Chrisoft::Blog(r#"A short post on Cakewalk's death and my music production")

Death of Cakewalk

-Cakewalk died.
-Imagine your old trustworthy friend suddenly passed away.
-It started as the feeling in a harsh winter.
-Then there was anger.
-But finally it all ended in pure voidness.
-So long, Cakewalk! -

-As stated by Gibson -here, -Cakewalk was SIGKILL'ed, perhaps due to insufficient resources, -or a dangling pointer. Anyway, it was finally killed, with all -development and vending activity ended. -

-I encountered Cakewalk in 2009, when I was skimming through an old -magazine on computer software from 1998. There was an article about -Cakewalk Pro Audio 5.0. Back then I was using a piece of software -called "Music Maker DX" to edit MIDI files. After that I started -using CWPA 9.0, which was, obviously, pirated. I used external -synthesizer such as Timidity to produce audio files, because I had -no idea about what I was really doing at that time. -

-I thought CWPA 9.0 was the last version of Cakewalk, and that Cakewalk -has long been dead, until somewhere in 2011 I found that they had -renamed their product to SONAR. So I tried SONAR 6 (which is, again, -pirated) and was fascinated immediately. -

-In 2014, I started to try (pirated) SONAR X2 Producer. After a (really -long) trial period of a year or so, in 2015, I finally purchased SONAR -Professional from Steam. Soon after, I got the SONAR Platinum Lifepass, -which hopefully is a penance of my earlier piracy. I made my major -production during this period. -

-And then it was the saddening story at the beginning of this article. -

-I've tried multiple DAWs, namely FL Studio, Cubase and even OpenMPT -(which is actually a tracker). Only SONAR deserves the words "it just -feels right" for me. It is also my first time feeling saddened by the -death of a proprietary software. If Microsoft ceased the development -of Windows, I would be much happier. -

My music production

-I'm going to pause any music production of mine, not only to mourn the -death of Cakewalk, but also due to my lack of time and inspiration. -

-Most of my current works are arrangements and "reverse engineering" -(「耳コピ」) of Touhou project's in-game music, with a few original -but mostly unfinished works. Therefore, to review the basic music -theory, regain my piano skills and to learn from the works of great -predecessors might be the most appropriate choice for me. Although -I have an extremely small range of audiences, it's my duty to make -sure that they won't be pissed off after listening to my works. -So I guess those steps are also a must before resuming my identity -of a music producer. -

Future choice of DAW

-Cubase is another classic DAW. It's even older than Cakewalk. -It has aggressive DRM measures, which makes Steinberg much safer -from piracy than Cakewalk. Apparently that DRM is also the center -of controversy over Steinberg. I've got many of Steinberg's instruments. -

-Reaper looks nice and is fairly priced. Might have a try later on. -

-FL Studio. Doesn't feel right for me. -

-OpenMPT? ... -

-~~Vocaloid~~. That's not a DAW. -

-Contact me if you have other suggestions. -