The Entire History of Cakewalk

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A short video essay about the history of Cakewalk. Going back to their roots in 1987 when it was but a simple sequencer to them creating one of the most capable DAWs SONAR, all the way to the modern day when BandLab resurrected the product.
0:00 Intro
0:19 Cakewalk Sequencer 1987
3:27 Cakewalk Pro Audio
4:51 Cakewalk Metro 4
5:22 SONAR
7:28 PLASMA
7:53 Roland buys part of Cakewalk
8:19 SONAR 5+
9:37 Music Creator 3
9:56 SONAR 7+
10:49 SONAR X1
11:46 SONAR Discontinued, BandLab buys Cakewalk
12:47 Outro
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[@CarlJacobsonArt]

This was really fun to see thank you for putting it together. I am the marketing director that you have a little clip of towards the beginning of the video. I wish I'd known you were doing it I could have contributed some historical information and imagery. Getting to work for Cakewalk at that time was really special, we were finally at the point where computer processing was starting a revolution and people were empowered to take control of their music production on their own terms. A couple key features that you missed in SONAR 1 and 2 were the introduction of audio quantizing and loop based sequencing, which were co-opted from Sonic Foundry acid. You also mentioned virtual instruments later, but the actual support for then came into play around that time which was also a big deal. SONAR was the first digital audio workstation to support both 64-bit processing and 64-bit audio quality, I think we introduced that around version 4. This was really well received by companies like Intel and Microsoft, because they viewed us as being cutting edge and used the program to showcase those technologies. Another overlooked feature of the product was its support for accessibility functions. This is one of the things that I'm most proud of. Vision impaired musicians could compose music and make arrangements without the need of anyone else to drive the computer. That led to an endorsement by Ray Charles, and getting to know Ray was one of the most amazing things that's happened in my career. Some of the other notable users of the product included BB King, Public Enemy, Slipknot and Jon Anderson of Yes. Plasma that you mentioned was actually a light version of a full sequencer called Project 5. The thing that made Project 5 great was its workflow, it was really fast for creating music. Unfortunately the small team at Cakewalk and our limited budgets made it difficult to support two flagship products and it was eventually abandoned. The last thing that I want to say is I believe the downfall of Cakewalk was the fact that we didn't port to the Mac. The product was great, really one of the best, but we had this uphill battle of not only convincing people to use Sonar, but also to embrace an entire operating system, when the zeitgeist of the moment was that Mac was for creatives. If you have any questions let me know. Thanks again for giving me this walk down memory lane I'm feeling really nostalgic this morning.

[@thebarf9235]

Awesome, man. Thanks for checking in.

[@afunnylookingsquash]

If you’d like I’d be happy to chat with you for a video on my channel since it was so hard to get info about the program only searching online and with the way back machine :)

[@afunnylookingsquash]

You can email me at [e-mail] if you’d like to get it touch

[@randallharp7010]

Great info! Although Macs are great, I never understood the blind allegiance to the Macs-are-for-creatives mantra. The new Apple silicon is impressive, but I've always been able to build (or have built) a music production PC that smokes a Mac for a fraction of the price.

[@thebarf9235]

@@randallharp7010 Yes I find that brand allegiance for the sake of brand allegiance is kind of weird and holding the idea that a competing brand is automatic garbage is pretty culty.

[@mrmalio]

Can't believe my video request came through lmao. Cakewalk by Bandlab is a seriously underrated Daw. Thanks for the video champ

[@afunnylookingsquash]

We stan our viewers here at the squash channel

[@WilliamHopperMusician]

I've used Cakewalk since the DOS version. Still use it and I've tried the others to see how they were. Never left Cakewalk. Still recording music daily with Cakewalk and couldn't be happier.

[@dighawaii1]

I used the original DOS version at my school as a 14 year old. I have continued to use Cakewalk/Sonar throughout my life. I recorded and mixed somewhere in the 100's of local bands and musicians, 1 of which gained traction and is now in their 10th year of touring. I used it on jobs for law enforcement (noise removal for surveillance video/audio), as well as national TV shows (Dirtiest Jobs/Deadliest Catch, Sesame Street, Hawaii 5-0. etc), and dozens of commercial spots. Once the OMF format was a part of Cakewalk the road was wide open, and I was able to easily collaborate world-wide with Pro-Tools-based studios as well. Over the years I dabbled in Cubase and Pro-Tools, but they were always lacking something that Cakewalk had long included, so there was simply no desire to conform to Pro-Tools when I got more out of Cakewalk.

[@blaisetangelo1224]

I used Cakewalk from v4.0 (on MSDOS) until SONAR 8.5. I started with Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold which used the same interface as the DOS version of Cakewalk. The instrument definition was a nice feature in Cakewalk that made it easy to import or create patch/bank list with program change from pretty much any keyboard brand, this was a time saver when you had to browse through thousands of patches across multiple banks, something that was either limited or nonexistent in other DAWs that I used or tested.

[@dighawaii1]

Exactly!

[@jbrown21m]

What TRIP down memory lane. I bought Greg's Calkwalk in September of 1988 along with a Roland D50, Swan's AT clone with a 30(!) meg hard drive & EGA (!) monitor, Sound Quest's D-50 editor librarian, and a Music Quest MQX-32M pc buss card. I still have most everything scattered about! Those were the dayz.

