CAKEWALK SONAR 7 - NOW WITH CONCLUSIONS!

[Anderton]

Yup, Sonar now has MIDI playback meters. They look just like the audio meters, with the only exception being that the audio meter clipping indicator is replaced by a MIDI activity indicator (which is the same color as the meter), and the main meter indicates the highest note velocity being played back. The separation of MIDI activity and note velocity is very useful, as you can see if a track has, for example, mod wheel data happening even if there aren't any notes.

That pretty much wraps up the MIDI editing options. The only remaining MIDI-related "biggies" are pitch-to-MIDI conversion in V-Vocal, and the Step Sequencer, which we'll get into next.

[garrigus]

Welcome Scott! Great to have you stop by. If you feel like contributing your considerable expertise to the thread, consider yourself invited.

 

 

Thanks, Craig! Will do...

 

I'm not sure if you covered them in your last review, but Cakewalk added some other features during the incremental version 6 updates. These include MIDI Input Quantize, X-Ray Windows, the Bit Meter plug-in, Track View Time Display, Friendly MIDI Hardware Port Names, etc.

 

You might want to cover those here as well if you didn't before...

 

Best regards,

Scott

 

--

Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge 6, 7/8 and SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Power books.

** Get Sonar 6 Power & Sound Forge 8 Power - Today! **

http://www.garrigus.com/

 

Publisher of DigiFreq. Win a free Absynth 3 or Kontakt 2 DVD Tutorial and learn cool music technology tips and techniques by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... over 20,000 readers can't be wrong! Go to:

http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/

[AW - Cakewalk]

The Multiple Controller lane concept should be pretty obvious, as just about every other program has it...this qualifies as a "catch-up" update, but it's welcome nonetheless. It's obvious to use: Click on the little + sign in the lower left of a controller lane, and it opens up another lane. Click on the - sign to hide a lane.

SONAR 7, however, still allows you to assign multiple controllers to the same lane. Other apps force one controller per lane. So, we give you the best of both.

[flatfinger]

Thanks, Craig! Will do... I'm not sure if you covered them in your last review, but Cakewalk added some other features during the incremental version 6 updates. These include MIDI Input Quantize, X-Ray Windows, the Bit Meter plug-in, Track View Time Display, Friendly MIDI Hardware Port Names, etc. You might want to cover those here as well if you didn't before... Best regards, Scott -- Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge 6, 7/8 and SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Power books. ** Get Sonar 6 Power & Sound Forge 8 Power - Today! ** http://www.garrigus.com/ Publisher of DigiFreq. Win a free Absynth 3 or Kontakt 2 DVD Tutorial and learn cool music technology tips and techniques by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... over 20,000 readers can't be wrong! Go to: http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/

 

 

 

 

Dude ,

You quit wasting time on the web and get the version 7 guide out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Hurry!!

 

(kidding):poke:

[Olly Oddball]

Looking forward to that Craig - you music God. Could you please post your computer spec.

xx
Olly

[garrigus]

Dude , You quit wasting time on the web and get the version 7 guide out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Hurry!! (kidding):poke:

 

 

Hey Flatfinger,

 

Ha! Yeah man, I'm workin' on it. It'll be out around mid-November. You can be sure I'll be spreadin' the word as soon as the book is ready. Actually, maybe sooner... It should be up on Amazon for pre-order very soon.

 

Thanks!

Scott

 

--

Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge 6, 7/8 and SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Power books.

** Get Sonar 6 Power & Sound Forge 8 Power - Today! **

http://www.garrigus.com/

 

Publisher of DigiFreq. Win a free Absynth 3 or Kontakt 2 DVD Tutorial and learn cool music technology tips and techniques by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... over 20,000 readers can't be wrong! Go to:

http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/

[tradivoro1]

Also, can someone talk about keying and ducking with compressors and gates. I can't for hte life of me figure out how to do this in previous versions of Sonar, and I"m just wondering if it's very easy to do it in version 7.

[garrigus]

Yes, this is a new feature in Sonar 7. It is called side-chaining and it is now built-into Sonar. Previous versions did not have this ability.

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge 6, 7/8 and SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Power books.
** Get Sonar 6 Power & Sound Forge 8 Power - Today! **
http://www.garrigus.com/

Publisher of DigiFreq. Win a free Absynth 3 or Kontakt 2 DVD Tutorial and learn cool music technology tips and techniques by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... over 20,000 readers can't be wrong! Go to:
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/

[Leonardus]

As long as we're still on midi..

