Cakewalk Music Creator 5
Cakewalk Music Creator 5
- No matter what you want to record guitars, keyboards, vocals, CD samples, or any other sound source Music Creator makes it easy to install and start recording.
- Music Creator comes with high-quality, cutting-edge instrument sounds that can be easily integrated in your projects. DropZone drag-n-drop sampler is perfect for creating remixes or for building the perfect hook for your song. It includes real instrument sounds, drums, vocals, REX-format loops, and more.
- Numerous views including Arrange, Piano Roll, Drum Editor, traditional Staff Notation, Synth Rack, and Loop Construction. You can zoom in and make pinpoint edits to your project; change the tempo and pitch; normalize or reverse the audio; preview, move, extend or cut certain sections; add track envelopes; and more.
- Most music projects require editing, no matter how experienced the musician. Music Creator gives you powerful, easy-to-use editing tools and features a new console mixer that allows you to mix your songs with the same feeling of using a hardware mixer.
- 25 studio-quality effects that can be used on any track or bus (group of tracks) simultaneously. Add up to 24 effects per project and easily turn on/off the effects for quick A/B comparisons.
Make your creative dreams a reality and achieve polished professional recordings from your home computer with Music Creator 5 – no previous recording experience required. Music Creator 5 guides you through initial set-up making it easy for you to plug in your instrument or microphone and immediately start recording. Get professional sounding results using Music Creator’s powerful tools instruments and effects. Creating music on your PC has never been this easy fun or affordable – all from Cakewa
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(out of 19 reviews)
List Price: $ 39.99
Price: $ 32.72
Finale PrintMusic 2010
- Music software for arrangers, composers, teachers, students, and other musicians
- Play MIDI keyboard and see music appear instantly; import/export MIDI and MusicXML files
- Share songs with free, downloadable Finale Reader; save MP3 files for an iPod
- Free software synthesizer with 128+ instrument sounds; Human Playback
- Composing and arranging tools; multiple-undo option; quick-start videos for getting started
Finale PrintMusic is the fast, easy way to bring your music to life – with professional results. The Setup Wizard helps you create scores of up to 24 staves. Note entry is a breeze, whether you enter with a mouse, MIDI device, microphone, or scanner. Human Playback™ makes your music sound like it’s being performed by live musicians. PrintMusic includes a software synthesizer with over 128 professional grade instrument sounds, plus Marching Percussion from Row-Loff™, and can save MP3s for
Rating: 
(out of 12 reviews)
List Price: $ 99.95
Price: $ 76.34
Review by TK for Cakewalk Music Creator 5
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The people at Cakewalk indicate that you’ll spend more time making music than struggling with the software its not at all true. It takes about 16 hours of work to learn enough about this to use it to make music. The company relies on the generosity of the people on the forums as their documentation and help files. The documentation and help files that ship with the product are inadequate and often inaccurate. To do something as simple as open a midi file, add an audio file, record your audio and export the mix to a mp3 or other audio format is mind boggling complicated and the help does not help. Oh and by the way they don’t ship the product with an MP3 codec you have to get your own or buy it. Also they don’t allow you to upgrade from music creator 4 to 5 which sucks because the new features in 5 versus 4 are not worth the roughly $40. Having said how hard this is to use and how often you do something the same way twice and get 2 different results you can get a decent recording after you invest the 16 hours of learning and struggling. Hats off to the people who post great help on the forum. Cakewalk should be ashamed of themselves for letting a group of users’ who bought the product to serve as the Cakewalk volunteer support staff, this is practically criminal.
Review by Joseph Ritter for Cakewalk Music Creator 5
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Wow! Lots of instruments, samples and midi clips to cut and paste in. Audio and midi setups we’re a bit challenging but their website has lots of help particularly their forums. Once everything was setup though it was a dream to use.
I’ve been using it for about 4 weeks now:
Everything has a different look compared to 4.0 version which I used extensively. But I like the new look a lot. The plug-in instruments still take up an audio track even though you’re using midi to play them. I don’t have a problem with just 32 tracks of audio. The video track was annoying until I figured out how too turn it off. (It’s one of the little icons that’s easy to overlook.)
I found it to be a powerful tool for a very low investment. I’m a one man band and I’m always trying to capture and flesh out some new song idea or rework an old song with a different style. And this let’s me do just that!
Review by Avidhead for Cakewalk Music Creator 5
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I am amazed at this program, especially considering the price. For newbies it is perfect. You’ll be up and running in no time (barring installation challenges such as I had). This is amazingly powerful software, and the quality of the instrument sounds is superb.
I use it in video production to augment production music which often is just about right but needs the little extra oomph that a bed of strings or an appropriately placed cymbal hit can provide. I researched a lot of software and even tried out a couple of well-known programs–with great disappointment. I’m not interested in a steep learning curve for what I need recording software to do, and Music Creator is the only application I found which allowed my to accomplish my purposes almost immediately–not to mention inexpensively.
I subtract a star because I had to agonize a bit to get the program to install correctly on my computer and locate all the plug-ins. Once that struggle was over I was off to the races–and having lots of fun considering all the future possibilities. This is a great tool to add to my toolbox.
Review by Marlena Martin for Cakewalk Music Creator 5
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I purchased this software because I was working on an animation project and needed lil sounds and music clips. Well, this software is the worst software I’ve ever purchased. The tutorial video’s on their site dont cover anything and then the You Tube clip they post wont even let you comment or rate it. I called the phone number on the box a toll free number which tells you to call a non toll free number for tech support, you call that number and they give you yet another non-toll free number to call. Tech support is automated and when you listen for your software it says it’s not supported, you have to email them??? huh. Got frustrated and called their corporate office and they told me, it’s not their problem, they only bought out the company and dont HONOR their software but call me crazy, if you buy a company aren’t you suppose to stand by the product as the manufacturer. Do Not Purchase this product, it’s horrible and will only confuse you. I’m an end user whose pretty technical when it comes to software but the lil guide it comes with, doesn’t even line up with the product. I could go on and on but all you have to do is buy this and see yourself.