[@gravics]

It was 1989, using an old IBM XT with 5.25 floppy disks to start up Cakewalk. Starting that computer was like starting an old car. It was a joy working with that software. It's impressive to see how far things have improved.

[@donaldhatcher8179]

I go back as far as Cakewalk 3.0 Professional running under Windows 3.1 on a 486 sx machine with 8 mb of RAM. I bought a MIDI 2portSE interface and used SMPTE codes to lock Computer to a 4 track Fostex Cassette recorder. It was like magic to me and I could record analog guitars and vocals and lay down drums and synth parts on the computer. We then mixed to 2 track stereo on cassette. It was primitive as HELL, but we got some passable demos that worked for developing live arrangements for bands I played in. It was great fun but I lacked the skills to get professional recordings. I stayed with Cakewalk, owning various iterations all the way through the Gibson debacle. I use Bandlab now but only as a pastime since I no longer play music in public. Thank you for this walk down memory lane. I will say that Bandlab’s version kicks butt! I am so glad to have it.

[@mikelivingston3244]

What a great trip down memory lane! Thank you. (I was a user from the beginning. YIKES!!)

[@pajodato5339]

I was a Registered User for the Twelve Tone System's Cakewalk Apprentice 1.0. That software came with the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro "MIDI Kit" (a MIDI cable adapter for the soundcart Joystick port). These allowed to connect an external synthesizer to the computer, and use the sequencing program on Windows 3.1 to record and play MID and native WRK files. I used a cheap Casio MT at the time. Promotional material was sent on the international mail, and included the QuarterTone quaterly magazine, a small newspaper. In this way, I was able to upgrade to the Cakewalk Audio. With a SB16 soundcard, you could play MIDI and audio at the same time, a feature not possible on the early SBPro. It may sound an idiocy today, but I was able to arrange great theatrical music and SFX for live plays at school using that nimble software and a tape recorder. What great memories!

[@BenPotts]

a funny looking squash explaining the most rudimentary things like "oxygyn is a gas that humans breathe to survive"

[@Euthymia]

Excellent video. Lots of stuff I didn't know about. I'm the original author of the current Cakewalk by Bandlab Wikipedia entry. It was initially more comprehensive, but some more high-powered Wikipedia editor cut a bunch of stuff out because while it was true, they didn't think the references I used (the actual manufacturer's product pages) were sufficient. At the time I created the entry, I did some cleanup on the Cakewalk SONAR article, which was a mess. I moved some of the content to the new article, but then it got removed. So that's the story on the Wikipedia entries. At least Cakewalk by Bandlab does have its own entry. Please do some editing, as your knowledge of the history is far greater than mine, and you seem to be very good at finding references.

[@raulplascencia3628]

Congratulations to all who created and developed this terrific DAW over the years. It was a journey and a hard work.

[@BruceRichardsonMusic]

You already heard from Carl Jacobson below, but you can also hook up with Noel Borthwick and Ron Kuper. I'm pretty sure Greg Hendershott would talk to you as well. Cakewalk was a fabulous company, and I had many years of association with them. One of the best aspects of the company was the way they listened to users, and hosted (some might say tolerated) insane levels of debate over the direction of the software and company. I have the fondest memories of my long association with them (starting with good old DOS sequencing). It's not an exaggeration to say that my entire career as a musician was very much a product of my early association with Cakewalk products, and that their products were the scaffold upon which I was able to stand. Very happy to see you highlight this excellent company.

[@brendanhoffmann8402]

You should do an episode on Cool Edit Pro / Adobe Audition... I first got started with Cool Edit back at the turn of the millenium... Made so much stuff with it

[@mitchtheneedle]

Our band has always been Cakewalk/Sonar users (having used the first versions on the PC when we switched from Master Tracks Pro on Atari Mega 2 in the early 90s). The current version of Cakewalk is so good and we’ve used it so much in recent years that I’ve forgotten all the versions and feature improvements along the way. But we are forever grateful to Bandlab for keeping Cakewalk going (tried doing a couple of projects in Cuebase right after Gibson stopped support of Sonar, but didn’t like Cuebase nearly as well). Thanks for this informative and fun video. -Jer of the band Mitch the Needle

[@christiaantinga]

My first steps into recording music was in 1989 using Cakewalk in DOS. It's great to see the way TwelveTone managed to develop over time, but seeing these old DOS screens... I just love it! I remember my first Memory Dump action to and from the Roland D-10. (SysEx)

[@zenithlazerbeam]

i'm no producer but learning about all these various daws is really interesting

[@wendelynmusic]

In the 90's I was a beta tester for Cakewalk. I loved it. But I stopped using it when I sold my gear and focused more on acoustic jazz...Version 6 and 7 was when I was doing that.

[@ryancrawford9894]

One small correction: Sonitus:fx is a bundle, not an all in one plugin. They were actually pretty powerful, I recall missing them quite a bit when I switched to PT in the mid aughts.

[@raulplascencia3628]

Thanks for putting this together. love Cake Walk. I started when it came together with the Sound Blaster many years ago. I have seen the developments and I thank Band Lab for the continued support and the terrific work they done every day.

[@adunion]

I started my career using Cakewalk with a Roland JV-80 in 1994. I had a Creative Labs Soundblaster Pro soundcard in my computer, where the joystick port could be used for MIDI if you bought the optional "Midi Kit". That kit had a version of Cakewalk, called Cakewalk Apprentice, bundled with it.

[@gr4ndv1ll3]

Cakewalk Home Studio 7 taught me how to think beyond the two-track recording limit of my PSR-520 Yamaha keyboard. What an incredible leap! I can't estimate how many hours I spent creating .wrk files left and right, each filled with dozens of tracks capturing the strange musical ideas of my teenage self. I eventually moved to Garageband, Logic, Ableton, and Pro Tools, but while each have their strengths and encourage me to think in different ways, my use of them is built on the foundation that Cakewalk gave me. I've never felt nostalgia for a DAW like I have for Cakewalk. Thank you for creating this video and letting me see my old musical training ground again.

[@roaldjensen3120]

Great video, I went from "Tracker" in Dos, to Cakewalk, Sonar, CuBase and now Ableton. Miss those days with outboard midi, and spaceship like mixing decks and racks :) Thanks again for the nostalgia trip.

[@brudduh]

Merry Christmas Squash and everyone!

[@kuperfamily]

Great trip down memory lane!

[@callum.dokkodo]

This was such a nostalgia trip. Please do Band-in-a-box at some point. I think there may be a lot of former jazz school kids who'll appreciate that. Actually a remarkable software for the time.

[@eggbass]

As someone who started using Sonar back in 2000, this video certainly brought back a lot of memories of the old versions. Kudos!

[@Chimpinalls]

In the Home Studio era when you still needed a dedicated sound card to run any high quality audio from a PC the cards would use the same processing circuits for either recording OR playback. You needed a higher end “full duplex” card to be able to record while listening to previously recorded tracks.

[@marcuscurtismusic]

I have been a user of Cakewalk since the Pro Audio days. There are a lot of features left out during the Sonar X days. Sonar x1 to Sonar X3 had many great improvements and you could still order the program on DVD. The next version of Sonar was called Sonar platinum. The main changes with this version was that you had to download an installer from the internet and that installer would setup cakewalk for you. No more DVD sets. Sonar started a pay as you go program and people were mad because they thought that Sonar would become a subscription service. This was not true but people thought they would need to subscribe rather than buy a license. There were a few upgrades to platinum and you would purchase the new upgrades every year for about 100.00. There were bug fixes and new program features. Usually these upgrades had new features and people requested what they wanted in the upgrades via the forum. The thing that destroyed Sonar was the fact that Gibson purchased the program. In the springtime the yearly upgrades were offered which were around 100.00. About a month or two after everyone purchased the yearly upgrade Gibson announce a lifetime update. If you purchased the lifetime update then you would never need to buy another update. You got the rest of the updates for free. Of course, this was about 150.00. (i don't remember the exact amount) but everyone purchased the lifetime update. Gibson got over double for the update fees because of this. Now all of a sudden Gibson had no money coming in to develop Sonar. That is when they announced that they were abandoning the development of Sonar. They only had the software a little over a year and they destroyed the whole platform. At that time the CEO of Gibson was a real jackass and he led the company into 350 million dollars of debt. I never purchased another Gibson product after that. Gibson had effectively killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Everyone felt that they were ripped off. Gibson had a lot of restructuring to do. They sold Sonar to Bandlab and they changed the name back to Cakewalk. Bandlab saved the software and they gave it away for free. In the process of saving the software some plugins were stripped away. These were good plugins but they are no longer found in cakewalk. Session Drummer 3 is awesome but it is only available if you have an older version of Sonar. Today's Cakewalk has many new features and innovations but it is still a stripped down version of what Sonar once was. Former Sonar users went on to use other DAW apps. Many went to Studio 1 and Many went to Reaper. Both are good DAW apps. The cool thing is that Cakewalk by Bandlab imports all the plugins from Sonar Platinum so I still have them. I think it is a shame that new users don't have access to them and they can't even purchase them.

[@larrybarronmusic]

Thank you for this trip down memory lane relative to Cakewalk/Twelve Tone/Voyetra/Sonar iterations. I still have the original CW/Twelve Tone System DOS floopy disk! I once visited Twelve Tone Systems headquarters in Pelham, NY circa 1986...I was surprised to find this amazing music software company housed in an extremely tiny storefront office. It was weird...although it was during office hours, the place was closed that day. Thanks again for the memories... :-)

[@edwardbrands3271]

One of the best things about pro audio 9 was the sound font integration .if you had a creative sound card you could play and rec them.

[@Sequentonal]

i spent hours in the soundfont creator.. .. and a fortune on RAM upgrades :)

[@AbaSynthphony]

Thanks for compiling this video, it's really informative. I used Cakewalk a lot 25+ years ago when I was 20+ years old. However, due to some reasons, I stop playing & producing Music. Until 2 years ago, I wanted to start producing music again for fun. I searched for Cakewalk & found that it was sold to Bandlab. I was excited at that time, because it's free. I downloaded it & gave it a try. I learnt a lot about computer music back then using Cakewalk. I can still remember the piano roll was really a fun one. I'm now using FL Studio as my main DAW for my music production.

