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Month-end Artist RECAP: JUNE – BILLBOARD CHARTS, PAN AM GAMES, HEAT!

Summer officially kicked off in June with plenty of BBQ’s, beaches and Pro SONAR users doing some extraordinary things.  June also offered the SONAR Platinum Everett update which introduced the world’s most technologically advanced drum replacement feature.  Here are some highlights from last month on a few of the many hard working professionals using SONAR.

Murray Daigle – Toronto, Canada [Official Theme Song for Pan (and ParaPan) Am Games]

SONAR Platinum user Murray Daigle is the one of the most-awarded producers in the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN). Based in Toronto, he is also known for his songwriting and mixing skills with major label and independent artists for over 20 years.  In June, Daigle added yet another major accomplishment to his profile when his writing efforts and song-pitch for the 2015 Pan/Parapan Am Games were selected as the official theme song for the event.  The song was written at a “writing camp [workshop]” sponsored by the Songwriters Association of Canada, and then recorded and produced by Daigle with one of Canada’s most established pop artists Serena Ryder. The song, “Together We Are One,” was chosen out of 70 submissions created from the workshop. Seventeen artists perform on the song, including Mykey Thomas (Smashing Satellites, Neverest), Spyro Chalkiotis (lead singer of Neverest) and the Morningstar River drummers to name a few.  The song is currently picking up momentum as Universal has been promoting it to major radio stations, and a video for the song was also cut.  Additionally, the song is being played before every single game as well at the celebratory nightly fireworks ceremonies. Continue reading “Month-end Artist RECAP: JUNE – BILLBOARD CHARTS, PAN AM GAMES, HEAT!”

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HOW UPGRADING TO SONAR X3 GAVE THESE PRO ARTISTS AN EDGE

Luigie Gonzalez
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Grammy nominated Producer, Songwriter, Mixer, Multi-Instrumentalist

“When I walk into sessions with my SONAR machine, I hear ‘what is THAT’ a lot from other producers and artists.  And then like clockwork, I hear a lot of ‘whoah’ and ‘wow’ when they see what I can do beyond their limitations.  I’ll never forget Jimmy Jam being blown away once in a studio when I started getting my sounds going in SONAR – that was a pretty cool feeling because he could see and hear what made my **** sound different from other producers on the scene at that time.”  

Since upgrading to SONAR X3, my favorite new feature is the Nomad plugin suite.

The Nomad Bundle that comes with X3  has been a go-to for me when boosting mid and high frequencies.   The mids are awesome and super-musical!  I also usually use them for HiHats to boost 8KHz – 16KHz without sounding to square-digital or harsh.   It just has a nice sizzling tone that sounds so different than any other plugin in my arsenal of VSTs.  When I mix I am very observant of the “stereo image,” and Nomad’s “Imager” is the trick to help make room for things.  Also, I use the Tempo Delay often because of its warmth and versatility.   I also, love the Tempo Delay’s parameter controllers – having 3 independent delay configurations is great to achieve the perfect delay tone in my mixes.  I can really get unique sounds with the delays and shape them to my heart’s content.

On the other hand, I cannot live without the Console Emulator (I believe this was new to X2 but it just never gets old)…  It just opens my mixes in such organic ways that have I become addicted to it!  I use the trident (A-type) mode for kicks, bass and everything with low end character because it adds great sub harmonics.  The SSL (S-Type) I use for snares, kicks and everything in between to achieve that pocket /punchy sound which warms up the top end frequencies without dulling the sound.  The Neve (A-Type) for Vocals, synths, guitars and everything that needs to sound frontal or cut through mix.  It helps my “center” in the mixes along with some nice mid-frequency response.

I always add a bit of drive (Console Emulator) to my buses to emulate the console circuitry saturation because it works without distorting anything too much – just enough to add more random harmonics and make the whole mix sound even more organic and full.  I think the Console Emulator is one of the best features to SONAR in a long time, and I’m very happy Cakewalk implemented it as part of the ProChannel.

Track coloring is also something I was waiting for some time.   It helps me keep organized especially when mixing 100 plus tracks sessions which is usually the case for me.  It’s so smart that the track colors respond to the bus colors, this way I stay even more organized by visually understanding my large mixes.

I really dig the QuadCurve ProChannel EQ as well.   It’s super-transparent and colorless on certain modes which plays an important part when carving very precise frequencies.   It’s kind of like the FabFilter but the fact that it’s part of the ProChannel makes it easier and faster to use.  It’s also dead-precise while still sounding amazingly clean!

~Luigie Gonzalez

DJ Spooky
Location: New York City and The Poles
Producer, Music/Song/Sound Creator, Author, Visionary

When you are as diverse of an artist as DJ Spooky you need some serious music-creation tools.  Take Of Water and Ice for example.  This album is the result of DJ Spooky’s art residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Of Water and Ice is a composition for string quartet and video that evolved out of his large-scale multimedia work Sinfonia Antarctica: an exploration of the composition of ice and water, and our relationship to the vanishing environment of the arctic poles. DJ Spooky created The Book of Ice based on his travels to the poles. All of the electronic sounds are generated by interpretations of either algorithms that mirror the geometry in ice crystals or the math of climate change data.

