Cakewalk, Inc. is a former music production software company based in

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

and currently a

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

of Singaporean music company

BandLab Technologies BandLab Technologies is a Singaporean company founded in 2015 that operates a social music platform, called BandLab, and also owns a variety of music-related brands, including Harmony and Heritage Guitars; media platforms ''Guitar.com'', ''NME' ...

. The company's best known product was their professional-level

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW ) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pr ...

(DAW) software,

SONAR Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects o ...

. SONAR integrated multi-track recording and editing of digital audio and

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

. The company also offered a full range of music software products, including Pyro Audio Creator—a digital music management program, and Dimension Pro—a virtual instrument. The brand was acquired in 2013 by Gibson, and in 2017 Gibson announced it was ceasing Cakewalk development. In 2018,

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

-based BandLab Technologies purchased some of Cakewalk, Inc.'s assets, and continued SONAR development as part of its portfolio of freeware digital audio workstation software.

History

Greg Hendershott founded the company in 1987 as ''Twelve Tone Systems, Inc.'', and was its CEO until July 1, 2012. The firm soon found that most customers referred to it by the name of its initial product, a

music sequencer A music sequencer (or audio sequencer or simply sequencer) is a device or application software that can record, edit, or play back music, by handling Musical note, note and performance information in several forms, typically CV/Gate, MIDI, or Open ...

that Hendershott had named ''

Cakewalk The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on black slave plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern Unit ...

''. To avoid confusion, the company operated for many years as "Twelve Tone Systems, Inc. DBA Cakewalk". The company released the original MIDI music sequencer product, ''Cakewalk'', for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

in 1987. In 1991, they released a version for

Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched on May 22, 1990. It introduces a new graphical user interface (GUI) that represents applications as clickable icons, instead of the list of file names in its predecessors. ...

. Early ''Cakewalk'' for DOS versions (up to 3.0) required the intelligent mode of the

MPU-401 The MPU-401, where ''MPU'' stands for MIDI Processing Unit, is an important but now obsolete interface for connecting MIDI-equipped electronic music hardware to personal computers. It was designed by Roland Corporation, which also co-authored the ...

, and so could not be used with product clones of the MPU-401, while later Cakewalk versions (since 4.0) relied on the "dumb"

UART A universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter (UART ) is a peripheral device for asynchronous serial communication in which the data format and transmission speeds are configurable. It sends data bits one by one, from the least significant to ...

mode only. With the addition of more features, the company renamed the sequencer ''Cakewalk Pro,'' and then ''Cakewalk Pro Audio'' when it gained support for digitized audio. The

provided users the ability to create projects in which they could edit digital audio tracks, MIDI tracks, and associated information like lyrics and music notation. SONAR's visual displays included audio waveforms, musical scores, editing consoles, and event lists. The user could mix MIDI output and audio tracks down to a stereo .WAV file and burn it to a CD or publish it in other media formats. In January 2008, the logo on the company's products changed to "Cakewalk by Roland" to reflect

Roland Corporation is a Japanese multinational manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment, and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on 18 April 1972. In 2005, its headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefect ...

's purchase of a majority interest in the company. In September 2008, the company officially changed its corporate name to 'Cakewalk, Inc.' Effective July 1, 2012, Greg Hendershott resigned as CEO, after 25 years with the company. Michael Hoover, previously Executive Vice President of Products, became President of Cakewalk, Inc. On December 6, 2013, Roland sold all of its shares of Cakewalk to

Gibson Brands Gibson, Inc. (formerly Gibson Guitar Corporation and Gibson Brands Inc.) is an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and professional audio equipment from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and now based in Nashville, Tennessee. Orvil ...

. For the next 4 years, Cakewalk continued to operate in Boston, developing products for the Cakewalk brand, along with joint products with

TASCAM TASCAM is the professional audio division of TEAC Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo Japan. TASCAM established the Home Recording phenomenon by creating the "Project Studio" and is credited as the inventor of the Portastudio, the first casset ...

. On November 17, 2017, Gibson announced that it was ceasing active development and production of Cakewalk branded products. After 30 years, Cakewalk, Inc. ceased operation, with only the company's web forum and license authorization servers still being kept functional. On February 23, 2018, Singapore-based BandLab Technologies announced its purchase of some of Cakewalk, Inc.’s assets and all of its

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

. BandLab's stated goal was continued development of the former company's flagship product, SONAR (now renamed

Cakewalk by BandLab Cakewalk is a full-featured digital audio workstation software package for audio and MIDI composing, recording, arranging, editing, mixing and mastering. It is developed and published under a free subscription licensing model by BandLab Tech ...

) as part of its portfolio of freeware digital audio workstation software.

Products

The company's products included sequencers; digital audio workstations, including the current Cakewalk by Bandlab, and former products Dimension Pro and Rapture Pro (Multisample synth); and instruments, effects tools and miscellaneous consumer products for creating music.

References

External links

Official website

The Cakewalk Blog

Cakewalk by BandLab
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cakewalk (Company) Software companies based in Massachusetts Companies based in Boston Defunct software companies of the United States American companies established in 1997 Privately held companies based in Massachusetts 1997 establishments in Massachusetts Software companies established in 1997

History

Products

See also

References

External links