[@israelcanova]

I'm 34 and have used Cakewalk for music production since I was 9. In fact, a CD of Cakewalk 7 was my 9-y BD, with a Begginer Yamaha 4 octaves keyboard. Those were the best presents I ever gained. Now, moving on among VSTi's, Kontakt libraries and other plugins, my Sonar X3 seems to be crashing too much and no longer working properly. It's been a long term relationship, but I'm able to move on, maybe to Cubase.

[@59framus]

Wow seriously thanks for posting this memory jog. I had started with Cakewalk v3 on my trusty Amstrad PC and went on to upgrade all the way through the last Lifetime offering. Think I even have a copy of the Sonar/Mac prototype somewhere (there was an attempt). The G*son thing ticked something off though and I proceeded to become kind of a DAW collector. Very happy that BandLab picked up the ball, however like some others I have become more Mac-centric and gravitating more toward dual - or more - platform applications.

[@THA-REAPER]

Cakewalk Project 5 should've been mentioned somewhere around Music Creator LE. It never got big, but it had Ableton like clips, but with sonar like features and plugins. I don't think it ever got out there so much because cakewalk had Sonar already. They couldn't push for two daws.

[@ValeriyKoshelev]

I worked in the Cakewalk Project 5. It was a great alternative Ableton. It is a pity that the development of the program has stopped. The appearance of early versions of Bitwig is very similar to Project 5 )))

[@danielcarlheister680]

Great video. I have used Cakewalk since it's first release. Unfortunately I don't have any of the older software to show you. Cakewalk in my opinion was way underated as it competed with pro tools and still does in alot of ways even as a free software.

[@Tmidiman]

Not bad, given the limited resources you had. I have cakewalk professional 3.1 and it still is a beauty to use. Fast when it comes to getting ideas down quickly.

[@wayneranson8763]

I bought it way back when and I still use it for sequencing today. It is by for the easiest and quickest workflow for sequencing that i have ever used ... maybe that's because i am a bit of a dinosour haha! I have to have a dedicated XP computer to run it unfortunately. I would however pay money for someone to adapt this version to run on a 64 bit computer! I have tried VM but with little success. I'm curios to know how you and others are you running it?

[@TheHmm43]

My first DAW was Cakewalk Gold 8.0, after which I used Pro Audio 9, Sonar 4, Sonar 6, and currently use X3, but also have Platinum. As I have used Cakewalk by Bandlab out of curiosity, I highly recommend it.

[@ISuperI]

I didn't knew this DAW had such an interesting (and crazy) story, great video, sir.

[@twistedfingers9757]

Thanks for the succinct Cakewalk History video. I've book marked it for reference. A number of comments reflect on the lack of a Mac OS version of Cakewalk. I haven't seen any mention of Cakewalks attempt to develop a Mac OS version around the time they released the phone recording app (called Momentum?) I think they released a beta version and dropped it soon after that.

[@thespadestable]

I first purchased my first Cakewalk software (Express version) in 1989 to work alongside my Korg M1. All due to magazine cover shown at 1:14 and the adds ran in Keyboard Magazine.

[@SamLowryDZ-015]

I was a dedicated user from version 1.0 for windows - as it came with the first release of the AWE32 soundcard. Later graduating to pro, pro audio and then sonar. Some of the features you didn't mention was the Set ability to chain sequences for a live performance with specified gaps. Also before the FX packs there were MIDI effects - such as echo/delay which also had pitch shifting on the repeats. It also had an arpeggiator Also those early audio FX plugins had 3d displays allowing you to rotate the room and move the speakers and the mic positions with the mouse. There was also a MIDI swing/shuffle - that could be applied to tracks individually and could vary for every bar. There were also swing templates that could be applied on a percentage scale. Great for adding feel to drums. The CAL scripting was great and allowed tasks to be automated When audio was introduced you could save projects in a single file called a bundle (*.bun) Also I think it was one of the first to introduce Freeze for virtual instrument channels - also it had it's own DXi - Instruments before totally embracing vst. I began to lose faith around the time of Sonar 7 as they stopped supporting the score window for inputting data. (Never liked or used the piano roll). They started recommending 3rd party score editors when they introduced rewire. You could tell they were not maintaining it as when I migrated to XP the main windows were fine but the note input/edit dialogue boxes were still win95 style Also you didn't mention the automated hardware controller which Roland introduced. There is probably a lot more but I would have to dig out my software archive. But I do know I still have my original floppy ver 1.0 and Big-box Pro Audio 9 suite. Which came with the gigasampler - Giga piano. Last thing to mention - around the time of pro-audio they brought out Cakewalk Guitar Tracks - a cut down DAW version with a fretboard view as standard along the bottom of the screen.

[@TheRealCAPerry]

My first DAW was Sonar when it came out, my last (and current) is X3 - I upgraded through all versions in between. It still runs on a PC based around a motherboard that I know is at least 13 years old, and aside from changing its CR2032 battery is still going just fine.