“The biggest asset to me upgrading to SONAR X3 was the speed Continue reading “HOW UPGRADING TO SONAR X3 GAVE THESE PRO ARTISTS AN EDGE”

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SONAR X3 Making Its Mark in the LA Scene

On the backend of the 2014 NAMM Show, we had an opportunity to take a spin around LA and drop in on a few SONAR users hard at work.  From rock, to EDM and just about every genre in between, here are what some SONAR X3 users in the LA scene are up to:

Adventure Club

While we were making the rounds, we were lucky enough to find out that the Canadian duo Adventure Club was camping out in downtown LA for a while with their mobile SONAR rig.  Adventure Club is defining a new wave of modern musicians and SONAR is at the forefront of their sonic assault.  Originally hailing from Montreal, the duo has recently been all over the globe playing to more and more dedicated fans after seeing the success of over 1.3 million views with their single “Gold” feat. Luna.  Their SONAR tracks have been streamed over a million times on Spotify, and they were noted in the 2013 Top 10 artists most consumed on SoundCloud.

AC has been touring across North America, as well as parts of Europe and Australia and has also played at various music festivals including the American Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, Nevada. They also made their first appearance at the Ultra Music Festival-2013 in Miami and additionally found themselves playing at the Ultra Music Festival in Seoul, South Korea in June 2013.

The duo’s remix of “Crave You” by the Flight Facilities was featured in the episode “Restraint” of the MTV television series Teen Wolf.  We got a chance to sit down with Christian and listen to some of his productions in SONAR and found it interesting to see how he gets some of his unique sounds Continue reading “SONAR X3 Making Its Mark in the LA Scene”

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Cakewalk Artists on Both PC and Mac Are Off to an Enormous 2012

Cakewalk Artists on Both PC and Mac are off to an Enormous 2012

We are well on our way into 2012 and many artists relying on various Cakewalk products are off to an enormous year.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have spent some time with most of these artists recently, and even more fortunate to have worked with a few in some creative capacities using SONAR X1 in the recent past.  There are some common threads that these artists share, but I think the most important element is that they are all working ridiculously hard in their own circles.

Murray Daigle

[Toronto, ONT, Canada]  Murray Daigle is a very talented Canadian Producer/Mixer/Songwriter out of Toronto Canada.  He just relocated to a new space in Toronto and opened a new studio running SONAR X1 Expanded.  A big “congratulations” goes out to him on a “Certified Gold” record for Neverest’s track “About Us” along with a SOCAN #1 Award (co-written and mixed on Cakewalk Sonar X1.)  Murray also produced and co-wrote other tracks on the Neverest release which came out in January and is already working on material for another release later this year. Continue reading “Cakewalk Artists on Both PC and Mac Are Off to an Enormous 2012”

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Grammy Nominated Luigie Gonzalez on SONAR X1

Friday, May 13 – Los Angeles, CA

Luigie Gonzalez 1In the Cakewalk Artist Relations Department we have the honor of working with many producers, songwriters, mixing engineers, composers and musicians on a daily basis.  As we all know (or we should all know), the beauty of SONAR is that not only does it stand out as the premier top-notch Digital Audio Workstation, but it’s also an inspirational and creative workhorse.  Many recording artists and producers looking for a more creative environment turn to SONAR and never look back.  The ability to customize just about anything you want, combined with a complete sonic package of content, plugins, virtual synths and other instrumentation really gives SONAR its award winning edge. Continue reading “Grammy Nominated Luigie Gonzalez on SONAR X1”

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NAMM 2011 "Featured Artists" Special Guests Schedule

The NAMM Show 2011, January 13 – 16, Anaheim Convention Center

In addition to the following presentations, Cakewalk will have many other demonstrations at The NAMM Show.  Please visit us inside the Roland Arena [Booth# 7400].

Staff Music Creator/Producer for Paul Oakenfold

TC (A.K.A. Spitfire)
2:00pm Saturday, January 15,
SONAR Session – “Self-Contained Music Production” feat. TC aka Spitfire:
As Paul Oakenfold’s in-house writer, mixer, producer and re-mixer, TC will discuss his work being heard in clubs around the world.

TC, AKA – “Spitfire” has burst on to the LA producer’s scene with as much spark as his name.  Hand-picked by Paul Oakenfold to be his main engineer, Spitfire brings way more to the table with his writing, producing chops and musicianship.  Once being grinded through the major label system as an artist, Spitfire has found his calling armed with SONAR X1 and a V-Studio 100 where he is producing, writing and engineering musical masterpieces for such artists as Usher, B.O.B. and Leona Lewis.

Continue reading “NAMM 2011 "Featured Artists" Special Guests Schedule”