There is a midi feature buried deep within Sonar 7 called Pattern Brush. It's for creating drum tracks. Craig, would you look at this and comment? It seems simple enough, but I could not conceive a way to use Pattern Brush effectively. I know Pattern Brush is dated; it was introduced in Sonar 2. Still, I'd love for you to have a go at it, just to see how you would break it down and put it to use.
Perhaps more interesting than Pattern Brush itself is seeing how Craig Anderton would put Pattern Brush to work. This, I'd love to see!
Craig, will you please give it a go? Thank you. Leonard

[AW - Cakewalk]

Sonar now has specific tools for split (scissors tool), glue notes (glue tube), and mute. Split works the same way as placing the cursor on a clip and typing S, but it can also be assigned as a mouse tool (as can the other new tools). Glue (which of course applies only to notes of the same pitch) is something I've been wanting for a while, and I'm glad it's here. When you choose the Glue tool, you just drag it over the notes you want to glue and they become one note. However, unlike Mute (described next) this works only on notes: Gluing controller events together produces a "fatal error" screen, and Sonar crashes after asking you if you want to save your work before it goes bye-bye.

 

Oops! We'll try to fix that in the first patch.

[garrigus]

A quick Pattern Brush primer...

1) Assign a Drum Map to your MIDI track and open that track in the Piano Roll View.
2) Choose the Pattern Brush tool.
3) Click the down arrow next to the tool and activate the following options: Use Pattern Velocities and Use Pattern Polyphony. Using these options will make your 'painted' parts conform exactly to the data in the pattern.
4) Click the down arrow again and choose a pattern from the list.

Now just click/hold the left mouse button (starting at the point you want the pattern to be created) and drag to the right. Also, you don't need to line up your mouse with a particular drum instrument because Sonar will automatically fill in the notes with the appropriate instrumentation (as per the previous activated options and the pattern you selected).

The patterns included with Sonar conform to the General MIDI standard so you can use any GM synth (that includes drum kits) to generate sound (like the Cakewalk TTS-1 or Session Drummer 2).

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge 6, 7/8 and SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Power books.
** Get Sonar 6 Power & Sound Forge 8 Power - Today! **
http://www.garrigus.com/

Publisher of DigiFreq. Win a free Absynth 3 or Kontakt 2 DVD Tutorial and learn cool music technology tips and techniques by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... over 20,000 readers can't be wrong! Go to:
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/

[Anderton]

Thanks Scott! My main use fot the pattern brush has been to create 16th-note high-hat patterns for techno tunes. I draw the 16th notes at a relatively low velocity, then use the filter to selectively boost velocity for all notes that hit on the beat. Then I use the filter again to boost velocity for all notes that hit on the beginning of a measure. Sometimes I'll randomize VERY slightly the start time of those notes that don't land on a beat...adds a little more interest.

[Anderton]

Oops! We'll try to fix that in the first patch.

One of my favorite Pro Review moments was finding a bug in Sonar 5, and you fixing it before the review was over! Makes me feel useful

[BuleriaChk]

Lots more flexibility, but you can't call up the erase simply by moving the draw button over the note (auto erase) in context as in SP6. There is an "auto sweep", but it is no accurate for individual notes, unless there is something I'm missing in the PRV Tool Configuration.....

I much prefer that; no big deal, but for quick correction of mistakes, that was the fastest, IMO.....

Chuck

Sonar has always had three main MIDI tools you could select with key commands: Select, Draw, and Erase. But Sonar 7 beefs up these three tools so you can add functions by using modifier keys (Ctrl, Shift, and Alt, singly or in combination) and mouse buttons (Left, Middle, Right).

 

[Leonardus]

Thanks Scott! ..then use the filter to selectively boost velocity for all notes that hit on the beat. Then I use the filter again to boost velocity for all notes that hit on the beginning of a measure..

Thank you, Scott. I'm looking forward to Sonar 7 Power.

Craig-Thank you for showing how Pattern Brush can be effectively used. Your detailed description on how you go about subtly breaking up static rhythm is particularly useful. Thank you. Leonard

Aha!! So that's what you can do with midi filters! Man, that filter interface has always looked stiff and foreboding. But, now that I have a better understanding..

[garrigus]

Thanks, Leonard! I'm workin' on it.

If you have one of my previous books... for example Sonar 6 Power... check out pages 95 to 98 and 233 to 235 for info on the select filter and the Interpolate function.

