Cakewalk Studio Instruments

Cakewalk has released Cakewalk Studio Instruments, a software instrument collection for Mac OS X and Windows. Cakewalk Studio Instruments is a dual platform Virtual Instrument collection providing a high quality Drum Kit, Bass Guitar, Electric Piano, and String Section that can be played stand alone or in your VST or Audio Unit plug-in supporting host application of choice.

Features:
- An entire band all in one package: Electric Piano, Bass, String Section, & Drum Kit.
- Easy to use animated user interface with powerful controls (cymbals crash, bows bow, bass strings vibrate, etc.).
- Play stand-alone or use it in your favorite recording software.
- Universal host compatibility for Mac (Audio Units) and Windows XP and Vista (32- & 64-bit) PC (VSTi).
- Professionally recorded patterns and instrument sounds.

With Studio Instruments, Cakewalk introduces a virtual instrument collection that is accessible to anyone, not just musicians, through its photo-realistic, animated, and interactive user interface. With point and click ease and professionally recorded patterns, Studio Instruments delivers a simple and fun way for all to make music. Cakewalk Studio Instruments is driven by Expression Engine, the same technology found in Cakewalk’s professional line of instruments, including Dimension Pro.

Studio Instruments’ feature animated, photo-realistic user interfaces, and each instrument present a true interactive music making experience: just click on a cymbal, and see and hear it crash. Each instrument accurately replicates the sound of its real-world counterpart and features simple control over the most essential functions of the instrument.

In addition, Studio Instruments includes a comprehensive collection of pre-recorded patterns and presets providing a creative jump-start to making music. These patterns can be placed on multiple pads that the user simply clicks to trigger sections of their songs. Cakewalk Studio Instruments also allow the user to play the individual sounds of each instrument from their computer keyboard – if you can type, you can now play drums, piano, bass, or electric piano. More advanced users can easily control Cakewalk Studio Instruments with a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI controller. Each Studio Instrument also features customized companion effects to enhance their sounds.

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How to Accompany Piano

Have you ever wanted to accompany yourself or others while singing? The desire to do so is one of the key motivations for a surprising number of piano students. How will you ever learn to sing at the same time – and carry a tune?

The ability to accompany yourself on piano while singing is a skill like any other. If you already have a good grounding in piano basics, such as knowing the notes, knowing your scales, reading music – great! You have a very firm foundation for learning how to accompany yourself. Now you can learn to read a “lead sheet,” which is a kind of musical shorthand.

A lot of pop, rock, country, and other contemporary music is noted down in this non-classical format. These lead sheets are collected in books called “fake books.” In its simplest form, the lead sheet consists of a single line of notes that pick out the melody, accompanied by chord notations above.

In accompanying yourself or others using a lead sheet approach, the vocalist takes the melody, and the accompanist plays the chords. The singer has the melody, the voice has the spotlight. If the piano is plunking out the melody underneath, it pulls attention away from the voice.

If you want to sound great when you’re accompanying yourself, you’ll need to try something called “chord piano.” This is, as the name implies, a style of playing in which the piano plays primarily chords, and leaves the melody to the vocalists, or perhaps another instrument.

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