Hey guys, in this video we’re going to cover how to use automation in Cakewalk by BandLab.
If you’re not familiar with automation from other digital audio workstations, it basically
allows you to adjust different controls, such as volume and panning, on tracks automatically
throughout the song.
This can be done manually, or with a MIDI controller like we’ll show you in this video.
Before starting, if you haven’t seen our other videos on how to use Cakewalk, check
those out first so you’re all caught up.
Before we start with automation, just make sure it’s enabled for the project.
The Global Enable Read Automation button at the top should be lit up.
On our tracks, we should have the automation read set to on.
Let’s start simple, by automating the volume and panning of a track.
To automate it, click the Automation Lanes at the bottom of the track.
This will create a new automation lane specifically for that track.
There are plus and minus buttons on the side of the automation lanes.
The + adds an automation track.
You would think that the minus button completely removes the automation track, but it just
hides it.
As you can see when we do this, it gets overlaid on the track above, telling us it’s still
there.
To actually get rid of the automation completely, we need to right click on the line and clear
all.
Then you can remove the lane and it won’t be applied anymore.
If you just want to temporarily disable the automation lane, we can disable the automation
read by pressing the R button, and it will no longer be applied, but the settings will
remain.
A1 is the name of the lane.
If we double click this field, we can rename it to volume for our volume automation lane.
Now we can start to edit the automation.
This lane created a green line underneath the audio from our track.
Clicking on the green line with the Smart tool creates a new node.
We can drag that node up or down, and it will increase or decrease the volume at that point,
and transition the volume to the nodes before and after it.
If we want to delete a node, right click on it and select Delete Node.
You can also right click on the line and Clear all nodes to start over.
The transitions between nodes are not just limited to linear.
You can right click on the transition between nodes and switch between linear, jump, fast,
and slow curves.
That basically covers how to automate the volume of a track.
Now let’s cover some of the different options we have for automation lanes.
Next up is panning.
If we add a second automation lane to our track, it will be set to panning by default,
but once again we can change that from the drop down menu.
Automating our panning works in the same way, we can draw nodes on the line and move it
up and down.
With panning moving up pans to the left, and down pans to the right.
Having the line in the center keeps the pan in the center as well.
Similar to the volume control, we can adjust the curve type for panning.
The last automation tool available for every track is the automated mute tool.
Since we’re muting this is either on or off.
With the line in the up position, the muting is enabled.
This can get a little unpredictable if you keep the transitions in linear mode, because
the nodes themselves do not determine whether it is enabled or not.
The muting enables as soon as the position on the transition line passes the center point.
A better way of doing this is using the jump transition that we looked at earlier, that
way it is displayed exactly as we will hear it.
The next set of automation tools varies based on what plugins we are using with our track.
These can be either Sonitus plugins like we looked at in the previous video, or ProChannel
plugins.
Many of the plugins will allow their controls to be automated.
For example, the Sonitus reverb has controls for all the different sliders that we used
to set it up previously.
Changing some of these settings with automation can be difficult, but if you pull up the plugin,
you’ll see the slider moving as the automation is applied.
This isn’t important for the bypass control, but you’ll definitely want to see what changes
you’re making for something like an equalizer.
We can also record automation throughout the song.
To do that, make sure the Automation Write Button is enabled for a track.
Then have it enabled for the lanes that we want to apply automation to.
I usually do work with one automation lane at a time for this, and I disable the automation
record on all the others until I’m ready to work with them.
With the automation lane for volume now set to record, we can play back the track, and
pull that fader on the screen up and down.
Cakewalk will save all the changes we made to that automation lane, and it will keep
it for the next time we play back the track.
This can also be done with some enable commands, such as for plugins, but not for the automated
mute on a track.
First we need to go to the Track properties and set the automation mode to Latch instead
of Touch.
In touch mode, it will only disable the plugin as long as we’re holding down the mouse
on that button.
It Latch mode, it will lock to that setting until we change it again.
This can also be used for Faders and Knobs to keep them in the same place when we release
the mouse button.
Next we need to set up control surfaces.
To set up our control surface, go to the Edit menu and select Preferences.
Then go down to control surfaces, and make sure our MIDI input device is enabled as shown.
We set it to ACT MIDI controller and select the Akai MPD218.
We can set the output port to none.
Now go to the Utilities menu at the top and select our MIDI controller we just created.
We’ll rename these ones to Rotary1-6 for the knobs on the side of our controller.
The last step to setup a controller is to enable the Active Controller Technology in
the bottom left.
Then when we click a plugin for example on our ProChannel, it will come up and tell us
what all the knobs do.
Thanks for checking out this video on automation and control surfaces with Cakewalk by BandLab.
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