Reference Guide

1228
Beginner’s Guide to Cakewalk Software
Audio
after each note is struck. This is as expected since the pictures represent the actual sound that is
recorded. The MIDI track’s graph is much simpler, since it only represents commands to turn a
certain note on for a certain time period, then turn another note on, etc. We zoomed in on these two
tracks far enough to expose all the track property fields, such as Volume, Pan, Input, Output, etc.
Notice the different logos left of the track names that distinguish audio tracks from MIDI tracks.
Notice the data in the audio track’s Out field: A. This is the name of the output driver that this
particular sound card uses. If your sound card only has one pair of outputs (or one stereo output),
you don’t have to change anything in the Out field. Cakewalk fills it in automatically as soon as
Cakewalk finishes running the Wave Profiler. If your sound card has more than one pair of outputs,
or you have more than one sound card installed and enabled on your computer, you can use this
field to choose what pair of outputs you want to hear a specific track played back through.
For more information, see:
Clips
Track-by-Track Playback
Connecting an Instrument, Home Stereo, or Microphone to your Sound Card
Choosing Inputs
Audio Recording
Audio Hardware (Sound Cards) and Drivers
MIDI
Clips
A clip is a portion of the audio or MIDI data in a track that is bounded by a vertical line on each end
of the clip. You can click a clip to select it—a selected clip becomes highlighted. After you select a
clip, you can copy it, drag it to a new location, delete it, or use any command in the Edit menu to
alter it. A clip can be any size. A clip that is an exact number of beats or measures and is suitable for
repetition, such as a drum pattern, is frequently called a loop. Clips are also sometimes called
events. A track can have no clips (no data at all), one clip (all the track’s data is in one clip), or many
clips. Having lots of clips in a track increases processing time for your computer.
In the following picture, the Scissors tool in the Track view toolbar was used to separate the audio in
Track 1 into three clips. You can activate the Scissors tool by pressing c on your keyboard, at which
time the cursor turns into a small scissors icon. You can press c again to deactivate it, or press t to
activate the Select tool, which is the default Track view tool. After you activate the Scissors tool you
can click the track data at the points where you want to split it into clips. If your Cakewalk version
doesn’t have the Scissors tool, you can use the Edit > Split command, or right-click a clip and
choose Split from the Clips pane pop-up menu.