telecharge

AT
One needs to remember the core users and Cake seems, to me anyway, to be aimed primarily at guitarists who have a PC at home and want to record.  Not beat artists.  Not classically trained notation musicians. 

Great post. I also get that impression -- more so since René left, and Gibson took over.

Even before Gibson got involved, about 70% of Cakewalk users were guitar players. But I suspect you'd find a similar stat for many DAWs, because there are a lot of guitar players. Compare the size of Guitar Player magazine and Keyboard magazine...and note that when MOTU wanted to expand their base, they added a ton of guitar-oriented stuff. And although my Quadrafuzz (which is in Cubase) has many uses, it was always aimed primarily at guitarists. Then there's Eleven, and Avid doing Eleven Rack. Even Ableton Live has been trying to get more guitar players.
 
It's the big demographic. According to the BBC, there are about 50 million guitar players in the world. There are between 16-20 million in the United States alone.

Anderton
 
It's the big demographic. According to the BBC, there are about 50 million guitar players in the world. There are between 16-20 million in the United States alone.

That's an impressive statistic. Thanks for sharing.
 
I identified more with the "beat artists" part of the paragraph. If you don't want to touch the subject of René with a 10 foot pole, I completely understand.
 
For me, I have always thought of Cakewalk as a synth-centric company because of Z3TA+, Rapture, and D-Pro. Those are some of my favorite instruments, so I may be biased.

telecharge
I identified more with the "beat artists" part of the paragraph. If you don't want to touch the subject of René with a 10 foot pole, I completely understand.

 
I never met him, and he was long gone by the time Gibson bought the company. So all I know is his work, in which case I consider him an effing genius (albeit an eccentric one).
 
I think it's ironic that Cakewalk was ahead of the curve on the beat thing, but got blowback. Now that EDM has reached the mainstream (it sure took long enough, eh?) I'd like to see Cakewalk return to fleshing out that section of the program more. Not sure if you knew this but I started doing live EDM sets back in the 90s. I still do sometimes, using Ableton if it's for performance and Traktor if it's more for DJing. So I'm into it. I got my start by jamming on guitar with DJs in Miami and Cologne, and one thing led to another...mostly did my thing over in Germany, so I tend more toward the techno/trance end of the spectrum. 
 

For me, I have always thought of Cakewalk as a synth-centric company because of Z3TA+, Rapture, and D-Pro. Those are some of my favorite instruments, so I may be biased.

 
If I could have only one synth, it would be Rapture Pro so I hear ya. It's all over just about everything I do. I'm finding out things to do with the Vector mixer that may be illegal in some states, so I better be careful.
 

Do your magic, chief officer.  I hadn't heard that 70% stat, but it sounds about right.  And nothing wrong with going after the largest piece of pie. 
 
But yes, I'm ready for more synth/beat/looping/padded stuff.  I love pads with touch screens, and Y/X pads.  So, upgrade the Matrix and give us Rapture + and you won't hear any more wants from me, at least until after I get bored with the new toys ;-) and try to learn guitar.

@Anderton I didn't know when you started doing sets, but I do recall you talking about using Live and the possibility of putting together some EDM information/tutorials for Sonar users.
 
+1 @AT

I have noticed that EDM posts make their way to the blog from time to time.

1. http://blog.cakewalk.com/tag/edm
2. http://blog.cakewalk.com/tag/edm-techniques
3. http://blog.cakewalk.com/category/music-production-tips/edm-music-production
4. http://blog.cakewalk.com/did-you-know-that-session-drummers-pitch-parameters-are-great-for-mangling-your-drum-loops

 

Tele, you should have been around for P5.  Everyone seemed to be doing EDM and it brought in (or exposed) a lot of "electronic"  musicians in the Cake family.  We had a our own forum, even our own internet radio, etc. etc.  As the old song goes, "those were the days my friend."  It was a great community and many migrated to SONAR (or returned).
 
Not to side track a rather long thread, but the great thing about P5 was the simplicity and obviousness of the program.  You couldn't do everything, but for most cooking you don't really need your Indian spice collection or your whole French sauce pan collection.  Something I hope Cake will realize when they do redo the Matrix, or a sampler.

Anderton
I think it's ironic that Cakewalk was ahead of the curve on the beat thing, but got blowback. Now that EDM has reached the mainstream (it sure took long enough, eh?)

 
You know, I've seen this sentiment before.  I see if often used to knock EDM as the 'Johnny come lately' de jour of music.  IMHO, it was the 'E' part of EDM that had to come up to speed. We have always had the 'D' part - Disco, R&B, Funk, Rock, Jazz. But had to get to a point where the 'electronic' part was good, cheap and easy enough to use.  We've had synths for at least 60+ years, but I think the 80's brought forth the TB-303 and DX7, small, relatively in-expensive synths that were much easier to use.  And if you listen to most 80's music, you will hear those synths and drum machines, quite a bit.  That's really early EDM.  So, 'EDM' was already pretty mainstream even back in the 80's, we just didn't call it that then.  I think we only reached that point maybe within the last 7 to 10 years where it's gotten even cheaper, easier, and with computers, has expanded the creativity so much, and so now we are seeing the 2nd wave of EDM.  Now, pretty much all dancey pop music is EDM.  It's so much so, it's rare now to even have a hit with say, a vocalist and a guitar.  Even the vocal part is probably Autotuned now.
 

Others have mentioned it, but I agree that DropZone covers a pretty good bit of ground as a simplistic sampler. Though I certainly wouldn't shy away from seeing it have some improvements.

forkol
We've had synths for at least 60+ years, but I think the 80's brought forth the TB-303 and DX7, small, relatively in-expensive synths that were much easier to use.  And if you listen to most 80's music, you will hear those synths and drum machines, quite a bit.

Nice bit of history here:
http://www.everything2.com/user/Ashley+Pomeroy/writeups/Roland+TB-303
 
This is one of my favorites from the era, and I always find it amusing there is so much synth in the song, yet no one is playing any keyboards.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPuXvpkOLmM