Granted I am the newest of newbies over at BandLab, but how did I not know about this before? Somehow word did not get out properly in the circles I run in about this new social media platform.
 
And that, turns out, is pretty much what it is. Imagine a social media network for musicians that combines the best of Facebook, GarageBand and SoundCloud. That's at least how it strikes me. So, you set up profile pages like you would on a Facebook or MySpace, and then you either compose your own tunes, or go collaborate with others on their songs. You can then share these songs with the community or the world at large.
 
It is also (or, will be very soon) a great network for finding music related work or people to collaborate with. But instead of merely posting a resume of past gigs, you can actually show people what you can do just using the tools available in BandLab.
 
The tools are here should you want to show someone that you can get together some great grooves or beats (DJ). Or maybe you want to show off your guitar playing prowess (Session Guitar Player). Or, maybe you want to show how adept you are at bringing like minded folks together to collaborate on a track (Producer)?
 
In many ways this is like a sketch pad for getting various projects off the ground. But that is not to say you can’t also use it to crank out great sounding finished products.
 
I am just getting going now, but I can envision this becoming a very cool tool moving forward for this community. Maybe everything really does happen for a reason.
 
Here's a cool review I found: http://tadtheapp.com/bandlab-review/

Agreed. It looks like a lot of fun so far.

My earlier enthusiasm has been tempered a bit on the BandLab thing. It is surely a very cool thing, but I'm just not sure at this point if it's possible to use this tool in the way I had originally envisioned.
 
I see how you can tap into the loop bundles and drag those onto the timeline to build up beds of sound. In fact, this aspect of BandLab reminded me of an old loop based app called Acid that I was familiar with. That is all well and good, and I can see how, maybe if you aren't an advanced musician, that it could be satisfying to layer together tracks in this manner and call them your own. But what if you like to do everything yourself like me?
 
I was originally thinking of this tool as a great way for those of us in the Sonar community to, sort of, guest appear on each other's projects. I was thinking we could use it as a platform to collaborate with each other since the DAW is live and in the cloud. You would just invite other Sonar users to your project, and then they would have access to the song in question opened up in a live DAW ready for additional contributions ... and all online! But after having spent some time in BandLab over the last few nights I'm just not sure this is possible ... at least at this time.
 
As far as me trying to track stuff live, I was having trouble with latency ... and if you think about it for a second, you can see why. An online DAW adds a whole new wrinkle to the latency equation. In addition to having a fast sound card you also need a great internet connection I would suspect. Last night as I'm trying to record keyboard bass, the piano roll just kept stacking my notes on top of each other. Every note was recorded for the whole length of my loop. What I mean is, I had a 4 measure loop set up so that I could overdub a bass part, but all the MIDI notes recorded in as four bar long notes all overlapping each other. Then I tried drawing in the part on the piano roll, but the tools seemed a bit too primitive to get it done.
 
Granted it could be an issue that is easily solved in the settings panel (if they have one), but that brings me to another issues which is just that, if you need help, you are kind of just on your own. There is a help feature, but it is very bare bones and brief.
 
I wonder if there is anybody with more BandLab experience than me that sees what I am doing wrong? If so, I'd love to understand better. The idea of collaborating with people from all over is very appealing to me. But as for right now, I don't see how I can use this as a live recording tool or a serious DAW.

I don't think the latency problem is anything to do with the internet connection.  The tracks are downloaded locally and the app (albeit web based) is running on the local PC.  The issue is more to do with the audio framework and or driver model being used.  I don't think there's anything fundamental to stop this working in principle - just that the software isn't there yet.
 
In the meantime, you can still collaborate by exporting the tracks as WAV files, importing into Sonar, recording a new track, then uploading that new track into the project.  Not exactly seamless, but not too difficult either.  With Bandlab owning Sonar, there's plenty of scope to integrate this workflow in the future.
 
AMB
 
https://www.bandlab.com/antmanb
 
 

As said earlier- The future of music- You don't need to waste your time learning how to play a instrument anymore. 
Whether anybody wants to listen to music created this way is yet to be seen. 
The good news seems to be we can ignore all this as there is no plan to trash Sonar into such a beast. 

@scottcmusic it sounds like you might be experiencing some bugs with MIDI - what browser are you using?

Also, presumably on windows?

AntMan is correct - as we run the Mix Editor via the browser locally there is not internet-related recording latency, for live audio there is some additional latency from the browser, but it does depend on device with today's browser technology...

It'll of course never be as low latency as a native desktop app - good thing we all know a great desktop Daw ;-)

Cactus Music
As said earlier- The future of music- You don't need to waste your time learning how to play a instrument anymore. 

 
I don't think it's a binary "1 or 0" situation. There are people who are only players, and there are people who are only composers, but I think many people fall somewhere in between. I'm a pretty good guitar player but I can't play acoustic drums. Yet loops and tone modules have allowed the composer side of me to merge with the player so my songs can have drum tracks. And while anecdotal, I know enough people who started off dragging loops into programs but then ended up learning instruments that I don't think it's an isolated occurrence.
 
AFAIC anything that gets people involved in making music on any level is good. Some will become bored with that process and move on to some other art form, but some will become bored with that process and move on to deeper musical explorations.
 
The entry barrier to becoming a musician used to be considerable - you had to buy an expensive instrument and build up a lot of muscle memory (and calluses if you played guitar). That stopped a lot of people. A lower barrier to entry that gets more people involved in making music can't be a bad thing.
 
If nothing else, I think the process of trying to make music will help people appreciate well-crafted music all the more.
 
 

meng
@scottcmusic it sounds like you might be experiencing some bugs with MIDI - what browser are you using?

Thanks for your quick response. That is so encouraging.
 
I thought I was using Chrome, as recommended, but now that I am seriously thinking about it, I can't say I didn't accidentally click on Firefox. I will check that out again. And yes, I have a PC.
 
I was also realizing that I could compose in Sonar where I know the MIDI very well, and then port those tracks over to BandLab ... that could conceivably be a temporary workaround.
 
I also agree with AntMan in that there is lots that can happen going forward to make this better. In other words, the way things are right now is not necessarily the way they shall stay.
 

Anderton
AFAIC anything that gets people involved in making music on any level is good.

 
Couldn't agree more Craig. The more the merrier.

I would guess Bandlab bought Cakewalk with the intention of integrating it into Bandlab for a more advanced DAW...that could also be used standalone. Or maybe they see people exporting stems from the DAW into Bandlab. I'm sure there is a bigger vision for both.