music for the Blind’s Executive Director David Pinto and Freedom Scientific’s JAWS screen reader to produce his music. Kern uses SONAR’s Drum Map Manager to create special keyboard scripts for piano, strings, and other instruments, so he can hear his melodic ideas through the sounds of a live ensemble. Currently, Kern is celebrating the release of his new songbook entitled Imagination’s Light which contains all original compositions from his last album. Kern’s new album, Endless Blue Sky, will be available as a download and for purchase in stores on January 27, 2009.

DJ Russ Harris – remixer and owner of the Illinois-based mobile DJ company Show on the Road Productions – incorporates SONAR into the remixing classes and seminars he gives at DJ Expos across the country.  Each year, Harris attends Mobile Beat in Las Vegas (February) and DJ Times in Atlantic City (August).  Harris also uses SONAR on solo projects and is signed to the dance music label, EsNtion Silver.  Check out Harris’ MySpace for current projects and tracks.

Drum & Bass dynamic duo, Urban Assault, announce a new 12″ album featuring a remix of the dance-floor hit Crank with MC Skibadee and an original bonus track Easy Run Tingz (Easy Records). Urban Assault, better known as Scratch DJs / Producers Faust and Shortee, kept very busy in 2008. Visit their official website for details.

Stokes Audio, Recording & Post of Tarzana, CA.used SONAR 8 Producer to mix several feature-length films for CodeBlack Entertainment. The first in the series of films is set to release on December 23, 2008. Starring Master P and Katt Williams, ‘Internet Dating’ is about- you guessed it -a date setup by internet gone wrong! The second film, ‘Nite Tales’ (as seen on BET Halloween) will be released in January 2009. Hosted by Flavor Flav, it’s a ‘shockingly twisted’ double feature horror flick. More information on these films can be found here. Stokes Audio specializes in post production sound and video editing.

Continue reading “Cakewalk's Session Stories: 2008-2009”

A Weekend at NAMM: In Pictures

As the Cakewalk team slowly settles back to earth after an epic weekend, we’ll be posting more and more footage from our weekend in Anaheim, California. Here are a few images from the conference that say it all:’Come together’ to educate and create great music!

More photos will be posted to our FlickR account in the coming days.

NAMM 2009 Wrap-Up: Videos & More

Many thanks to all for making our weekend in Anaheim, California at the 2009 NAMM Show a HUGE success. Thanks to those who stopped by our booth and to those who’ve been following along on the blog.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out of NAMM 2009 blog page. Ian has worked very hard to post about his experience from the convention floor with live video footage and booth photos. Check back this week for more NAMM coverage. Here’s a new video, showcasing one of our new cable products(UA1G) and SONAR Home Studio 7.

* Please see our post below to learn more about our cable products! *

The NAMM Show 09': Coverage by Cakewalk

For those of you off to Anaheim Convention Center, stop by Booth #6800 to see Cakewalk live in action. If you’ve chosen to stay at home this year, get everything you need to now right here on the Cakewalk Blog. We’ve made a dedicated NAMM Page featuring posts from the exhibition floor, new product information, and media to keep you informed! Check back throughout the weekend to see it all.

To learn about our new products, view the official press releases here.

Here’s a quick overview of the artists stopping by to say hello at NAMM 2009:

Top TV and Video Game music producer, Shawn Clement, best known for scoring Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman: Vengeance, hosts a live demo on Video scoring.

World-renowned composer, engineer, & producer Craig Anderton will demo his brand new Electronic Guitars  Expansion Pack for Rapture and Rapture LE. Watch preview here.

Legendary turntablists, DJs Faust & Shortee, will be mixing it up at the booth.

Cakewalk’s Brandon Ryan hosts a live panel discussion on “Music For Video Games” featuring these four industry professionals:

Chuck Carr is the music supervisor for SONY Computer Entertainment (PAIN, Gran Turismo 4, and Twisted Metal: Head On)

Doyle W. Donehoo, the video game extraordinaire, is best known for his work in (America’s Army, Savage, Savage II, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II)

Timothy Michael Wynn is an award-winning television, film, and video game music producer and his company, Sonic Fuel, has provided cutting edge music for clients including BMW, Energizer, Gatorade, Mazda, Nike, and others.

Rob King has won numerous awards for his work as sound designer, music composer, and dialogue director (Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam, Reservoir Dogs, Heroes of Might & Magic V, Scarface: The World is Yours, Jade Empire).