[@randallharp7010]

My Cakewalk journey started with 4.0a for DOS. I didn't upgrade at every release, but did a few versions of Pro Audio, Sonar 1, Sonar 6, and eventually a "lifetime" subscription to Sonar Platinum. It's amazing that even with all the latest amazing updates, I can still load 20-year-old projects and many CAL scripts still run. Cakewalk has always been an underestimated powerhouse.

[@misstress1928]

I recall occasionally using Cakewalk 9 Pro in the late 90s and Cakewalk Sonar 5 in the mid 00s. Since 2015 (Sonar X3 Platinum) I have been using Sonar/CbB almost exclusively. Perfect workflow is the main reason, besides stability and dependability.

[@flavanthensome]

Sonar 2 was my first daw. Thank you limewire. Then I bought Sonar 5 and still have the disk. Downloaded Cakewalk by bandlab but haven't had much opportunity to use it as I mostly work with mainstage and Logic now.

[@DEMBEATSPRODUCTION]

This was very interesting. I started using Cakewalks Music Creator 5 in 2011, and I kept upgrading it all the way until Cakewalk By BandLab. I really love the history of this DAW. Thanks again! 🙏🏾👍🏾😎

[@rickpearce9239]

I started using Cakewalk DOS back in the late 80's/early 90's. It came in a vinyl case that held 5 1/4 floppy discs. I used it to create midi backing tracks for my band using the stand alone Roland Sound Canvas, Midiman box and an early Compaq laptop (green screen). I still have those three items collecting dust balls on a shelf in my basement. Cakewale For Dos had some excellent features for live performance like being able to search for the next midi track you wanted to play without stopping the one currently playing. It also allowed you to merge several playlists together into a new playlist. That was a great program and easy to use.

[@Warren1814]

WOW just looking at this video at 1:47 brings back so many memories. So many... that was the first music software i started using.. I even kept the original box and disk just as a keep sake.

[@AudioDiscoveryVids]

This is a great retrospective... thanks for all the research and attention put towards enlightening the history of Cakewalk!

[@afunnylookingsquash]

:)

[@MrSmithvideo]

I still use a windows XP system with Sonar 4 Producer to record bands and all of my own music. It has never been on the internet (apart from windows installation) or updated, has never glitched and is still running today with 3 M-Audio Delta 1010's at 48khz 24 bit recording, which is still industry standard today. Every iteration of Sonar that came out after Sonar 4 producer, was just reshaped buttons and a couple of new toys that ended up being pretty useless. I use Waves and other third party plugins from the same era too and who can really tell which reverb or chorus someone used in a full mix? Every piece of music on my channel has been done on this system and I have future proofed with spare pc's that were free, when people threw them away. Sonar 4 is where I will stay until some kind of paradigm shift in audio happens. Never once has someone questioned the DAW I use and never once has quality been an issue. I can run it blind while sitting backwards on a motorbike, what's the point of changing?? Thanks for the video and the work that you put in with it, it was a blast to see it. If you want to know anything about Sonar 4 just ask.

[@PrimitiveBaroque]

I loved Cakewalk 3 when I was younger. It was so fun writing MIDI in my spare time.

[@michaeldoris4327]

Really enjoyed that. Thank you. I had every version of Sonar all the way up to Sonar Platinum. Found the X line so unstable I ended up moving back to Cubase. The skylight interface has now become pretty much standard across the industry. Ahead of it's time,

[@BirdYoumans]

Been using Cakewalk since the 90's but only as a sequencer back then because the computers that us mortals could afford were simply not fast enough to do sound yet. Too much latency to deal with and besides, I had a couple of Alesis 24 track hard drive recorders that worked great and sounded quite good for the cost. But in the early 2000's I had the money to have a computer built that at the time was a rocket. Put Sonar 3 on it and began to enjoy the many wonders of visual digital editing. Game changer!! Latency was no longer a problem. I used lightwire interfaces (needed two in order to get the 48 tracks I was use to). Had and still have, a Yamaha DX 2000 board. This was, and still is, a dream set up. And now with Cakewalk on steroids free, it's Disney world in my studio. And the plugs we have now, wow. I go back to when we spliced 2 track, 1/4 inch tape (early 60's) with a razor blade so you can imagine how much I love what we have now. You young folks have no way of knowing the world you live in lol! No worry. Just enjoy it!! Sometimes I'd love to be 30 again in todays marvel of technology world. But I did live long enough to build a highly successful youtube music channel, something we didn't even see coming 20 years or more ago.

[@JamZorro]

Still using Sonar 3 here also... It's always done everything I've needed to do and more 👍... Use any Sound Fonts? (just curious)

[@BirdYoumans]

@@JamZorro If by sound fonts you meant samples like piano, harp, bass, guitar, and the like, I do use a sampled piano, but play most other instruments I need. But yes, again, the world we now live in, at least from a tech standpoint, is beyond belief. I do have some interesting sound packs that I have yet to explore, but eager to get to them.

