Kinetic

Kinetic is a brand new electronic music production application from Cakewalk. Looking at the layout of the application, the grid format of the tracking window and the straightforward mixer above it, it's pretty easy, with even a basic concept of music, how easy it will be to get to work with it. But the ease of use is enhanced by the great collection of sounds bundled along with it, compliments of Roland. The bundled sounds are taken from Roland's many well known synthesizers and beat makers, including the legendary 808 and 909.

Kinetic does require the following Windows systems (It is worth noting that Kinetic does not support Windows 95,98,ME or NT or Macintosh of any kind):

• Windows 2000, XP
• 800 MHz processor
• 256 MB RAM
• 180 MB free hard disk space
• 800 X 600, 16-bit color
• CD-ROM drive (for installation)
• Windows-compatible sound card for audio playback
• Windows-compatible MIDI interface to connect to any MIDI instruments

Introducing the Main Interface

This little intro is a quick overview of the interface, most of the components will be discussed in further detail later in the review, so if something appears to be being brushed over quickly...well...it is.

With the main interface, as shown below, you have total control over the production, arrangement and mix of your musical creations. Each project can have up to 64 individual sections of music, arranged in any order and of any length, each section with up to 16 different instruments. If you use Music Creator, Home Studio and Sonar you will even have more to be excited about, as Kinetic also connects to those applications to add even more power to the program. You can import audio clips and loops into Kinetic to use in your projects, and when completed your Kinetic project can be exported as a wav file for whatever mastering, burning, mp3 encoding or anything else you wish to do with your music.

The mixer is a fully functional mixer with volume, panning, mute and solo for each track of your composition. The arrangement of your project is then assembled from all of your music grooves (which are labeled by letters A-D and numbers 1-16) in the arrangement timeline at the bottom of the main interface window.

The grid part of the interface is your key to composing the music. Each row is a different instrument, each column being a beat, or fraction of a beat. You simply turn on each instrument you want to activate on any given beat and away you go, making music that easily.

Below the grid layout is the patch editor. This contains all the tools you need to tweak and twist the sound to your liking. There is also a small window beneath that which is your effects window. Here you add your plugin effects and adjust them as you see fit to totally and professionally customize them. Each effect is editable in two ways. In the effects window, you can highlight the effect in the chain that you wish to edit and the parameters available in that effect appear in the window to the right, or, above the window appears a thumbnail view of the effect you are using, click on that to open the plugin in a separate window to adjust it in it's native interface.

Starting it for the First Time

The first couple times I started up Kinetic I was kind of confused by the layout (as I have a habit of starting apps without even so much as looking at the cover of any users manual). It opens with the mixer on the top, the timeline on the bottom and two large windows in the middle, one labeled "patterns" and one labeled "patches".

The thing that seemed to be most productive for me, is immediately upon opening, I go to the left pane and click the "edit all" button. Doing so makes those two windows smaller, opens the grid view of for plotting the beats and underneath that the patch editing window.

Besides that button, there is also "edit pattern" which collapses the patch properties and makes the grid and pattern panes make up the entire workspace, and "edit patch, which makes the whole workspace into a patch editing window. I prefer the "edit all", as it shows a bit of everything in the workspace as is displayed in the largest screen shot above.

In order to start making music, you need to select a patch. Kinetic comes bundled with a huge selection of samples from all different kinds of instruments from synths to strings to drums to very unique ethnic instruments such as sitars and bagpipes.

Once the patch is selected, you may choose from one of the dozens of patterns available for it. Or, if you, like many of us, prefer to make your own pattern, just click the "new" button in the pattern pane to clean the grid and start programming your own.

Sequencing Within the Grid

The grid is quite easy to understand. Horizontally you are viewing the notes, vertically, the beats. You have drop down menus to choose the snap resolution and the length of the notes you are placing. After placing notes you also have the option of dragging out the length of each note.

One thing I noticed about the note placement that was very cool, is one very simple feature...the ease of removing them. Go to any spot in the grid and click...a note falls into place. I misplaced one and started looking around for a shortcut key or button to get me into "erase mode", well, low and behold, all I had to do was right click on the note and it was gone. Quick, simple, I wish more apps made it that easy.

