ampfixer
Anderton
"If you are referring to me as a self-gainer, first, Cakewalk does not pay my salary but yes, the future of this company matters to me because I know the staff and I know they are extremely dedicated. I suppose I take the slights and comments about their incompetence personally because I know how much they care about SONAR and their customers, and I feel the criticisms about Cakewalk not knowing what they're doing are totally unjustified."
Craig, the topic of your Cakewalk involvement has come up in a few threads in the past. I'd like you to comment on the statement you made, above.
One would think from this statement that you make no financial gains from Cakewalk. Does this actually mean that you publish a monthly e-zine for Sonar and develop tons of content and don't get paid for your work? I'm sorry man but I can't believe you do all of this from the goodness of your heart. If you do all of this, and put up with pesky forum users you deserve a medal. If fact, we should start a fund so that you can get paid for all the work you do.
If I'm wrong, I profusely apologize, but your involvement in all things Cake is pretty nebulous.
Profuse apology accepted.
I make no financial gains from Cakewalk, aside from a few hundred dollars a year from expansion packs I made
prior to Gibson buying Cakewalk, and those royalties are fading fast as most of that content is now included for free.
I do almost all of my Cakewalk work on evenings and weekends (everybody needs a hobby, right?). This is why I'm all over the forums on a day like today, in the morning before I head off to Gibson, during lunch, and in the evenings after I get home. I
could make an argument that since I do content work on my own time, that I'm entitled to royalties. But I'm not wired that way. The Cakewalk staff,
which consists of good and dedicated people, are working their butts off to make this dream come true. Note that Noel is working today too...the effing
CTO of the company is giving up his Sunday to post in forums and answer my offline questions about a potential TH2 full version issue. What I do is my way of helping people whom I respect and admire, which by the way also includes many people who frequent this forum (although certainly not all of them). And it most certainly includes Henry Juszkiewicz for seeing Cakewalk's potential.
I
sometimes do
some eZine work during the normal workday if there's not a lot going on, and I'll miss getting it in on time if I don't, but the last one was an all-nighter, as was the Kick Start video demo. Also remember I have a background in publishing and writing (my first article was published in 1966), so it's easier for me to pull off doing a monthly mag than it would be for other people with less experience.
The work I do for Cakewalk during "Gibson hours" involves looking over press releases, helping out with web copy, giving second opinions on product names, putting together bundling arrangements with TASCAM, and so on...which is also the kind of thing I do with KRK, Neat Microphones, Gibson USA, Gibson Memphis, Gibson Acoustic, etc. etc. Those are just some of the things I'm paid to do, though, I have multiple functions within the organization. (I'm also paid to go to Ibiza and participate in the International Music Summit as a panelist, so there are some definite fringe benefits
.)
But I wouldn't say the
content is strictly from the goodness of my heart, I create content that
I need. It's just that now it has an easy path for release to the public. I didn't want to pay for an exciter plug-in so I made the "Sizzle Bus." I didn't like any of the amp sims I used so I decided to make my own, now they're the only sims I use. I couldn't find any good sampled instruments with 5-string basses so I made the EB expansion pack and now it's the only bass I use for non-synth bass. That Gibson Les Paul Standard 12-String? I wanted a 12-string sound on a song, and creating one from sampling an LP Standard and mapping the samples across the keyboard gave me a sound I couldn't get by sampling my Rickenbacker. The Resonator and Tightener FX Chains have increased the clarity of my mixes...and so on.
Cakewalk benefits from this and so does the community, even if some people want to sniff "Of course, I see no value in the content." (I always wonder if they've actually tried it...) Well,
I see value, and so do other people. That's who I do it for, and that's why I do it. When someone posts in these forums that they found the pedalboards incredibly useful in their songwriting,
that's the payoff. There are still some idealists left in this me-first world, although internet forums often remind me there are plenty of people who see things only through the lens of their own wants, have no empathy for the situations in which others find themselves, and to hell with everyone else. Fortunately for them, I'm old enough that I won't be around all that much longer...so there will be one less person to interfere with their enjoyment of unfettered cynicism.