Cakewalk Midi Instruments

[Cherie Trojak]

HIGang, I have looked all over the net and can't find an answer to this one, and was hoping someone could help

ok here goes,

on track #1 I went in and recorded a very simple midi piano line on the Virtual Electric Piano VSTI included with cakewalk

I then thought to myself , hey I wonder how this piano line would sound as a bass..

and this is where I am stuck,

all I want to do is keep the midi information I recorded on track 1 as is, but change from the Virtual Electric Piano VSTI to the Studio Instruments Bass

so I can hear my piano part being played as a bass line.

I'm sure its a super easy thing to do, and im just overlooking something, but I'll be dammed if I can figure out how

anyone have a suggestion

thanks in advance

Derek

Hope this is what you are trying to do. It you have a simple instrument track (Midi and instrument combined) you should be able to right click on the track and then select "replace synth" to pick a new one.

Cakewalk by Bandlab does not come with any of the old instruments that were licensed for the discontinued Sonar. You'll either need to buy into a different DAW that comes with bundled instruments, or build your own library. Most of the available free stuff is okay, but not great, but it will get you started.

There is a lot of free and affordable stuff on the internet available that is quite good. You have to download and install them (either using their installers or extracting their dll's into the VST directory of your choice that has to be defined in CbB's preferences). By the way IMO the instruments and FX plugins coming with DAWs are 1) often also not so great and 2) not the ones that you like. So many people using DAWs buy a lot of additional instruments and FX plugins anyway! ?

That's pretty helpful actually. I wonder if there's a quick way to hear a sample of the instruments before downloading though. I feel like I'm gunna be downloading for days before I find what I'm looking for.

I am sort of in the same place you are. This forum has been very helpful. So far, for me anyway, I am okay with the free bass, piano and drum modules that come with CakeWalk but the only guitar instruments are in TTS-1 and those sound more like keyboards than guitars. I have tried every free guitar instrument I can find and none have a sound that suits except Ample Sounds free Acoustic Guitar. I like some of the paid electric guitar sounds from Ample Sounds and I will probably go that route at some point in the future. I wish there was some place that sold some entry level guitar instruments at lower prices but if it exists I can't find it.

The free version of Kontakt has some guitars in it if you like programming midi guitars, if you use the basic guitar sounds and disable the processing of them in Kontakt and then feed that to something like guitar rig, they can sound alright.

Me not being able to find even the right piano sounds is kind of worrisome though that may just be me being unwieldy with the interface. I hope I don't just get ripped off if I buy virtual instruments.

Should you later decide to buy the full 88 key version, XLN Audio normally has one or two sales a year with a 50% discount which effectively puts the full version in the $45 price range (and that's in my opinion a steal for the full instrument).

@Canopus Thanks for that, btw...I had made another thread asking about pianos specifically, and had kinda forgot to look into Addictive Keys for some reason (I actually run AD2 and have an XLN account and all that).

I really wanna dive into this again with all your suggestions but I'm fighting the urge to procrastinate due to the difficulties of getting used to the program lmao. I did not come into this thinking it would be so difficult to assemble all the pieces and figure out what button does what.

At the top of the "Cakewalk by BandLab" forum is a "Reference Guide PDF now available" sticky thread. Open that thread and there is a link to download the Reference Guide PDF. Read through that PDF a few times and you will be well on your way.

I created a MIDI part for a string instrument in Cakewalk (latest version) using one of their built-in instruments (SI-String Section). I wanted to use it in a Cubase project using the same Cakewalk instrument, so I exported the MIDI from cakewalk (tried both Type 0 and 1) and imported them into Cubase, and it loaded OK and looks the same as it did in CW.

Yeah, I mentioned that in my posts above, some in the EDITs, like the List Editor and MIDI Monitor in Cubase. I do know that MIDI and Instrument tracks in Cubase are distinct (which added to my original confusion), but I tried it using a MIDI track routed to an instrument in the Rack, or an instrument track to where I had copied the MIDI event. Sorry, long thread.

I am learning the basic concepts of music production by exploring the capabilities of Cakewalk by Bandlab as well as Pure Data. My question is about how to capitalize on the sounds one generates in Pure Data.

I assume that although it is possible to write music entirely in Pure Data, most producers in some fashion export sounds from Pure Data into a DAW for further arrangement. The most sensible way to do this that I can see would be to make virtual instruments out of one's Pure Data creations.

Suppose I create a sound I like in Pure Data, either using a synthesizer written in Pure Data, or by some unstructured process of playing with sinesums/drawing freehand sound waves in tables/etc. How can I make a custom virtual instrument in Cakewalk from such a sound? I found this () tutorial for creating virtual instruments, but it doesn't discuss Cakewalk, and the tutorial involves audio recording from a physical instrument. Would sound generated in Pure Data have to be recorded in order to be ported to a DAW, or could it be transferred through an entirely digital process, since the sound in Pure Data originates digitally?

I believe you could make a virtual instrument or effect out of a Pd patch using Camomile - then it would appear as a VST instrument in Cakewalk.

Another option would be to route the sound from Pd into an audio channel on Cakewalk but I don't know how internal audio routing works on Windows.

Or (least complicated but maybe less interesting) you could of course just sample the sounds you make in Pd and collage them together in Cakewalk or perhaps load them up as samples in a virtual sampler instrument.

@Metronome The simplest way is just to route midi from cakewalk to puredata and audio from puredata to cakewalk. I believe there are some ways to create plugins from puredata patches but they are limited somewhat regarding externals?

Routing MIDI internally requires a 'virtual midi driver' which you can set up with something like MidiYoke or LoopMidi -erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html

I'm not on Windows so I can't give you anything more specific.

moving projects between daws is expensive anyways. you may purchase a non-cheap 3-rd party utility for converting from one DAW to another, but if you're using the built-in DAW instruments and effects that won't make much more that exporting midi, as far as I believe. I didn't try any of them though. I know there's (they offer a free convertation of one track), but did not use it.

you may also want to export and import rendered audio stems (that is rendered audio that will keep your instruments, effects and automation) to the new DAW, but in this case you won't be able to edit instrument parameters or something like this. I actually prefer this way when I started the project in one DAW, but want to mix and master it in other. though you will lose the mixing part, you will have to re-do in a new DAW.

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