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Integrate Review — Cakewalk Project5

Oct 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Frank McMahon

Soft-synth workstation constructs scores based on MIDI instruments and audio loops.

Video producers are always struggling with soundtrack creation. Some of us use off-the-shelf, royalty-free music beds, some hire musicians, and others create their own arrangements. Cakewalk's Project5 software for Windows is designed for those who want to create their own music. Not that it's quick and easy — but with a little time, you can come up with some really wonderful scores.

Cakewalk describes Project5 as a soft-synth workstation, and that's a good summary. Project5 allows you to construct scores with audio loops and MIDI instruments, and it also inputs virtual synthesizers.

Project5 is set up a little differently from most audio loop programs. The software is built upon pattern sequences, which you build in the P-SEQ module. A pattern is a short series of repeatable notes and can be created a number of ways. You can click with the mouse on a grid and create one. You can tap a MIDI instrument and build one. Or you can load one of the included pattern sequences that ship with the program.

Once you nail down a pattern, you can adjust the velocity of the pattern and quantize it. Velocity is the rate at which the note hits, hard or soft. Emphasizing specific notes is as easy as moving a slider. Quantizing a series of notes basically means loosening up the riff a bit. It's an automatic (and adjustable) effect that makes notes sound much more natural.

Change the duration and start times of the notes to achieve that natural feel. I recommend not adjusting the start times at first; instead, experiment with changing the duration slightly. That way the notes will hit (start) on the beat, but the varied length will make the notes feel more human.

You can also adjust parameters, such as swing time, to give a sway to your sequence. Basically you are taking a rigid series of notes and making them a little less symmetrical. The hope is that they will sound like a person played them. It's worth noting that this is hard to do with loops. With loops you can adjust the pitch and beats per minute, but you can't make the loops sound more natural.

Once you've created your natural-sounding sequence in Project5's P-SEQ, drag it to the left side of the interface, where all the tracks are arranged. Here you can stack multiple tracks. Each can have different patterns that lock in and play to the beat.

Each pattern is assigned a virtual instrument. The program ships with several excellent ones, and you can add more by installing third-party VST and DirectX plug-ins. Some of the virtual instruments sound amazing, such as the Edirol VSC plug-in, which creates fantastic piano and orchestral sounds. The PSYN instrument provides great music based on sine waves. The included DreamStation DXi2 pumps out sweeping sounds with lots of parameters to tweak. In fact, all the included instruments come with many presets and racks of knobs for altering your soundscape.

Cyclone DXi is an included virtual instrument that maps Acid loops to 16 virtual pads on your screen. Just load a bank of loops and start clicking. Save the banks and alter each with individual settings, such as pan, pitch, and volume. The Groove Player allows any standard audio file to be included in your timeline, so your .wav and Acid samples can slide right in.

It gets better. Any track can run through a rack of MIDI or audio effects, so you can tweak and alter by adding digital sweetening with EQs, echoes, and lots more. The main interface also has lots of buttons for control: Change beats per minute on the fly, track your CPU usage, record new tracks, and start a metronome. You can even set up auxiliary buses, which allow you to swap tracks and route them through specific MIDI and audio effects or route everything through one effect. Lots of power and a clean interface enable vast creative possibilities.

If you already have a sequencer like Acid Pro, why bother with Project5? There are several reasons you should. The most notable is that both programs support ReWire functionality. You can hook one program into the other and play the output of Acid into Project5 or vice versa, taking advantage of the strengths of both programs.

Project5 is easier to grasp than Acid. Whereas Acid is understandably based mainly on loops (even though it does MIDI just fine), Project5 is geared more toward multiple virtual instruments playing MIDI sequence loops. A rack of instruments ships with Project5, so you can create thousands of new sounds — or just use the presets. With Acid you mainly buy additional loop collections, which can become expensive. Project5 works fine with Acid-ized loops that you already own. Load several into Project5 and they will change to match the beat just like they would in Acid Pro.

DirectX and VST plugs-ins and virtual instruments are usable in both Acid Pro and Project5 and swappable between the two programs. When I booted up Project5, Acid's effects were immediately available to me from within the program. The two programs definitely complement each other.

Spend time learning how Project5's sequencer interacts with the program and how is it used to lay down the foundation for songs. Then get comfortable with choosing different instruments, and I guarantee you'll be hooked. You can create a basic song, layer tracks and add some phat atmospherics and moody strings, and then recreate the song entirely just by swapping out instruments.

The program was updated to 1.5. The features and changes are buried in the program's Help, so it's hard to get a quick handle on interface changes that don't match up with the manual's screenshots. But that's minor.

Like an inexpensive keyboard, a MIDI instrument is a smart add-on. It is not essential, but Project5 is a lot more expressive than a standard loop program because of the virtual instruments and music bed sequences. It's certainly nice to have something that can bang out a track. If not, the mouse can drive the entire program.

Cakewalk's Project5 is as much fun as Acid Pro, but in different ways. It's more expressive and self-contained, and you can create music scores for your productions that literally have never been heard before. (That's hard to achieve when you're purchasing often-used loop libraries). The program ships with many top-level synthesizers. Their varied strengths and amazing sounds are worth the price of admission. Project5 is highly recommended for pros who know music and those just getting into it.

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BOTTOM LINE

Company: Cakewalk Boston; (617) 423-9004 www.cakewalk.com

Product: Project5

Assets: Many options for making a sequence or loop sound more “natural”; accepts and ships with VST and DirectX plug-ins and as well as many virtual instruments; ReWire support allows it to link with Acid Pro.

Caveats: Use a MIDI instrument to get the most out of the program.

Demographic: Anyone creating soundtracks; owners of Acid Pro.

Price: $289

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