There are two different views of the grid editor. The basic view is the simple, snapping interface that snaps to beats and allows only step sequencing. When you drag beats they drag snapping to the next line of snap resolution. The advanced view allows step sequencing and real time recording from a MIDI keyboard and the beats can be easily dragged to any length without snapping. Both views allow editing of automation and the other fundamental editing tasks.

This grid view of beats and sound samples is a common way for beat making apps to view the music, and rightfully so, because it is a very logical and intuitive way to do so. Anyone with any amount of experience with beatmaker software should immediately feel at home in this interface, and people with no experience should quickly understand the concept and be making music quite quickly.

Arrangement

As mentioned earlier, each groove you create, a groove being a measure or a few measure of a song, containing all the instruments for that part, is assigning a letter and number combination by the keypad in the upper left corner of the app. Letters A-D and number 1-16 are used, which gives a total of 64 grooves for each song with a total of 16 instruments for each groove.

All these grooves are then arranged in the lower timeline by setting which groove number you want to use and dropping it into the time line. After that you can drag the grooves for as many measures as you wish. If one groove repeats itself 4 times before the next groove starts, just drop it once and drag it out. I personally found this to be a very fast and easy arrangement method.

Bundled Synths, Groove Boxes and Effects

To edit the actual sounds, or "patches", themselves, click on it's channel of the mixer that is playing that patch, and, if you are in the "edit all" mode, it's properties and signal chain will appear underneath the pattern window and beat grid. There you will see the patch window, which will tell you what original patch is being used and also display the effects in the chain, the synth of Groove Box being used to create that patch. If you are not in the "edit all" mode, then either click the "edit all" button or click the "edit patch" button. The only difference is that the "edit patch" button will use the entire workspace for the patch editing.

Kinetic has, included in the install, a great collection of high-quality sound samples of many different instruments, in addition to these sounds, they have added soosftware version of some legendary Roland groove boxes and synths to give you further control in customizing each sound to your needs. If a Groove Box or PSYN, which is the exact same PSYN that Cakewalk introduced with the Project5, is used in the patch you are playing, it will be displayed in the patch properties as a small thumbnail picture, in order to edit it's parameters, click the thumbnail and it opens in full for you to edit at will. During the couple songs I made while reviewing this app, the GrooveBoxes were a lot of fun to play with. For all you tweakers out there, it'll be a great time.

It doesn't stop there, Kinetic also comes packages with reverb, delay, EQ and more effects to use in your mix. Underneath the patch properties and the possible Groove Box thumbnail you will find a couple of blue windows which may or may not be empty. The left window is your effects chain, the right are the effects properties for the chosen effect. Right click in the effects chain windows and click to insert the effect you wish, if you add more then one, you can easily drag and drop them in the order you wish. Highlight one to see the parameters available for it on the right, or, double click it to open it in a new window.

The effects themselves seem pretty decent. Surely not the highest quality effects available, but comparing them to the average bundled effects with application, they are nice, and they are very usable. Beyond these you are also able to use any third party plugin as well, so you are by no means limited to only the bundled effects.

Exporting Your Beats

When you are completed with your composition, exporting is quite simple, just a couple of clicks will get you to exporting your music to a more commonly acceptable file type for players or for use in another tracker.

Kinetic exports to .wav, .mp3 or even will export as a Project5 file. And, even cooler, you can dump you song down to a Roland SP 606 as well.

My Two Cents

This is an incredibly valiant first-effort into a more budget level beat maker for those that can't afford, or simply don't want to pay for the bigger apps like Project5. I find Kinetic to be very intuitive, I got up and running on it quite quickly, as it all worked and acted very logically and predicatably.

I do, however find a little room for improvement. I would like to see a preference where I could set it up to automatically open in "edit all" mode, as it has become my preferred mode. Also, with a simple effects window in the top mixer, like Sonar has, even in "edit pattern" it would be a quick double click to do a quick edit on an effects without having to switch view modes.

All that said, Kinetic is a great app, and for the price they are charging, it's a great bargain. Considering the sounds bundled with it being some very good samples of classic beatboxes, the groove boxes are great...it's a very good app at a decent price. If someone is looking at getting a software beat maker/sequencer, definately give Kinetic a test drive.

Cakewalk and Roland

The strategic alliance between Cakewalk and Roland that was announced almost a year ago is readily apparant in this effort. I, for one, think it really paid off. With Kinetic the alliance really made a positive impact.