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge 6, 7/8 and SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Power books.
** Get Sonar 6 Power & Sound Forge 8 Power - Today! **
http://www.garrigus.com/

Publisher of DigiFreq. Win a free Absynth 3 or Kontakt 2 DVD Tutorial and learn cool music technology tips and techniques by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... over 20,000 readers can't be wrong! Go to:
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/

[AW - Cakewalk]

One of my favorite Pro Review moments was finding a bug in Sonar 5, and you fixing it before the review was over! Makes me feel useful

Haha, excellent, I'm up for a repeat.

[Anderton]

Hey Alex - another heads-up - if I try to insert Steinberg Hypersonic as a soft synth using the insert > soft synths menu, it crashes Sonar. If I insert it by right-clicking in the effects bin and choosing Hypersonic, it loads okay.

[digital lofi]

Probably not the place, but this is one bug I'm in the middle of crushing - been around since Sonar6. Names missing from Plugin Menus!

I'm not sure when it began to rear it's ugly head, but sometime last year certain VST plugins just wouldn't show up in any Plugin Manager menu, no matter what I did. I first noticed with microTonic, a plug I use a lot. I can see it in the list of installed VSTs, and it's in the menu editor. But where it counts it just doesn't show up. Oatmeal & V-Station are two others I know of off the top of my head that have gone MIA. I can get to some through track templates (yea for remembering to create them), but I can't figure out how to get V-Station into a Sonar Project.

I was hoping 7 would be the magic number and it would all be good. Nope.

In frustration, I ripped all my versions of Sonar off the computer, along with a whole lot of old software. Old Project 5. Gone. I didn't touch my plugins too much, including Dimension Pro and Rapture, but all those versions of Sonar I had going back to version 2 - outta there. I washed the registry several times with two different registry cleaners, including by hand. I was careful but thorough. But no luck.

So today I'm thinking of strategies to clean out my plugin folder. Granted, there's a lot of detritus in there. I'm pretty good at deleting what I don't want, but there's freebies I thought were cool, mag-ware I might have used once or twice, some of the lesser SynthEdit creations. I'm going to whittle it down to just the commercial plugins and the free/donation-ware I know works and use a lot. I guess I'll create a 2nd vst foler that sits right next to the current where I'll move most of this stuff, so I can still use it in other programs; perhaps bring it into Sonar with eXT as a plugin. I also think I'm going to toss any overall folder structure ("c:\program files\audio_plugins\instruments\samplers\..") and go with just splitting them up by developer and project ("c:\program files\audio_plugins\u-he\zebra2\..").

Anyway, I just needed to rant. If anyone knows where exactly in the registry I could look to see what's not show up that would be great.

[garrigus]

Hey Alex - another heads-up - if I try to insert Steinberg Hypersonic as a soft synth using the insert > soft synths menu, it crashes Sonar. If I insert it by right-clicking in the effects bin and choosing Hypersonic, it loads okay.

I heard about someone having the same problem with Session Drummer 2 over on the DigiFreq Forums, but I haven't experienced it myself. Bugs are weird little critters, aren't they?

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge 6, 7/8 and SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Power books.
** Get Sonar 6 Power & Sound Forge 8 Power - Today! **
http://www.garrigus.com/

Publisher of DigiFreq. Win a free Absynth 3 or Kontakt 2 DVD Tutorial and learn cool music technology tips and techniques by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... over 20,000 readers can't be wrong! Go to:
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/

[photon]

[BuleriaChk]

FWIW, Amplitube 2 still crashes (for me) as a VST in Sonar 7 (for me), as it does in Live 6 - after about 5 seconds. Every other plugin I have is rock solid (including Guitar Rig 2 and Revalver MkII). I can only get AT2 to run if I use the Revalver MkII as a VST wrapper - it then will run all day and night).

The problem obviously is with IKMultimedia's VST implementation, but just though I'd update vis a vis Sonar 7. I have done extensive research into buffers, drivers, etc., but IK doesn not have good stability reputation.

Pity, because I think AT2 has the best sims available (although GR2 and Revalver are very, very close indeed.)

Best Regards,

Chuck

[digital lofi]

Just following up my post.

I did a thorough cleaning of my plugin folder, pulling everything that wasn't commercial or a plugin I use frequently. I created a 2nd audio_plugin folder in which to dump everything, so I could still experiment and have access to it through eXT or other hosts, but my Sonar 7 install would be clean. I simplified the directory structure. Then I went into the registry and cleaned out a lot of registry entries, some of which probably dated back to when I was using the fxpansion VST wrapper! A lot of crap buried down in the windows system registry .

