Cakewalk was a sequencer first developed by Twelve Tone Systems, Inc. (the company later known as Cakewalk, Inc.). Originally for

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

, starting with version Cakewalk 1.0 in 1987, and, beginning in 1991, for

Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched on May 22, 1990. It introduces a new graphical user interface (GUI) that represents applications as clickable icons, instead of the list of file names in its predecessors. ...

. Cakewalk, until version 4.0 required an

MPU-401 The MPU-401, where ''MPU'' stands for MIDI Processing Unit, is an important but now obsolete interface for connecting MIDI-equipped electronic music hardware to personal computers. It was designed by Roland Corporation, which also co-authored the ...

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

interface card operating in intelligent mode, while 4.0 and later versions relied on the dumb

UART A universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter (UART ) is a peripheral device for asynchronous serial communication in which the data format and transmission speeds are configurable. It sends data bits one by one, from the least significant to ...

mode only. Cakewalk was delivered in two versions, Cakewalk Pro and Cakewalk Express. The latter was a lite version limited to 25 tracks and 1 MIDI output port. The Express version was sometimes bundled with hardware such as a sound card. Cakewalk was a purely MIDI based sequencer: Although it could trigger

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced or ) is an audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on personal computers. The format was developed and published for the first time in 1991 ...

files at certain points, more comprehensive audio support was not incorporated until the advent of Cakewalk Pro Audio when true support for digitized audio was added. Cakewalk Professional 1

Features

The last version of the product featured a

piano roll A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. Piano rolls, like other music rolls, are continuous rolls of paper with holes punched into them. These perforations represent note contro ...

editor, support for limited

music notation Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The proces ...

and a built-in

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

called CAL (Cakewalk Application Language).Cakewalk DevXchange
- CAL Cakewalk was a predecessor of

SONAR Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects o ...

which had nearly all of the same features, including support for CAL, and was the only major DAW on the market supporting a scripting language. Cakewalk had

and CAL support since the Windows 16-bit Version 3.01. Image:Cakewalk 3.01 staff views WAV.gif, Cakewalk 3.01 showing limited WAV file support. Image:Cakewalk3-display.gif, Cakewalk 3.01 showing Piano Roll, Staff and CAL windows.

References

External links

Official websiteCakewalk Forum - independent forums for Cakewalk users
(archive.org)

(archive.org) Digital audio workstation software Audio editors Software synthesizers {{multimedia-software-stub

Features

See also

References

Further reading

External links