Crossword clues for cakewalk
cakewalk
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1863, American English, from cake (n.) + walk (n.), probably in reference to the cake given as a prize for the fanciest steps in a procession in a Southern black custom (explained by Thornton, 1912, as, "A walking competition among negroes," in which the prize cake goes to "the couple who put on most style"). Its figurative meaning of "something easy" (1863) is recorded before the literal one (1879). As a verb, from 1909. This may also be the source of the phrase to take the cake (1847).
Wiktionary
n. 1 A contest in which cake was offered for the best dancers. 2 (context music English) The style of music associated with such a contest. 3 (context performing arts English) The dance, or style of dance associated with such a contest. 4 (context idiomatic English) Something that is easy or simple, or that does not present a great challenge.
WordNet
n. a strutting dance based on a march; was performed in minstrel shows; originated as a competition among Black dancers to win a cake
an easy accomplishment; "winning the tournament was a cakewalk for him"; "invading Iraq won't be a cakewalk"
v. perform the cakewalk dance
Wikipedia
The Cake-Walk or Cakewalk was a dance developed from the "Prize Walks" held in the late 19th century, generally at get-togethers on black slave plantations in the Southern United States. Alternative names for the original form of the dance were "chalkline-walk", and the "walk-around". At the conclusion of a performance of the original form of the dance in an exhibit at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, an enormous cake was awarded to the winning couple. Thereafter it was performed in minstrel shows, exclusively by men until the 1890s. The inclusion of women in the cast "made possible all sorts of improvisations in the Walk, and the original was soon changed into a grotesque dance" which became very popular across the country.
Cakewalk, Inc. is a music production software company. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, the company is best known product is their professional-level digital audio workstation (DAW) software, SONAR. SONAR integrates multi-track recording and editing of digital audio and MIDI. The company also offers a full range of music software products, including Pyro Audio Creator—a digital music management program, and Dimension Pro—a virtual instrument.
Greg Hendershott founded the company in 1987 as Twelve Tone Systems, Inc., and was its CEO until 1 July 2012. The firm soon found that most customers referred to it by the name of its initial product, a MIDI music sequencer that Hendershott had named Cakewalk (in reference to a movement of Children's Corner by Claude Debussy). To avoid confusion, the company operated for many years as "Twelve Tone Systems, Inc. DBA Cakewalk". In September 2008, the company officially changed the corporate name to Cakewalk, Inc. Previous to this, in January 2008, the logo on the company's products ( but not the company name itself ) had changed to "Cakewalk by Roland" to reflect Roland Corporation's purchase of a majority interest in the company.
The SONAR digital audio workstation provides users the ability to create projects in which they edit digital audio tracks, MIDI tracks, and associated information like lyrics and music notation. SONAR displays a range of project information—including audio waveforms, musical scores, editing consoles, event lists. The operator can mix midi output and audio tracks down into a stereo .WAV file format and burn that to an audio CD or publish it to other media formats.
The company released the original MIDI music sequencer product, Cakewalk, for MS-DOS. In 1991, they released a version for Windows 3.0. Early Cakewalk for DOS versions (up to 3.0) required the intelligent mode of the MPU-401, and so could not be used with product clones of the MPU-401, while later Cakewalk versions (since 4.0) relied on the dumb UART mode only. The company renamed the sequencer Cakewalk Pro at some point, and then Cakewalk Pro Audio when they added support for digitized audio.
In 2009, Cakewalk announced a new product line: SONAR V-Studio 700 and SONAR V-Studio 100. These became the flagship products in Cakewalk's new line of hardware and software music production products. The next generation V-Studio line of products is modeled on Roland's hardware Cakewalk's SONAR Producer.
Effective 1 July 2012, Greg Hendershott resigned as CEO, after 25 years with the company. Michael Hoover, previously Executive Vice President of Products, became President, effective 1 July 2012. On December 6th, 2013, Roland sold all their shares of Cakewalk to Gibson Brands. Cakewalk will continue to operate in Boston, developing products for the Cakewalk brand along with joint products with TASCAM.
Cakewalk is a traditional African American form of music and dance.
Cakewalk may refer to:
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Cakewalk (company), a Boston-based company which produces music software
- Cakewalk (sequencer), their music sequencing software
- Cakewalk (carnival game), a game played at carnivals, funfairs, and fundraising events
- A play by Peter Feibleman about his relationship with Lillian Hellman
- A game for the Atari 2600
- Golliwogg's Cakewalk, a composition for solo piano by Claude Debussy
- " Cakewalk", a jazz composition by Oscar Peterson
Cakewalk was a MIDI sequencer developed by Twelve Tone Systems, Inc. (the company now known as Cakewalk, Inc.) originally for DOS, starting with version Cakewalk 1.0 in 1987, and beginning in 1991, for Windows 3.0. Cakewalk for DOS, until version 4.0, required an MPU-401 MIDI interface card operating in intelligent mode, while 4.0 and later versions relied on the dumb UART mode only. Cakewalk was delivered in two versions, Cakewalk Pro and Cakewalk Express.
The latter was a lite version limited to 25 tracks and 1 MIDI output port. The express version was sometimes bundled with hardware such as a sound card. Cakewalk was a purely MIDI based sequencer: Although it could trigger WAV files at certain points, more comprehensive audio support was not incorporated until the advent of Cakewalk Pro Audio when true support for digitized audio was added.
Cakewalk (or cake-walk) is a game played at carnivals, funfairs, and fundraising events. It is similar to a raffle and musical chairs.
Numbered squares are laid out on a path. Tickets are sold to participants, with the number of squares in the path equal to the maximum number of tickets sold. The participants walk around the path in time to music, which plays for a duration and then stops. A number is then called out, and the person standing on the square with that number wins a cake as a prize (hence the name).
During the 1930s, the English poet John Betjeman described St Giles' Fair in Oxford as follows:
It is about the biggest fair in England. The whole of St Giles' … is thick with freak shows, roundabouts, cake-walks, the whip, and the witching waves.
Cakewalk is a jazz composition by Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, one of his best known originals. A live version of the song appeared on his 1981 album Nigerian Marketplace. He performed it live on numerous occasions in a group. He played it with the Oscar Peterson trio live at the Berlin Philharmonic on July 2, 1985. He opened with it live in Tokyo in 1987 with Joe Pass and Dave Young. It also featured on his 2004 album A Night in Vienna. Biographer Alex Barris noted that Peterson often played "Cakewalk", a "rollicking profane stride", in contrast to his delicate "The Love Ballade". Coda Magazine remarked that it gave Peterson the opportunity to show off his stride piano chops.
Usage examples of "cakewalk".
And of course there was no sensation of hitting anything—my suit simply vanished as it went through the larger field—with the result that, because some part of me had been braced for impact, had been flinching, wincing, bracing myself, it was like reaching for that non-existent top step, and I did a comical cakewalk as if the floor was coated with banana peels and came that close to a pratfall any silent film comedian would have envied.
Jannie showed off and did the cakewalk to a jazzy version of "Blueberry Hill.
And of course there was no sensation of hitting anythingmy suit simply vanished as it went through the larger fieldwith the result that, because some part of me had been braced for impact, had been flinching, wincing, bracing myself, it was like reaching for that non-existent top step, and I did a comical cakewalk as if the floor was coated with banana peels and came that close to a pratfall any silent film comedian would have envied.
You'll do fine for a barn dance or a cakewalk, or maybe a picnic, but house building and brat raising ain't exactly your line.
Said they've had more accidents on this job, which should've been a cakewalk, than they had on that stretch of highway they blasted through Pine Ridge.