Graduation Gifts for Musicians

After-The-GraduationLooking for the perfect gift for the high-school or college graduate? Give them the gift of music with Cakewalk. Whether enrolling in a music school, starting a career in the industry or enjoying music as a hobby, Cakewalk’s Graduation Gift Guide offers a wide range of products for the performing and recording musician.

Check out these great products for making music in the dorm, on the road or wherever inspiration strikes.

Last Minute Shopping? Grab a Cakewalk Gift Card!

MC5_GiftCardAttention Last Minute Shoppers: Cakewalk’s Download Gift Card are perfect last minute gifts or stocking stuffers for the up-and-coming rock star and guitar hero in your life! Simply, purchase a Download Gift Card from the Cakewalk e-store. Print it out or email it to your favorite musician.

Geared for novice recording musicians, these products make creating music on the PC more fun! Just point and click and you’re making music. Music Creator 5 guides you through the initial set-up, making it easy for you to plug in your instrument or microphone and immediately start recording. Get professional sounding results using Music Creator’s powerful tools, instruments and effects. Can’t play bass, drums, piano, or violin? Let Cakewalk’s Studio Instruments be your band! It has a full suite of instruments for you to play with and includes hundreds of pre-recorded patterns (played by ace session musicians) so you can build sections for your songs, practice, or just have fun jamming along!

Stop by the Cakewalk e-store to purchase a Cakewalk Download Gift Card. There’s no better gift than sharing the love of music this holiday season.

'Inside Home Recording' Reviews Music Creator 5

IHR logoInside Home Recording (IHR) is the longest running podcast to date that covers the latest in home studio recording, hosted by web guy / ‘podsafe’ musician Derek K. Miller and keyboardist / composer Dave Chick. Derek and Dave are both professional musicians involved in performing, teaching, producing and recording music. Based in Vancouver, Canada, IHR strives to bring the latest news, reviews, examples and techniques to musicians around the globe.

A few months ago, we sent over a review copy of Music Creator 5 to the IHR team. Dave immediately gave his first impressions. In their latest episode, Derek conducted an extensive review on the program- running it on a Windows 7 test candidate.

Click on the links above to hear their thoughts.
Visit IHR.com for more home recording news!

Creating Music In The Classroom With Cakewalk

On June 15 2009, Cakewalk Product Manager Samara Krugman discussed music production in the classroom with Keith Mason, coordinator of Music Technology at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and producer for the Music Tech For ME podcast.

In this episode, Samara explains how Music Creator 5 can benefit the music student. It’s simple interface and getting started tutorials guide users through the process of recording, editing, and mixing their first tracks. Students can add sound effects and backing tracks to their projects with hundreds of high-quality instrument sounds, loops and samples built right into the software studio. With these tools, plus Music Creator 5’s various project views and assistant features, students will learn basic music composition techniques as they work toward arranging and printing their own sheet music.

Visit Music Tech for ME online to hear the interview.

Music Tech For ME covers all aspects of incorporating music technology into the K-12 school curriculum, advising music educators across the globe on the latest advancements in creating and teaching music. Even if you’re not a music educator, you can learn a lot about the numerous technological tools and resources that are available on the market today just by listening to the show.

The How-to Geek.com Awards Music Creator 5 Four Stars

Cakewalk’s Music Creator 5 gets 4 stars and an excellent review at The How-to Geek.com!

Judged in five categories – Installation, Ease of Use, Features, Performance and Product Support – Music Creator 5 scored 8s across the board as ‘the affordable and powerful multitrack recording program perfect for beginners.’

The program’s help guides, simplified project views, and professional quality virtual instruments garnered much attention from the reviewer as he states:

”There is a bit of a learning curve to begin using Music Creator 5 and they offer a detailed user guide in the software and also videos on their site.  Once you start getting the hang of it everything falls into place.”

“While geared at beginners, there is a large amount of professional and studio quality features included in this package… there is a complete set of virtual instruments you can program to make the sound of your song huge.”

The How-To Geek.com features ‘how to’ articles on all things computers from operating systems and internet browsers to computer games and Microsoft Office™ tools. Need advice on running a certain program?  Just ask for help from a fellow geek on the site’s forums and wiki pages.

Get the full review, complete with installation instructions and screenshots, at the How-To Geek.com.

Angels & Airwaves Cover Featuring Studio Instruments – Drums

A Studio Instruments fan, who goes by the name of Tadqim on Youtube, posted this video late last week and we wanted to pass it along. Using the Drum kit, included in Cakewalk’s Studio Instruments, Tadqim added his own beats to the Angels & Airwaves hit ‘Call to Arms’.

Cakewalk’s Studio Instruments-Drums allows users to make backing tracks with a realistically animated interface that looks just like a drum set! Now included in the latest recording and editing software for beginners, Music Creator 5.

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