So now my Sonar 7 is a lean, mean plugin machine.

I'm not a big advocate of moderation when it comes to plugins - whatever you can afford, why not? - but there is something both cathartic and useful in really simplifying your plugin structure.

[Anderton]

FWIW, Amplitube 2 still crashes (for me) as a VST in Sonar 7.

 

 

I'm sorry to hear that, it works fine in Sonar 7 at this end using AMD X2, as well as in Sonar 6 on my laptop using Intel. You do have the latest AT2 update, right? And you instantiate it as a signal processor, not a soft synth?

 

Consider re-installing it just in case it got corrupted. I used to have problems with AT2 but not since downloading the latest version.

[Anderton]

This one threw me a little bit at first. Is it an instrument? A track? A pattern generator where you drag MIDI files into the Track View? A MIDI effect? The answer is none of the above: It generates a step sequencer clip on a MIDI track.

 

Like other step sequencers (see the attached image), this one has a matrix, with horizontal rows representing a particular note and vertical columns representing a particular beat or sub-division thereof. You click at the junction of a row and column when you want to drop a particular note (or drum hit, or whatever) at a particular time. As step sequencers are often used with drums, it's not surprising that this one integrates with Sonar's drum map feature.

 

The step sequencer has a seemingly unlimited number of rows (after inserting 130 of them, I lost patience and figured that's enough!). You can mute and solo individual rows, and set a velocity offset or multiply all velocities by a constant. To change this, you click and drag up and down on the number, or type in a value.

 

Although the screen shot shows only four beats to save space, the sequence can be up to 64 beats long, with up to 16 steps per beat. So not only can you have step sequences, but they can be pretty long and have some pretty fast notes chugging along. This to me is the most important Step Sequencer feature; you're not limited to, say, 4 beats of 16th notes.

 

There are controls for Articulation, Swing, and Portamento (with an associated on-off switch; of course, the instrument you're controlling needs to support portamento for this to matter). A Mode switch chooses between Poly (being able to enter several notes in the same column and Mono (only one note per column is allowed).

 

I loaded up Session Drummer 2, and all seemed well at first. But while the sequencer was playing, clicking around too fast on the different tracks to audition the drum sounds caused Sonar to freeze. So I re-booted, and of course, wanted to see if I could make it happen again. It did, and more specifically, I found it happened if I double-clicked on the note name. This was repeatable, so I figured okay, I'll double-click on the note name to bring up the Drum Map Manager only while it's stopped until either I find out that a) there's a fix, or b) there's a problem with my particular system that needs to be tweaked.

 

Once I sorted that out, everything worked great so let's get to the rest of the features.

 

I was initially disappointed that when you dropped a note in place, it defaulted to a velocity value and it seemed you couldn't drag the numerical-you had to type it in. Turns out that you can change the value with your mouse scroll wheel, as well as use Shift as a "fine tuning" modifier. Cool! However, next rev, I'd like to see the velocity value darker; it doesn't show up that well against the background.

 

Another great feature is that you can tie notes together very easily: Just click between them, and hit enter. The series of notes plays as one note, using the first note's velocity.

 

The Step Sequencer also includes a controller strip along the bottom where you can do the same kind of controller manipulation as in Piano Roll view, which is definitely a most useful addition.

 

The final feature is a "Fit to quarter note" option, where you can take a four-beat clip and force it to fit into a specific number of quarter notes. This is kind of like "time-stretching" as the notes get stretched to fit into a larger number of quarter notes, and shrunk to fit into a smaller number. For example, if you have an 8-beat, 4/4 sequence and make it fit 16 quarter notes, the sequence plays back at half time.

 

So is it cool? Yes. I like that you can trigger playback independently of the transport by clicking the Play button on the Step Sequencer itself. I also like that if you make copies of Step Sequencer clips, editing one copy affects them all-unless you specify that one should be unlinked, at which point you can edit it independently.

 

You can convert an existing MIDI clip into a Step Sequencer clip simply by clicking on it and selecting "Convert MIDI Clip to Step Sequencer." This is useful if you create a drum part from hitting keys or using a controller, then decide you could work more efficiently if you were using the Step Sequencer.

 

And if it wasn't clear before, you can have as many Step Sequence clips going as you want, even opening up several Step Sequencer clips on a single track.