Professional sequencing under Windows has just got a lot easier - in fact, you could call it a Cakewalk...

Many of you will be familiar with the name Twelve Tone, or at least with the name of their most famous product - Cakewalk. Cakewalk has been available for the IBM PC for some time now, and their DOS based packages have recently been joined by a Windows 3.1 version called, not surprisingly, Cakewalk Professional for Windows. Cakewalk Pro is a linear sequencer (as opposed to a pattern based one) with 256 tracks - more than enough for most people. Anyone who is familiar with Windows applications in general will feel immediately at home with Cakewalk, but even those who have never used Windows before should still find it relatively easy to get to grips with the intuitive user interface.

Installation is about as simple as you can get, with a separate, clearly laid out installation manual to guide you through it, and the Windows setup routine taking care of all the necessary file copying, as well as the creation of directories, program groups and icons. Twelve Tone supply their own versions of the MPU-401 and Music Quest drivers, and you are recommended to use these, especially since the MPU driver allows more than one Windows application to use the MIDI card simultaneously. You must install them yourself using the Drivers option in the Windows Control Panel, and if you want to check out the latest versions of the Music Quest drivers, these are available in the MIDIAVEN forum on CompuServe.

On running the program for the first time, you are presented with a screen bearing the control bar and the Track/Measure window. The control bar contains the usual transport controls, current time (measure:beat:tick and SMPTE), from & to times, and meter & tempo indicators. Underneath the tempo window are three buttons marked 0.5, 1 and 2, and when 'pressed' these multiply the current tempo by the selected amount (ie. half, normal and double speed). The multiplication factors can also be altered if you fancy whizzing through your composition at up to four times the normal speed! And there are also buttons to set loop points, initiate punch-in or step recording, and change the sync method (internal, MIDI or SMPTE/MTC). The button at the end bearing a depiction of Edvard Munch's The Scream is the panic button - pressing this stops playback, sends note-off commands for each note on every channel and resets all continuous controllers.

The Track/Measure window is split into two halves, with the left-most section containing all the pertinent track data, such as the track name, mute/solo status, pan, volume, port, channel, relative velocity, pitch and time, and the current patch number. Rather than use plain old 0 to 127 for the patch numbers, Cakewalk Pro allows you to create your own patch lists for your synth, allowing you to select from a list of meaningful names. The 'relative' windows are extremely useful, since these allow you to take a base track and shift all the events up or down in velocity, pitch and time. All transpositions are performed in real time, and the changes are non-destructive to the original data, thus allowing your experimentation, and Imagination, a free rein.

The loop parameter allows you to override the linear nature of Cakewalk Pro by specifying the number of times a short pattern should be repeated during a song - a value of 9999 causes the track to continue looping as long as other non-looping tracks are still playing.

On the right half of the Track/Measure screen is the measure display - a familiar grid of squares containing nothing if they are empty and a blob if the corresponding measure holds some data. All the usual Windows conventions are supported here, allowing quick and simple cutting and pasting operations, copying and drag 'n' drop editing. If you are more familiar with the menu-driven DOS approach to things, all the same operations can be carried out via the drop-down Edit menu. Recording is simply a matter of selecting the required track and clicking on Record. Once finished, you are prompted to keep the take and the data is merged with any other data already contained in the track.

If you want to replace a section of data you can use the punch-in feature, which will record over the selected range of measures. There is also a step time recording facility which will allow you to record at your leisure, and a multi-take mode which records as many takes as you like, placing each successive one on the next free track, from where they can be auditioned and discarded.

Once you have recorded your track, there are many editing tools available to help you get it just right. At the bottom of the opening screen are seven iconised windows, ready to spring into action at the click of a mouse button (see the 'Editing Windows' box for further explanation), whilst at the top is the standard Windows drop-down menu bar, providing access to the other four main editing windows.

The Piano Roll view is becoming a standard on graphical sequencing packages now. For those of you not familiar with the format: it displays notes from a single track in a grid format that bears a resemblance to a player-piano roll. Notes are displayed as horizontal bars against a vertical 'keyboard' display which represents their pitch. Clicking on the first third of the note bar allows you to move it horizontally (alter its time), whilst clicking in the middle of the bar allows you to move it vertically (alter its pitch). Clicking in the last third of the bar allows you to stretch the note, whilst a click with the right mouse button brings up all the note parameters for text editing. The Piano Roll view is actually in two sections, with the lower section containing a bar-graph display representing note velocities.

The Event List view needs little explanation, containing as it does text parameters of all the events on a track. Particularly worthy of explanation are one or two events which are peculiar to Cakewalk Pro. The first of these is the text event, which allows you to create a single event which contains a single line of text. This can be used to enter notes or lyrics which will scroll in time with the track.

