Cakewalk+Home+Studio+2004

__Program:__ Cakewalk Home Studio 2005 __Published by:__ Twelve Tone Systems, Inc. [|www.cakewalk.com] Copyright 2004 For Windows only Requires a MIDI input device or microphone for digital audio and appropriate computer hookups High school and beyond Primarily for recording and editing MIDI and digital audio
 * General Information**

Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 has a thorough manual, a dedicated support website and newsgroup, and technical support reachable through email and phone. It also has an extensive help function within the program.
 * Teacher Support**

This program allows students to record digital audio and MIDI audio. They then have the choice to edit, polish, and rearrange it in order to turn it into an mp3, WAV, and other various types of audio file. Students will learn how to input some form of audio, edit it, and turn out a finished product. There are no tutorials, lessons, or anything of that nature built into this program, however the program itself can be a useful component of a lesson. The national standards that could be addressed using Cakewalk are:
 * Instructional Content**

4. Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines. 6. Listening to, analyzing, and describing music. 7. Evaluating music and music performances.

This program is initially confusing to the untrained user. The interface, at first, is actually quite confusing. Aside from the common icons such as play, pause, etc. there appears to be no place to start; there are many buttons, boxes, icons, and menus that can confuse beginners. However, the manual is very helpful in explaining how to do everything from using a MIDI instrument, to inputting audio, to adding real-time audio effects, and to looping audio clips. This program is similar to GarageBand for the Mac in that you can loop what they call “Groove Clips” underneath audio that you input yourself. However, this program is quite powerful in terms of adding effects, mixing, and editing your audio. For example, you can use a guitar with a MIDI hookup to input some audio into your track, put some drum loops underneath that, cut, copy and paste some things you like or don’t like, add some effects such as flange for the guitar, or reverb, and export the whole thing as a Real audio file.
 * Instructional Design and Pedagogical Soundness**

You can save individual projects or tracks to your hard drive, but there is no other record keeping system in place for this program.
 * Record Keeping**

Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 is a powerful program that, once learned, can be extremely essential in the music classroom, as well as professional recording levels. The interface is not intuitive, but the support is excellent. If you want a powerful input/edit too for digital audio or MIDI ,and have no qualms about a fairly steep learning curve, then this is the program for you.
 * Overall Evaluation**

Rating:+++-

Reviewed by: Ian Youngs, 11-5-09