[@adamdamico9269]

I used to use Cakewalk back in the mid 90s. My goal was to turn the PC into a sampling workstation which required finding the right sound card. At the time I used a Creative Sound Blaster that had built in RAM which was a new concept. It was designed to have samples in the SoundFont format, so I had to record the audio into an audio editor (I used Sonic Foundry Sound Forge for sample recording and editing). Then I'd load the samples onto the sound card (which replaced the MIDI GS sounds) and call them up within Cakewalk to record a performance. From there Cakewalk allowed me to precisely compose sequences in a way that none of my friends could do since they were using sampling keyboard workstations like the Ensoniq ASR 16. I tried using Sonar around this time but ended up using Sonic Foundry ACID quite a bit in the following years. It was a new way to use sample loops and had on the fly time stretch and pitch features that were not accessible to me prior to using ACID. The 'painting' of audio tracks was wild and really allowed you to manipulate loops like never before. I've searched recently for modern versions of ACID but it seems like the 'painting' type of composition is no longer used. I'd love a modern version that uses that method. I'm not sure what happened, but as DAWs became more complex and prevalent, I became less enchanted by them. However I did use Reason for many years following the Cakewalk days because it captured my imagination with the virtual rack layout. Really like the "entire history of.." videos you are making! Great job!

[@subramaniamchandrasekar1397]

You missed out 'Project 5' Came out until version 2 and died later. But was a great program like Ableton clip window and sequencer.Regards

[@postman9699]

Also, Twelve Tone was a Massachusetts based company and I'm in Mass, so music stores in our area saw releases of this before anyone because I was at the demo when Twelve Tone first started pushing it to area stores.

[@stevef.8041]

Don't forget Guitar Tracks by Cakewalk.... c. 2000, this was my first experience with digital recording. The software always worked perfectly on my under-powered HP computer.

[@ArtoftheDial]

Started with Sonar 2 - bought "LIfetime Updates" during the Gibson era. Didn't switch DAWs during the sell and am thankful they went with Bandlab to not only keep the free updates but giving it away to everyone. Also thankful for the Theme Editor, as I can't imagine the UI at this point without the custom theme I use.

[@tombibla7516]

I have every disk (3 1/2" , CDs. and DVDs) for every version since Cakewalk 3.1 for Windows - including all the manuals. I just have to dig them up from some stored boxes in the basement.

[@tbmuse]

If you want to get photos or scans of anything, just ask.

[@noone6905]

I was only vaguely aware of cakewalk before, excellent video!

[@TheUnthaw]

Lovely, I had my father bye Calkewalk 2.0 för ms dos 3.1 in the US (I'm in Sweden) in the -89. I keept using it until Pro Audio 9 and loved it!

[@iodinedesign]

Thanks for this. Was good to hear this story. Cakewalk 2.0 (for DOS) was my first sequencer and I purchased many versions over the decades that followed. Per your video, I would agree the Cakewalk for Windows user manuals were the best, most detailed user manuals ever created. It is truly amazing what Hendershott accomplished. Thanks again!

[@juno6]

I used cakewalk for dos in the early 90s. But my main sequencer was Voyetra's Sequencer Plus Gold, the one Cakewalk was inspired from. I always thought the Cakewalk name came from Debussy's piece.

[@martincaz7772]

Oh, nice insight!

[@gionspenzers]

This is such a great video. I always interested in finding out the history of Cakewalk. And yes I agreed that it was hard to research about the history of Cakewalk because the information we have is quite difficult to find. Cakewalk is far one of the best free DAW in the market.

[@JamesSteeleProjectVideos]

I used Cakewalk in the late 80s. Probably 88/89 with a Roland MPU-401 interface on an IBM PC/XT clone running DOS. Prior to that I used something called Robert Keller’s 48 Track PC, but I digress. Anyway, I’m pretty positive the DOS version of Cakewalk back then had piano roll editing also. It had to be done using ASCII characters simulating true graphics, and it supported the Microsoft Mouse. This was BEFORE Windows. It was ahead of its time. Not much later I got a Mac SE and switched over to MOTU Performer as well as Opcode Vision. Just remembered another great feature of that old DOS version of Cakewalk. You had slots in which could store system exclusive dumps with your sequence and even designate certain ones to be sent upon loading a sequence from disk. That way, you’d load a sequence and before you hit play, sysex messages would be sent out to your attached synths setting all the right patches before playback.

[@MatthaeusEbonah]

I used Cakewalk products since the late 90s. I think Cakewalk Home Studio 8 or something. I upgraded to every new version until Sonar platinum (not mentioned in video). After bandlab acquired them and renamed Sonar back to Cakewalk I was still very much happy with the product. But now after nearly 25 years of use I think I'm moving to a different DAW.

[@doctorcarlos]

Excellent. Thank you!

[@joseluis7309]

Nice story and many memories. I started with version 3.0 in the 90's, with the MQX midi interface with 32 midi channels, nice memories. From that moment until today with Cakewalk by bandlab and having gone through all the versions, I don't hesitate to choose it again. 30 years of career as a musician and arranger, having used almost all the programs on the market both on MAC and Windows, working in many different studios, and on projects of all kinds. I keep choosing CAKEWALK. Thanks to funny looking squash!!!👏👏👏

[@ulyssessay]

Great video as usual!

[@afunnylookingsquash]

thank you sir

[@MegaGuitman]

You totally left out cakewalk pro audio 9...I love this version of cakewalk.

[@SteveStrummerUK]

Excellent video - thanks for putting it together! I started relatively late with 'Guitar Tracks 2' before quickly moving on to 'Guitar Tracks 3 Pro. I ventured into MIDI with 'Music Creator 4', before upgrading to the wonderful 'Home Studio 4' and then 'Home Studio 6'. After so many of us were disappointed with 'Home Studio 7' (which CW used as a guinea pig with a very early version of the Skylight interface), CW generously offered HS7 users a cheap upgrade to 'SONAR 8 Studio'. I soon opted for 'SONAR 8 Producer' before upgrading via every 'X-Pro' version up to and including the short-lived 'lifetime' 'SONAR Platinum'. Many thanks to BandLab for keeping our beloved DAW afloat and so extensively backward compatible.

[@postman9699]

I used the original version of the sequencer when it came out and it wasn't even called Cakewalk. I'm pretty sure it was Twelve Tone Dr. Music that then became Cakewalk very shortly after. I was using it in my studio and chaselocked it to my multitrack. I used it until Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 before closing my first studio. When I jumped back in to studio like in 2020, Cakewalk was now free and blows the doors off of the PAID version I used. I've tried pretty much every DAW. They all pretty much do the same so use whatever best supports your workflow. I see no reason to switch from Cakewalk at this time because I'm creating Pro level recordings with it AND mastering. Cool video.

[@seabreeze2792]

I still have Cakewalk 3 and use from time to time,Purchased it on disk at Comp USA many years back.. Sill works great. I have protools and Abelton but the cake walk still keeps going.

[@GoenndalfTheBlue]

Damn! That was so cool! You definitely found out more than me when researching. Cakewalk/Sonar was always good... but it always flew under the radar of most people... Not hip enough for the young Beatproducers and not "Pro" enough for most professional Studios which used ProTools... It was always reliable.. I personally started with Magix Samplitude, which was kinda the same for me... then FL Studio came along and i got that one... but i always flirted with Cakewalk when i recorded with friends... when i heard Bandlab bought it i instantly started using it... but until recently i still used FL Studio as a second DAW... i kicked it into the bucket back in May... and to be honest, it's a ways different way of working in Cakewalk than in FL Studio, but it has mostly has all the same features i need. Anyways... this and all the other Videos are super awesome!

[@eggzonerevolution]

This was awesome & very nostalgic for me to watch! I started using Cakewalk 2.0/3.1 to write & produce songs WAY back in the 1990's when I was just a teenager. My local music studio used it, and I could only afford to record there as a rare treat (begging my parents lol), so the engineer actually taught me how to use it, and once I set it up at home, my life truly began as a musician. Fast forward to many years later, and I was out playing keys, touring with celebrities, continuing to use Sonar products for many years (even on stage!) until around 2009. I don't tour anymore & I'm not an Apple lover, but a producer friend got me hooked on Logic Pro at that time. The PC I had was REALLY old, so I caved, bought a Mac and never looked back (even though I hate learning new DAWS). However I still ONLY use a Mac for music production & video editing... I use a PC for mostly everything else. There is nothing wrong with using a PC for music production, though. Thanks for taking the time to make this video. It was really enjoyable as well to read other people's stories & memories of "which versions" they used. I didn't know it was brought back as Cakewalk. I will now recommend it to anyone who is just starting out, as I would imagine it is the best free DAW out there! Cheers :)

[@billhuang6506]

Love the video. I wish you had called out Gibson's shameless money grab of offering "lifetime" updates for a $200 fee right before they punted. Really burned my bacon with that one. I've been using Cakewalk since 1999. Tried Studio 1, but the free aspect for (plus all my old premium plugins like Dimension) was too much to pass up. Still use it. Love it. Highly recommended even in 2023.

[@mephistowalzofficial9970]

It was very deceptive.

[@Bernz66]

Awesome video….. thanks!

[@RobertWGreaves]

I started with Cakewalk apprentice version 1 and bought ever upgrade all the way through pro audio and then every version of SONAR stopping at Sonar X3 which I still use.

[@unstopology]

This was a great blast from the past. My uncle got me into Cakewalk very early on, I'm guessing version 6 or 7. The only major thing missing, that I can see, is Project 5 which was an additional sequencer that connected to Sonar. Project 5 made it super easy to loop events.

[@Sequentonal]

Nice blast from the past. Thank you. you could load soundfonts into your RAM easily through cakewalk with the Soundblaster Audigy. that was magic :)

[@mc2engineeringprof]

Huge omission was the Gibson lifetime free updates scam. As a Sonar Platinum user, I paid like $500 to get lifetime free updates. Gibson killed cakewalk less than a year later and kept everything from all of the lifetime payers. I'll never buy, support, use, or record anyone using a Gibson product ever again in my life. I do thank them for doing one thing: forcing me to pick Cubase (my current DAW). Best decision I ever made. I still have my final Sonar Platinum version and a current version of Bandlab Cakewalk, but I don't use it anymore because of how much I like Cubase. Cakewalk did come with some great plugins, Z3TA being my absolute favorite...one of the best wavetable / VA softsynths to this very day. I'd stack it up against Sylenth, Spire, Hive, or Serum any day. Glad to see that it's free and supported. Great option for those who want a professional free DAW with literally all of the capabilities of the big paid DAWs.

