Tutorial 9 - Exporting and sharing

 

Note: The core Music Creator installer does not include any tutorial content. In order to follow along with the tutorials, please download and install the optional Music Creator Help and Tutorials via Cakewalk Command Center (see Cakewalk Command Center).

Once your Music Creator project is complete, you will want to share it by posting it online. Music Creator includes features that will allow you to share your music online through Facebook and Twitter.

Before we get started, let’s open one of the example audio projects included with Music Creator. If you have your own project that already contains audio, you can load that instead. However, your screen will look different from the images in this tutorial.

1.	Go to Help > Quick Start to open the Quick Start dialog box.

2.	In the Open a Demo Project list, select Music Creator Tutorial Demo and click the Open a Demo Project button to open the project.

Now that you have opened the demo project (or your own audio project), click the Play button or press SPACEBAR listen to it. If you do not hear any audio, review the steps in Tutorial 1 to ensure Music Creator and your audio device are configured correctly.

Cakewalk Project Files are different from the audio you hear on a CD in that they are often multi-track as opposed to stereo. Nearly all songs you hear on CDs or stream online are stereo. In this example, you will notice that there are nine audio tracks. In order to burn this mix to a CD or prepare it for distribution, we need to export or mix it down to a stereo track.

In the Control Bar, click the Export button.

This will bring us to the Export Audio dialog box. This has many useful functions. Let’s explore some of them in detail.

You will notice that the top half of this window is very similar to the Open and Save dialogs. This is used to navigate to locations on your computer's hard drive and tell Music Creator where you want to store the exported audio.

Look in. Shows the folder to which you are exporting your audio. Browse your available drives to choose a different directory. Below the Look in field is a list of the selected folder's contents.

File name. Enter a name for the file you are creating.

Export preset. Select the desired export preset. The File Settings section displays the settings for the selected preset. The following presets are available:

CD Quality. Use this preset if you plan on burning your song onto an audio CD. Your song will be saved as a stereo Wave (.wav) file.

MP3. Use this preset if you plan on sharing your song with friends, or if you want to listen to your song on an MP3 player. Your song will be saved as an MP3 (.mp3) file.

Share with SoundCloud - CD Quality. Use this preset if you want to share a CD quality version of your song on SoundCloud. This format will result in a larger file size and may take longer to upload.

Share with SoundCloud - MP3. Use this preset if you want to share an MP3 version of your song on SoundCloud. Your song will be saved as an MP3 (.mp3) file. MP3 files are the smallest and fastest files to upload to SoundCloud.

Windows Media. Use this preset if you want to save your song in Windows Media (.wma) format.

 

Note: Sharing with SoundCloud options require an active Internet connection. For more information, see Sharing your songs on SoundCloud.

To export CD quality audio

1.	Click the Export Audio button to open the Export Audio dialog box.

2.	In the Export preset list, select CD Quality.

3.	Enter a name for you mix in the File name box.

4.	Specify where you want to save the file.

5.	Click Export.

A progress bar appears while a CD quality audio file is exported. When the progress bar disappears, Music Creator has finished exporting your project.

You can now use any CD burning program to burn the mix to an audio CD.

 

See:

Uploading audio to SoundCloud