Cakewalk Issues

[Rous]

Hi. I am new to this genre of forum, so I aplologize in advance for any goof-ups. I have Cakewalk Music Creator. I bought it thinking I could print out sheet music for my MIDI files. Did not happen. However, I kept it because I can turn said MIDI files into WAV files. Now, my question is, I am looking for more versitality. Can I spice songs or parts of songs together with Cakewalk? Is it possible to save a song on a WAV file, then reopen it later to tweak it? I have many more issues with this program, but they will keep for now. Are my problems simply ignorance because they are not mentioned in the less than helpful handbook, or simply that I need a different version of Cakewalk, or even a different program altogether?

 

[AlChuck]

I bought it thinking I could print out sheet music for my MIDI files.

Well, the specs on the website says it does. But even SONAR doesn't exactly do a great job of notation; I've always found it useless for most of my notation needs. If you really want good notation features you might think about Finale or Sibelius.

I kept it because I can turn said MIDI files into WAV files.

Just a quick comment -- you can't "turn MIDI files into WAV files." They are fundamentally different things. What you do is record the output of a MIDI device when it's spitting out audio in response to the MIDI message in a MIDI file. On a computer some of these lines can be blurred a bit, but that's essentially what happens. The MIDI file is a set of instructions. An audio rendering of that is a performance that will be different based on what device or devices play the sounds that the MIDI file tells them to play. It's not a conversion of a file from one format to another.

Can I spice songs or parts of songs together with Cakewalk?

I'm pretty sure you should be able to cut and paste sections of songs together as much as you want.

Is it possible to save a song on a WAV file, then reopen it later to tweak it?

THis relates to the previous comment about MIDI. When you make a WAV file, you don't change the MIDI file into another more or less equivalent format. You will still have the original MIDI data unless you deleted the file. So that will remain tweakable. The WAV file is of course as "tweakable" as any other audio file -- you can compress it, equalize it, chop it up into bits, fade in and out, etc... but if you want to adjust the arrangement -- the key, the number of sections, which instuments are playing which parts -- you can do all that with the MIDI file and then render a new mix of that into a new audio file.