[@christophermracna770]

I used Cakewalk and all of it's iterations for more than thirty years only to be left out in the cold. Even though I still have Platinum installed on my studio computer, I have found a new home on Presonus Sphere. I miss "Project 5".

[@olajideparis]

Great video

[@synthoelectro]

I got serious with Cakewalk at version 5.0, loved that I had full control over MIDI.

[@gregfender]

Sonar 1 was my first foray into recording on a computer and I stuck with it up to Sonar 7. I’ll always love it.

[@modalatsuv]

Thanks for accepting our requests

[@JornLavoll]

Fun :) I had cakewalk on Windows 3.1 and all the way up to X1. At the time of X1 I started a gig scoring a TV show and was excited about doing that on X1. But... x1 would crash in a way that corrupted the project file. And there's no way I could lose a day's worth of work in a situation like that, so I switched to nuendo. And that's where I've been ever since. But now steinberg products at version 12 are being really unstable.

[@joelsstuff8318]

I believe I got a copy of Cakewalk with my 1st computer in 1996. It was a Pentium 100 and I paid an extra $100 for a Soundblaster AWE 32. I think cakewalk came with it. Maybe a light version. I might even still have it installed on an old computer in the office. Maybe I’ll plug it in and see.

[@EdgyNumber1]

8:41 KORG, TAKE NOTE!!! 🎹

[@tomkuhn]

I have been using cakewalk from the very start. My 1st band used the program in the 80’s for MIDI production for recording sessions booting off of 360K floppy drives in the studio. Later, we used the Roland MPU-401 with FSK tape sync in the studio for pre-produced midi tracks, still booting off of 360K floppy drives. Later, I used a product called CAKEWALK LIVE. This was a separate product specifically for live/sequenced shows. This was a helpful product as its only job was playback. I probably have the install disks, boxes etc in a storage crate somewhere. If it wasn’t damaged in a flood. And, I have a box of midi files from the 80’s somewhere too. Not that it would do me too much good right now. Lol

[@squeakD]

Damn I feel old after watching this video. These kids today don’t know how good they have it with currents DAW, VST’s and Plugins. The struggle was real back in the day. They’ll never experience the poor man’s multi track tape recorder (which was any dual cassette recorder of the day).., who remembers doing this! How about the way we used to hack cheap headphones and turn them into mics!!!!! The good o’l 1980’s.

[@radonato]

I used Sonar through 3-4 Versions. Great to learn of it's earlier iterations. Also great to have had the pleasure of the ever improving technology that went into making it.

[@TheShortShop]

I loved Sonar 2 with rewire. I ran reason 2.5 and some native instruments

[@garryvee]

Great informational video on Cakewalk. I started using Cakewalk in the late 80's after moving on from a Commodore 64 with the Syntec sequencer. I soon bought the Cakewalk pro version because it offered a percent quantize function. I stood in line at a local music store to get the Cakewalk audio version which didn't work very well with my Pentium 90. I abandoned Cakewalk in the 90's because I really wanted to get off of Windows and chose Cubase on a MacIntosh. I still have the DOS version which runs in emulator mode on a Mac but I was not able to get it to communicate with the MIDI interface. It's probably the best simple MIDI sequencer I've ever used. P.S. Syntec (by Sonus?) would be a great history video but apparently not much on the web that I could find.

[@rawnificent]

Good info

[@humanbeing7851]

The most amazing thing that I feel about Cakewalk that there are so many professional DAWs available in the market and all are good, but Cakewalk by Bandlab is the only available professional standard DAW that's absolutely free. Cubase, Nuendo, Protool and now I am using Cakewalk since only about nine months but I am very sure that this is the DAW I am going to use for life time, I am just loving Cakewalk. Now I'm feeling amazed by the whole history of this from the very beginning. Thanks for the video. Lots of love from India

[@guidorehder6802]

I bought Sonar in 2012. I was able to transfer everything from it into Cakewalk. I've never had any big problems with either Sonar or Cakewalk. The only times it would crash were when I used 32 bit plugins that were probably not well coded. Anything I've bought has never crashed the DAW. Cakewalk has some amazing features like the tempo finder or the theme editor. There are dozens of nice themes available on the internet. I've been working on my own theme for a while but it's not finished yet. I love the fact that you can customize pretty much anything in Cakewalk.

[@jgmopar]

Six months after I bought sonar cakewalk professional. Gibson sold it. I still use it and I like it. I have 2 other DAW's but I stick to cakewalk by SONAR its the one i am most familiar with

[@trioguitar]

I remember first using the music notation feature in Cakewalk back in 1994, and would continue using it for the next 7 years. I was in a band writing original songs, and we wrote out all our music on Cakewalk. We weren't using Cakewalk as a DAW (can't remember what we used), but the beauty of using the music notation app was that we'd create what we called the guide track, and would rely on it when we started doing our recording (so drummer and bass had the guide track to play to, etc.) Many years later, I tried to fire it up, but it would no longer run on whatever operating system I had at the time (unsurprisingly), and so it was around 2019 that I first got Guitar Pro, which I use to the present day. Back in 1994, the music notation feature seemed pretty good, I used it a lot, but it wasn't overly stable, and every now and then it would do something you hadn't intended and we'd say to whoever was in the hot seat: you've just been cakewalked!