in this cakewalk tutorial I'm going to show you how to use cakewalk by bandlab
for beginners if you're just getting started on your home studio recording
journey or maybe you just want to know some of the basics of how to use
cakewalk by bandlab then this tutorial video is for you
welcome to simple green tech I'm Zane and on this channel I do weekly audio
tech tips tutorials and reviews to help you conquer the tech and unleash your
creativity now here's what I'm going to cover in this cakewalk tutorial first
we're going to quickly set up your audio interface and your MIDI controller so it
works with cakewalk plus I'll quickly show you how to add third-party VST
plugins and after that we're going to do some recording and editing of MIDI which
includes using virtual instruments after that I'll get into audio recording plus
using effects plugins then I'll quickly go over arranging your song in the
timeline and finally saving your mixed down audio so you can share your tracks
with your friends and fans now let's look at how to use cakewalk by bandlab
first up I'm going to quickly go over setting up your audio interface and MIDI
keyboard so go up to edit then go to preferences and click here on playback
and recording now you want your driver mode to be set to ASIO click apply
then go up to devices and in the input drivers and output driver section make
sure your audio interface has a checkmark beside it in here now if you
need to change your sample rate or your Audio Driver bit depth you can go into
the driver settings tab and do that in here once you have everything set up for
your audio interface you can click apply and now we want to set up our MIDI
controller so go to devices in the MIDI tab here and then in inputs just select
whatever MIDI controller you have and you don't have to worry about outputs
unless you are planning to output MIDI but for this I'm just doing input and
when that set up click apply now the file part of our setup is adding the
folders for your third-party plugins so go down to the file section click on VST
settings and you'll likely see a couple of folders already in here but you'll
want to add a couple of other folders that are pretty common for plugins to
install - and those are see Program Files
Steinberg VST plugins and see Program Files VST plugins to do that you just
click Add locate your folders in here and then
click ok and any subfolders that you have within that folder will get added
as well and you'll notice as soon as you add the folder it's going to start
scanning for your plugins right away and once that's set up click apply close
this down and now your cakewalk is set up and we're ready to start making music
so let's start an empty project and first I want to record some MIDI into it
and don't worry if you don't have a MIDI controller I'm going to show you how you
can draw your MIDI notes in so stick around for that so let's add an
instrument to our project so click this plus sign right here and then you want
to click on instrument right there and for this cakewalk tutorial I'm going
to use the drum plug-in that comes with cakewalk so I'll just go down to drums
and click on this one here and now I'll click create
you can now test out your MIDI controller if you have one connected and
see if it works now click on this red arm for record button but before we
actually start recording there are a couple more settings that I quickly want
to adjust and the first is the metronome so click on the metronome right here and
then where it says record count in I want to change that to one measure then
click OK and this is going to give you a countin before you actually start
recording after you press the record button also make sure that this button
right here the metronome while recording button is turned on it should be yellow
if it's on you can also enable the metronome during playback and this is
great for practicing before you start recording and another setting that I'm
going to change right away is the recording mode so what you want to do is
go to the record button right here right click on it then under the recording
mode section click on sound on sound then click OK and what this does is it
allows you to record over top of MIDI without overwriting it so you can add
notes in and we're now ready to record
all right so that's just a basic kick and a snare drum and if we want to
quantize that which means lining it up so it will hit on where the beat should
be you can click on the cue button on your computer keyboard and open up the
quantize menu and in here I'm just going to choose eighth notes then I'll click
OK and if we double click on our MIDI clip we can see in here everything is
lined up perfectly to the eighth note now what if we want to add some hi
hats to this we can just click record and then add our high hats over top of
our kick and snare now when you double click on the clip and bring up the piano
roll you'll see that we have some more notes in here all right so that's our
drum beat and MIDI recording now I want to show you how to draw your MIDI notes
in so let's add another instrument this time I'm going to add the bass guitar
plug-in that comes with cakewalk so we have it on another track here I'm
just gonna close down the interface all right so we're now going to disarm this
track for recording as we're just going to be working on our bass guitar track
and to draw your notes in you want to right-click over here in the timeline on
your track then go to view piano roll and now we've got our new piano roll for
our bass guitar instrument and you can just go in here click and drag
and make your notes in there like that and you may need to drag the clip so it
goes to the beginning of your song and we can now listen to what it sounds like
if you're getting some value out of this video please hit the thumbs up button it
really helps the channel out and I appreciate it so much now let's get back
into the cakewalk tutorial alright so we now have a bassline and a drumbeat let's
record some audio into this and I'm going to record my electric guitar so
first we need to go to the plus sign again but this time we're going to add
audio and for our input we want to select whichever input it is that you
have your guitar plugged into I have mine into input 2 which is the right so
I'm going to click on that now the thing is if you're recording an instrument or
a microphone it's going to be a mono source so you want to choose a mono
track not a stereo track alright so we now have this audio track that we're
going to record our guitar on to and if we want to hear our guitar while we're
recording click on this button right here and this will allow you to monitor
while you're recording and you'll see when I play now my levels show up and if
you do this you'll be able to hear your guitar but it's pretty plain the way it
is so I want to add an effect to this and to do that I'll just click on this
plus sign beside effects and go to insert audio effects and I'm going to
add the guitar amp simulator that comes with cakewalk so I'll go to overloud
and then th3 once th3 is open you'll see this area here that says banks and
you have a few banks here and each one of these has a bunch of presets in them
and you can see the presets down here and you can scroll through them in each
Bank and go through these presets find one
that you like or you can build your own rig there are a bunch of amps that you
can choose from and you can just build your own rig and create your own sound
I'm just going to quickly go with the preset and start recording so I have the
sound that I want now I'm going to arm this track for recording and we'll start
recording
and if we're happy with that take we can disarm it from recording and turn off
the monitoring and we can just listen back to what we've recorded if you want
to adjust the levels you can open up the console just go up to views console view
and now we can see our mixer down here and you'll see the levels in each
Channel when I press play and you can adjust the levels by moving the sliders
down or up however you need them
and if you want to close the console down you would just click down here on
this X and it's out of your way and if you want to close any of these side bars
here if they're in your way you can click on these arrows at the side and
that will unclutter your interface so all you're focusing on is your music now
we have our guitar a bass line and a drum beat here so let's arrange some
things in the timeline a little bit now first I want to duplicate this MIDI
track here because it's only going halfway through our song so to do that I
can just hold down control on my computer keyboard click and drag to
where I want it to go and then let go and you can move your audio or your MIDI
around however you like on the timeline you can even duplicate it later on so if
this is like a part that needs to be duplicated in your song you can
duplicate it and bring it to a section later on in your project now let's just
say this is our full project and this is what we want to share with our friends
and our fans so we need to export it as an mp3 file and to do that you just want
to go up to file export audio and then in here you can choose where
you want to save your audio file the file name that you want to give it and
what type of file you want it to be so I want it to be an mp3
I'm just gonna save it to the desktop and I'll just call this test and then
we're going to export it and you can select the bitrate that
you'd like I really like 192 but you choose whatever one you like you can
even encode your id3 info in here if you like you can put your the title the song
in here your artist name album your whatever you want in here and this is
what's going to show up in various audio players but you don't have to fill any
of this out if you don't want to then just click OK and you're done click here
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thank you so much for watching for simple green tech I'm Zane keep
creating and we'll talk soon