Is there a reference for the .CWP file format?

I tend to write music in lots of separate projects and then merge them together into songs. To help with this, I'd like to program a little tool that can go through my Sonar projects and extract things like key, tempo, and time signature, so that I can see at a glance which ones are likely to go together.

To achieve this, I need to be able to read CWP files and extract the information from them. Does anybody know where I could find a reference to this format?

That's a bit of a dumb response, with all due respect. Should I dump Sonar too, because hey, most pros use Pro Tools or perhaps Cubase? I'm sure once upon a time people like you would say that people who are serious about their music would not be using computer software at all to record their songs. Stick to four-track tape machines! Luckily the rest of us are happy to use the new tools that technology gives us to improve our workflow. Being serious about your music doesn't mean jumping through unnecessary hoops just to show how 'pro' you are.

You can just add all of this info in the title of the project. I do this in various forms and it makes it easy.

Kylotan


That's a bit of a dumb response, with all due respect. Should I dump Sonar too, because hey, most pros use Pro Tools or perhaps Cubase? I'm sure once upon a time people like you would say that people who are serious about their music would not be using computer software at all to record their songs. Stick to four-track tape machines! Luckily the rest of us are happy to use the new tools that technology gives us to improve our workflow. Being serious about your music doesn't mean jumping through unnecessary hoops just to show how 'pro' you are.

You totally missed the whole point of my post, and that was that you just have to put in some manual labor to get what you want. LOOK at each cwp file and WRITE down the data you want, and then when you have all the data, put it into a spreadsheet to organize the data. Never said you have to use or not use a particular piece of software. What I meant by working like a serious pro was that they make notes all the time on what they have recorded and you can and should do the same - there was never any slight on whatever daw software you use.

IOW - lose the 'tude.

Kylotan


I tend to write music in lots of separate projects and then merge them together into songs. To help with this, I'd like to program a little tool that can go through my Sonar projects and extract things like key, tempo, and time signature, so that I can see at a glance which ones are likely to go together.

To achieve this, I need to be able to read CWP files and extract the information from them. Does anybody know where I could find a reference to this format?

A little tool that can extract key, tempo, and time signature? If you can't read the key, tempo, and time signature right there in the different projects how are you going to get it from a .CWP file? It's all right there in plain terms.
Matching and altering these peices of the different tracks is going to be the same which ever "file " you read.
Match key, tempo, and time sig from track B to track A automaticaly? 6 notes in B, measure 1, 9 notes in A measure 1. Boy that would be a handy tool.

to rstollen:
The op seems like a lot of the new generation of musicians wherein they really don't want to be involved in the nitty-gritty grunt work of making their own music. They want to push a button or run a program and have a musical composition made out of bits and pieces they manage to record. The computer can't do it all for anyone, and even if it could, who'd want that? And like the op, you missed the point of my post: there are tools already in existence that can help the op do what he wants. You just have to put some manual labor into it on the front end to make it work. Just about everybody else in the recording industry does it (making and keeping notes, etc.) so why can't kylotan and the rest of the people here?

to wicked:
No, there's no smiley missing - don't believe in them to make or soften a point. I say what I mean and mean what I say and if people can't take an honest opinion about something then that's there problem. I'm not and never will be into political correctness.

to crg:
I guess some people don't want to put the real work into their music that it takes to solve a problem like most of us here do.

If kylotan had been organized in the first place with good notes then he'd not have this problem. I learned my lesson the hard way about not keeping adequate notes. Now I do - both handwritten and on the computer.

There's no substitute for good old-fashioned hard manual labor.

Oh, yes there is!  Or do you NRA folk bash the bullets in with your bare hands?

Well, I just feel like we jumped to a lot of conclusions about this new member. He was talking about writing his own program.

You are absolutely correct!  Certain people need to read, then re-read a post, and then read and re-read their comments, before hitting the "Post Message" button.

To all: yes, the idea would be to have something like the Explorer browser to show this metadata. (eg. time signature, key signature, tempo, number of tracks, song length, etc.) It would be helpful when there are maybe hundreds of files. It is more convenient than logging all this data in something like Excel because (a) it will require fewer resources than Excel, and (b) it will automatically stay in sync with the project files rather than requiring you to keep updating when you change your files.

Sorry jackn2mpu, I just completely disagree with you on this and think that you were the one who brought the attitude by choosing to post in this thread criticising my question rather than either answering or ignoring it. This isn't about skipping hard work, it's about doing a different kind of work to avoid not wasting time in future doing things twice. The information is already right there in the Cakewalk file where I put it by setting key/tempo/time-signature so it makes perfect sense to extract it from there.

Rstollen, I may well just use a hex editor on some basic projects as you say. I've done it before with other file types and I doubt it would be too difficult here. I was just hoping someone might have done this before.

Seth, I currently do encode this sort of meta data in the filename, but that's not as convenient for sorting under multiple criteria unfortunately.

Being a software engineer, I think the original question is quite valid.  Hacking aside, access to the cakewalk data files would have to be through Cakewalk's own code interface (for those who might care, a set of entity and query  methods calling into a database engine), typically called an API, for Application Programming Interface.  Theoretically, Cakewalk could offer some kind access to it, or maybe they already did in the dead and gone CAL.

Regardless, I think the tool suggested - essentially a Cakewalk file browser with maybe a scratch pad for assembling clips, has merit for someone like me, who has built endless loops and zero songs in the past fifteen years.  Am I asking my computer to overcome my own laziness?  Absolutely.  But that's why computers were invented in the first place?

Cakewalk, I'm interested in writing this application

And I'm interested as well. I've got tons of zero projects myself too. Altho what I would really prefer was a way to play .cwp files via some kind of interface with Sonar. Because opening a file in sonar, then hitting play, then stopping, then closing the file + having to click on "No, I don't want to save the project" is time consuming to say the least. That new audio/midi browser they're incorporating into Sonar 9 looks like a great tool, it would be nice if it could preview .cwp projects and not just audio and midi loops.

spinlock_1977


Being a software engineer, I think the original question is quite valid.  Hacking aside, access to the cakewalk data files would have to be through Cakewalk's own code interface (for those who might care, a set of entity and query  methods calling into a database engine), typically called an API, for Application Programming Interface.  Theoretically, Cakewalk could offer some kind access to it, or maybe they already did in the dead and gone CAL.

Regardless, I think the tool suggested - essentially a Cakewalk file browser with maybe a scratch pad for assembling clips, has merit for someone like me, who has built endless loops and zero songs in the past fifteen years.  Am I asking my computer to overcome my own laziness?  Absolutely.  But that's why computers were invented in the first place?

Cakewalk, I'm interested in writing this application

One further thought on this - I'd love to be able to highlight a section of a clip somewhere in the project and designate it as a 'demo' clip.  I say this because I often mix down the entire thing onto a track that I archive for later reference or mp3 master.  The notion of saving an xml file containing meta-data could possibly dovetail nicely with this.  Maybe even multiple clips could be tagged and noted in the xml - no drums, no vocals, complete mix, etc.

Cakewalk, if you happen to be watching this one, I'd sure like to know what language such access could be provided in.  Then at least I would know if I should brag about my willingness to contribute to the effort .  I'm guessing MS Visual C++? (which puts me out of the coding game :-( )