 You've probably heard that Cakewalk by BandLab is free music production software, but the free part may actually be the thing that makes you nervous. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. If you're unsure about whether to use Cakewalk or not for music production, then listen on because I'm going to give you five reasons why I think you should. And I'm also going to be revealing a completely new free product to compliment Cakewalk, especially useful if you're a complete beginner. And by the way, I'm not connected to BandLab who make Cakewalk in any business sense at all. So everything you're going to hear is my complete, honest and independent opinion. Let's get started with the first reason why I think you should use Cakewalk in 2022. So the first reason is it's free and it's fully functional and it's that second part that really matters. There's no point in getting something for free, which you outgrow later and you end up having to buy something and relearn another piece of software. That's really not a great proposition. Let me explain a little bit further. Cakewalk is a type of software called a digital audio workstation abbreviated to DAW or door. And there's many doors out there in the marketplace at the moment, including Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic Pro, FL Studio, Reaper, Studio One, all of them are really actually very good, but they basically all do the same thing. You can use them to record and produce music so that you can release it to the world. And Cakewalk is no exception. It's got all of the tools that you need to record your music, to mix your music and to master your music ready to release it to places like Spotify, iTunes, those kinds of places, but he is completely free. You don't get any sort of upgrades that they tell you about in emails later and they certainly don't send you lots and lots of spam or anything like that. You simply sign up for BandLab, which is a completely free service and you get to use this software. So my second reason is that it's always improving. Since I've been covering Cakewalk on this channel for the last two or three years, not only they've been taking care of bug fixes to make sure it remains stable, but they've been adding a steady stream of new features as well. Things like the arranger, things like articulation mapping, advanced tempo mapping and also improvements to automation envelopes and a list of other great improvements as well. This is really impressive, especially for a piece of software which is free and it definitely gives me the impression that the Cakewalk team really care about their product. One thing that Cakewalk users seem to love is a unique feature called the Pro Channel. Now if you're going to be recording music on your computer, you're going to need access to tools like EQ, reverb, saturation, compression and limiting. With most other doors, these are available separately as plugins with each channel. But with Cakewalk, it's built into each channel with the Pro Channel. Even though it's been a part of Cakewalk for years, I still think it looks and performs beautifully. And the great thing is it's very light on resources. You don't need a supercomputer to have many instances of the Pro Channel running on many channels of your song. So I promised you at the beginning of this video that I would tell you about a completely free product which compliments Cakewalk, especially if you're a beginner. Now whenever we're getting started with a new door or digital audio workstation, such as Cakewalk or any of the other doors, unfortunately, there is a kind of a steep learning curve. And that's because we have to go through the process of actually setting up our software to work with our computer or any other external hardware which we may have connected. And I fear this puts many a beginner off even before they record their first note of music. So I've made a completely free workshop for you to work through. It tells you how to install Cakewalk, how to set it up with your computer and how to set it up with your audio and MIDI gear. So follow the link in the description down below. That's to cakewalksetup.com, sign up there and enjoy my free gift to you. So apart from the Pro Channel, we also have a whole bunch of free effects and virtual instruments. That includes a suite of effects from Sonatas as well as an amazing vocal and percussion strip and the virtual instruments which include drums, bass guitar, electric piano and also strings as well. Actually those strings are really quite amazing. Now I should mention that Cakewalk uses a format of plugin called VST. You're going to see a lot of this and that's really important because it's by far the most common form of plugin. That means that you can also get a whole bunch of third party free VSTs. Now I talk about those a lot on this channel so maybe a good time to subscribe. But you can also buy commercial plugins as well. You may decide to use them much further down the line and you're going to be able to use them in almost all cases with Cakewalk because of its VST compatibility. Now something which is not a feature but which is highly important when you're choosing any new piece of software is the quality of the community that surrounds it. Now there's not much point in using a piece of software where hardly anyone else is using it. We all need help sometimes and when you go to reach out you'll find there's no one really there to help you. That's not the case with the Cakewalk community. It's extremely active and some of the members have literally been using Cakewalk for decades so they've got lots and lots of experience. But I do find especially with the Cakewalk community that they've got a great attitude towards beginners. Do you find sometimes when you're learning something new and you go into different sort of forums and groups on Facebook? That people can be a little bit rude towards beginners or people just starting out? Well I don't find that that's often the case in the Cakewalk community. Now it's there in various places. It's got its own forum for example. There's Discord, there's Reddit and there's also a whole bunch of Facebook groups. Now I'm a little bit biased admittedly but I think the best Facebook group the Cakewalk is my own. And I have a link for that in the description down below. I'd love to see you there. So don't forget if you decide to go ahead and use Cakewalk for your music production, sign up for my free workshop. It's at cakewalksetup.com. There I guide you through that tricky process of setting up your computer and external hardware with Cakewalk so you can get on with actually making some music. And if you want to know how to make some actual music in Cakewalk, follow my series Record Mix Release where I take you from the very beginning of recording a song through to release. You can see a link for the playlist for that here on YouTube right here. I want you to go ahead and click there after you signed up for my free course of course and enjoy making your first song.