Two other events make use of the multimedia features of Windows 3.1. The Wave event triggers playback of a standard Windows .WAV file through a built-in sound card, if available, whilst the MCIcmd event contains Media Control Interface (MCI) commands which allow you to control other multimedia devices during the playback of your sequence. You could, for instance, play a section of a commercial CD in time with your own composition - who needs a sampler? The Controllers view is a graphical display of MIDI controller events such as volume, modulation and panning. By using the mouse, smooth graphical curves can be drawn to represent the level of the events over time. Pitch wheel and aftertouch events can also be created and edited here, even though they are not MIDI controller events per se.

Finally, the Staff view - a feature well worth having in my opinion, but which is included in few sequencers at the moment. It allows you to select one or more tracks and display the notes on staves - bass and treble clef staffs can be created automatically where appropriate. Notes can be created and edited on the staff, and the notation can be tidied up using the resolution, fill and trim features without actually affecting the recorded data. Unfortunately, the resulting score cannot be printed out, but since Cakewalk is capable of creating Standard MIDI files (types 0 and 1), which can then be imported into a separate notation package, this should not be too much of a problem for most people.

At first glance there may appear to be a bewildering choice of windows with which to work in Cakewalk Pro, but obviously not all will be applicable to all situations - some operations might require the Track Window, whilst others would benefit from the Piano Roll or Staff windows. As an overall package I found Cakewalk very easy to use, despite the apparent complexity and the sophistication of some of its features. All the necessary functions fall easily to hand (or mouse) and very little recourse to the manual is required. There are also plenty of nice touches which make you feel comfortable with the package, rather than at odds with it - the ability, for example, to define your own patch maps (instead of assigning patch number 53 to MIDI channel 1, I created a 'Korg 01/W Bank A' patch list and assigned a 'Tenor Sax' to channel 1 instead).

Dump Request Macros (DRMs) can also be created for your own synths within the SysEx Librarian. I managed to obtain a set of DRMs for the Korg 01/W from CompuServe and was thus able to save and load individual patches, or the entire contents of the synth's memory, to and from my PC's hard disk. Incorporating custom patch lists and DRMs within Cakewalk is the only aspect of the system which could be described as complicated, since it involves the amendment of some of the Cakewalk/Windows system files. Even then there is an entire chapter of the manual devoted to the subject, and all the system variables are listed along with a description of what they do - a hackers delight!

Whilst some applications are re-hashed to run under Windows, others are what can only be described as 'true' Windows applications. Happily, Cakewalk falls quite definitely into the latter category: it has the look and feel of a real Windows program right down to the comprehensive help system and the 'hidden screen' (after selecting the 'Help/About Cakewalk' option, try holding CTRL and SHIFT and clicking on the Cakewalk icon...).

It is, of course, impossible to provide more than a taste of the features available on a program like Cakewalk in a review of this length - but hopefully I will have whetted your appetite enough for you to put Cakewalk Professional on your shortlist when looking for your next PC sequencer. On a purely subjective note, it is probably the best Windows-based package on the market at the moment.

Price: £299 RRP (inc. VAT)

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Several windows are iconised at the bottom of the main Cakewalk Pro screen, which perform the following functions:

Comments View - This pops up an editor for you to make notes on your composition, which can then be forced to appear each time your song is loaded (ie. for copyright notices, patch assignment details, etc.).

Tempo View - This provides a graphic display of any tempo changes in your work file. Measures are shown along the top, and tempo up the side, and the mouse can be used to plot instant or gradual tempo changes onto a map.

Meter/Key View - This allows you to enter meter and key changes on measure boundaries. You can have as many meter and key changes as you need, and they are global (affecting all tracks). The meter affects the metronome's accents, how the beat time is displayed and how the staff view is drawn. The key signature affects how notes are displayed and how the staff view is drawn.

System Exclusive View - This is a neat librarian which provides you with 256 banks in which to hold SysEx messages. Each bank can hold any number of messages, with up to 1Mb of data in Windows standard mode, and up to available memory in 386 enhanced mode. The banks can be saved in the work file and automatically sent to your equipment as the file is loaded, thus configuring all your synths in readiness for your epic composition!

Markers View - Markers are a way of associating text with a time. They can be used to name sections of your work (ie. chorus, bridge, etc.), to mark 'hit points' for film scoring and for short cuts whenever you need to enter a time and/or move around in your Cakewalk work file.

Faders View - This provides you with 16 on-screen graphical faders that generate MIDI controller events (ie. volume and pan) as you move them. Fader movements can be recorded as part of a track, and will be reproduced during playback, thus providing a degree of automated mixing if required.

CAL - This is the window which allows the loading, editing and running of CAL programs (see separate box).