Review by PositiveVibration for Cakewalk Music Creator 5
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This product is cumbersome, inscrutable, has lousy documentation and is just a huge overall headache. The company claims that it’s easy to get started, and is perfect for people who want to focus on their music rather than spend time with complicated software. Well, the experience we had was exactly the opposite. It should be renamed Frustration Creator 5. I’m not promoting any other product — still searching for something that does what this purports to do. BTW: I’m highly suspicious of the recent glowing five-star reviews posted here…seems like the company is in damage control mode even though this is a big seller. No doubt numerous users are drawn in by the company’s marketing blather, as was I.
Review by Dave for Finale PrintMusic 2010
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I purchased PrintMusic because I know Finale is a very good program but I don’t need all the features in the full version. PrintMusic is quite powerful for the price. It is quite intuitive and I was up and running very easily. The scanning works very well and the playback sounds are a very nice touch. I highly recommend if you are looking for pro results without a pro price-tag.
Review by Braden Bost for Finale PrintMusic 2010
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I’ve had this for roughly a month and I love it. Let me go through my uses and skill level so you understand what I’ve needed so you can determine if this is the right one for you. (I spent a lot of time debating since there’s such a huge price difference between this and the full version, or even Allegro).
First – understand that you can always update your version to Allegro or full via the Finale website for the difference in price. That helped me be even more comfortable with my purchase.
I am a musical hobbyist and (very) part-time instructor. I use Finale to write out my musical ideas so I can mess around with other instruments and parts which I may not have available or even know how to play. Often, being able to SEE what I’ve written allows me to arrange better–some people need to hear and play, and I am not like this. At least not yet. I also love taken written songs and creating new arrangements for them. I’m a big geek so I love arranging video game songs on piano or guitar. It’s so easy to find midi files online and I just open the file in Print Music and viola! I have the whole song written out. Saves me hours upon hours of listening and re-listening and frustration until I’m tired of the song. If I had to find a gripe, the only one would be that the tabbing tool is poorly put together, and that sucks since my primary instrument is guitar. But honestly it doesn’t ruin anything, it’s just annoying (I’d ding it .01 stars for that if I could).
Review by Dcf for Finale PrintMusic 2010
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I was looking for a music notation program that would allow me to write full orchestral scores that sounded and played back as realistically as possible. When looking into the Finale products, this included human playback and VST plugin support. In the 2009 versions, this would have been the expensive Finale only. But I didn’t need the Garritan Personal Orchestra (I already have it as a standalone program and VST library) that comes with Finale, and some of the extra features in the expensive Finale were not THAT necessary to me.
I was previously looking at the Printmusic 2009, but I just couldn’t bring myself to purchase that, since I really wanted that VST plugin support (the SoftSynth integrated sounds are good, but I don’t think they’re realistic enough). The 2010 version of Printmusic is much more powerful than the 2009 version. It includes the VST Plug-in support so you don’t have to use the integrated sound library if you want to go with a more realistic sound library. I use the Garritan Personal Orchestra library as a plug-in which has an excellent sound. As with previous versions of Printmusic, it also includes the Human Playback feature which is a must have in my opinion.
I do mouse-click note entry, and this works well for me. Sure, it’s SLOW, but it suits my needs. I’m not in a hurry when putting together lines. I can’t comment on the Hyperscribe technology since I’ve never used it (probably never will).
There are a couple limitations (i.e. things keeping it from perfect) to this SW so far as I’ve seen. But neither of these would warrant a lower rating. One is that you can only use 24 staves (expensive Finale has unlimited). This isn’t too bad because you can always double up instruments (such as horns I, II, and III) onto on a single staff, etc. so you can still get a full orchestra sound if you want. The other limitation is on the human playback. There is a tab selection on the menu for “customize”, but it is always grayed out, so you’re left with the human playback capabilities which are built into the system, but there are a lot to choose from and they are good. Hopefully, they will include the customizable playback feature in the future.
In all, this product is the best to get if you don’t want the expensive Finale. Aside from the full Finale version, I think this one is better than any other Finale product. It’s powerful and it’s very easy to use!
Review by Michael J. Matassa for Finale PrintMusic 2010
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I purchased this hoping it would replace the shareware software I use for drum kit notation. Unfortunately, its ability to enter drum notation is limited by virtue of the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a way to add, delete or modify percussion instruments nor to modify what percussion instrument goes where on the staff. The placement of toms in particular seems to not follow the standards I generally see in drum notation and I would like to have been able to change this. I also tried the scan/import feature and it didn’t work as well as I’d have liked. The piece of music I wanted to scan has several measures that are repeated 16 times but, unfortunately, the shareware program I use is limited to 15 repetitions. I hoped to import this into PrintMusic and fix the number of repetitions but it didn’t even pick up the repetitions notated on the scanned sheet music. All in all, this was quite a disappointment and I’m returning it.
Review by Ann Rodela for Finale PrintMusic 2010
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I like this product!!! I composed my music with in minutes after installing it on my Windows Vista (Basic) and watching the quick start videos. They designed the product to be user friendly and fun. Typing in the notes and hearing it play back with the rich tone colors of timpani, harp, piano and electric guitar make the music come alive and then you can export to a wav or mp3 file. I have found the edit features which include add/remove staff, insert a measure, essential in developing a song. You can use a midi keyboard to enter notes but I just use my laptop’s mouse for ultimate portability. This product has increased my knowledge and enjoyment of music.:)
P.S. I couldn’t add tags. So I would write notation software, music in the tag.