in this video i'm looking at seven reasons why you should use the free daw cakewalk by bandlab even
if you have money for a paid music production program be sure to stick around for reason four
as that's one of my favorite features within cakewalk and also stick around later on in the
video i'll give you the cons of using cakewalk and also who i recommend this program for i'm
zane welcome to audio tech tv where it's my goal to help you conquer the tech so you can
unleash your creative beast now i've included a link down in the description to cakewalk in
case you want to download it for yourself or get any more information on it but right now
let's jump into reason number one and of course it's the most obvious reason it's free and the
money that you save on your music production software you could use to buy a microphone
audio interface midi controller or whatever it is you might need in your studio another daw can cost
you anywhere between sixty dollars and six hundred dollars and maybe even more than that and that can
buy you some decent gear i actually have a video where i did a whole studio set up for 256 dollars
so save your money and invest it into some gear that's going to have a far greater impact on
your music now reason number two it's unlimited you can have unlimited tracks or whatever your
computer can handle and this includes midi tracks audio tracks auxes buses and all of that you can
record numerous tracks at the same time so if you record a band or maybe multiple instruments at
once you can do that no problem and also cakewalk allows you to bring in third-party plugins
unlike some other free digital audio workstations the only limitations are your abilities and your
computer power but cakewalk doesn't use a lot of system resources so the core program doesn't
take up a lot of your cpu leaving you with lots of power for your actual music projects
reason number three for why you should use cakewalk by bandlab is the included plugins
are excellent now before i get into more details of those included plugins i just want to ask if
you're enjoying this video so far getting some value out of it can you please hit that thumbs
up button maybe even subscribe to the channel for more cakewalk videos now let's get back into this
reason you could mix entire tracks using just the plugins that are included with cakewalk
now here's an example of some of the plugins that you get there's th3 which is an excellent guitar
amp sim that competes with paid amp sims and it includes a lot of decent amp gear plus presets
there's the breverb plugin which is a huge incredible reverb plugin and it covers a variety
of different reverb types plus it also has a ton of presets to get you started there's the entire
sonitus effect suite and these are great too plus there's the cakewalk effects suite and that's
also great you even get some instruments included as well and these can be very helpful if you're
looking to add some quick drums to your track or maybe record or write music to some drums
there's also a string instrument that you could add a bass guitar there's even a nice e piano in
there as well the included plugins are excellent and they give you everything that you need for
mixing great sounding tracks another cool thing is that there's a 32-bit bridge in there so you can
bring in 32-bit plugins even though cakewalk is a 64-bit daw and that's a kind of a neat feature
you can use some older plugins that maybe they don't make anymore and have an updated to 64 bit
not a lot of daws offer that built in but cakewalk does now reason number four for using cakewalk
it's similar to the previous one but this is the pro channel strip that's included on every track
so on every track that you create including buses you get this incredible channel strip
that can give you that classic analog style workflow and sound plus there are even more
effects in here that you can access like the included eq it's amazing i use that all
the time for my surgical eq there are some great compressors in there plus saturation and console
emulation i actually have a video coming out that's going over this feature in more detail it
might be out by the time you're watching this and i'll be sure to link to it down in the description
once it's released in case you want to check that out but because the pro channel strip is on every
single track already it makes it easy to use and it doesn't chew up a lot of your system resources
and reason number five for using cakewalk is that it has a familiar workflow so if you're used to
maybe using something like pro tools or cubase or any daw that has a more traditional workflow
cakewalk will be easy to jump in and maybe you haven't used those other programs but
you're thinking down the line you might want to use pro tools or cubase or one of these other daws
but if you learn on cakewalk you're going to be very familiar with that workflow and the sort of
style and even a lot of the shortcuts are going to be similar so you're going to be able to hop into
pro tools or cubase or whatever other daw you want to hop into that has that similar workflow and
you're not going to have any problems with it so working with things like midi maybe you use
the piano roll or you record it in or you like to program it into the step sequencer these are
all going to be very similar to other daws and it looks very similar to the same sort of layout even
recording and editing audio is going to be very similar so don't think that because cakewalk is
a free daw it has a lesser workflow or something like that this is a pro da that just happens to be
free now reason number six for using cakewalk is for the people that love to customize things and
really make it their own cakewalk allows you to fully customize the look of it you can use the
theme editor to create your own themes or there's also other themes that you can download online
and i'm not really into this myself but i know a lot of people are into customizing their user
interface and i get it having an interface that looks cool can totally inspire you to create
something great so if you love to customize your user interface cakewalk has you covered reason 7
for using cakewalk is the arranger track if you're not sure about the composition of your project
maybe you want to put in another verse before the chorus or maybe you want to move the chorus
somewhere else in your song the arranger track allows you to rearrange your song however you like
and this is such an easy and useful tool to use plus by setting up the arranger sections it gives
you some nice visual markers for the different sections in your song and this can help you to
map out your entire song before you even start recording and i actually have another video that
goes over using the arranger track in a lot more detail so be sure to check that out if
you're interested in it so there is a reason why cakewalk by bandlab does have all of these pro
features in there even though it's a free daw and that's because it used to be a paid for premium
program the gibson guitar company owned it before and it was owned by another company before that
but gibson sold it to bandlab who are incredible to the music community and they decided to make
it free for everyone and there doesn't appear to be any sort of pushing other products on you or
anything like that i've never received an email like that so there's no premium upgrades what you
get is the full complete program there's no higher tier or anything like that they're not trying to
sell you anything you just get this amazing free program that you can use to make music and they
continue to update it to get rid of any bugs and sometimes even add new features so it's not a
dead program either now some of the cons of using cakewalk and the first one is it's a windows only
program so if you use another operating system you won't be able to use cakewalk unless you put
windows onto your system the next con is the installation process so you have to register
for an account on bandlab which is fine with me i'm totally into making the account on there and
you also have to download this bandlab assistant software and then from within that software you
can install cakewalk that's the only way you can really install cakewalk now i have a video that
goes over how to install it using the bandlab assistant program in case you're interested in
that and another possible con for some people not me and i did mention this earlier is that you have
to sign up for an account with bandlab so you have to register on there in order to install bandlab
and that might be a con for some people not me this is an incredible program and if all i have
to do is sign up to be able to use it not a big deal because even if i paid for a daw i have to
sign up to whatever company i paid to get that daw so it's no different from those paid programs and
that's pretty much it for the cons there's no deal breaker there for me all you're getting is this
incredible free program to make music and there's a few little cons in there and it's nothing too
big of a deal will cakewalk allow me to record and make music to the best of my abilities
yes it will will it allow me to grow my abilities so i can continuously make better music yes it
will do that as well i recommend using cakewalk to anyone that's on a windows based computer
and they want to make music whether it's beats recording a whole band or maybe being a one-man
band where you record everything yourself you can do all of that in cakewalk by band lab if you
want a music making program that's free and it's not going to get in the way of your creativity
then cakewalk is an excellent choice even if you have money for a paid program and if you're
just starting out like i said earlier invest that money that you would have spent into that program
into some hardware like a microphone or an audio interface those are going to have a far greater
impact on your music than the software now if you want to jump in and create your first song
in cakewalk click the video up here or click down here to see what youtube recommends if you
like this video please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more cakewalk videos
thank you so much for watching for audio tech tv i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk soon