Cakewalk Sonar 5 User's Guide

™

Cakewalk SONAR User’s Guide

Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Twelve Tone Systems, Inc. The software described in this document is furnished under a license agreement or nondisclosure agreement. The software may be used or copied only in accordance of the terms of the agreement. It is against the law to copy this software on any medium except as specifically allowed in the agreement. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, for any purpose without the express written permission of Twelve Tone Systems, Inc.

ACID is a trademark of Sonic Foundry, Inc.

Cakewalk is a registered trademark of Twelve Tone Systems, Inc. SONAR and the Cakewalk logo are trademarks of Twelve Tone Systems, Inc. Other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Visit Cakewalk on the World Wide Web at www.cakewalk.com.

Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii

About This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii

Registering SONAR Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxiii

Conventions Used in this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiv

Getting Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxiv

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

About SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Music Composition and Exploration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Remixing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Game Sound Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Sound Production and Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Web Authoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Film and Video Scoring and Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Flexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Computers, Sound, and Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Installing SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Audio Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

MIDI Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Starting SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

SONAR Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

SONAR File Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Opening a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Working on a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Windows Taskbar Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Screen Colors and Wallpaper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Starting to Use SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

2 Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Tutorial 1—The Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Opening a Project File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Preparing for Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52

Playing the Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Restarting the Project Automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58

Changing the Tempo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Muting and Soloing Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Changing a Track's Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Playing Music on a Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63

Tutorial 2—Recording MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64

Creating a New Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Recording a MIDI Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Saving Your Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67

Loop Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Punch-In Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Tutorial 3—Recording Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Setting the Sampling Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Setting the Audio Driver Bit Depth and Recording Bit Depth . . . . . 71

Open a New Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72

Setting Up an Audio Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Checking the Input Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72

Recording Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73

Listening to the Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Recording Another Take . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Input Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Loop and Punch-In Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Recording Multiple Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Tutorial 4—Editing MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Transposing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75

Copying Clips with Drag and Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75

Editing Notes in the Piano Roll View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76

Slip Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78

Drawing MIDI Envelopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Converting MIDI to Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Tutorial 5—Editing Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81

Opening the Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Importing a Wave File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81

Moving and Looping the Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82

Slip Editing a Clip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Automatic Crossfades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83

Bouncing Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83

Tutorial 6—Using Groove Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Adding Groove Clips to a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Looping Groove Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Changing the Pitch of Groove Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Changing the Tempo of Your Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Creating Your Own Groove Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Tutorial 7—Mixing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Adding Real-time Audio Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Automating an Individual Effect’s Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Grouping Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Automating Your Mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Exporting an MP3 File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Tutorial 8—Using Soft Synths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Inserting Cakewalk TTS-1 into a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Playing MIDI Tracks through a Soft Synth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Converting Your Soft Synth Tracks to Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Tutorial 9—Drum Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Create a New Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Creating a Drum Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Create a Drum Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Map Drum Notes to Different Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

3 Controlling Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

The Now Time and How to Use It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

The Now Time Marker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Displaying the Now Time in Large Print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Other Ways to Set the Now Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

The Time Ruler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Controlling Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Handling Stuck Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Looping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Track-by-Track Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

The Playback State Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Silencing Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Soloing Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Inverting the Phase of a Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Changing Tracks’ Mono/Stereo Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Changing Track Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Setting Up Output Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Assigning Tracks to Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Choosing the Instrument Sound (Bank and Patch) . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Adding Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Adjusting Volume and Pan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

vii

Configurable Panning Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Adjusting Volume Trim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Assigning a MIDI Channel (Chn) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Adjusting the Key/Transposing a Track (Key+) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Adjusting the Note Velocity (Vel+) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129

Adjusting the Time Alignment of a MIDI Track (Time+) . . . . . . . . 130

Other MIDI Playback Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

Controlling Live MIDI Playback—MIDI Echo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131

Local Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Playing Files in Batch Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133

The Play List View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Video Playback, Import, and Export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Inserting and Playing Back Videos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Exporting Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138

Optimizing Video Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139

Using the Video Thumbnails Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Video Playback on a FireWire DV Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141

Exporting a Project to a FireWire DV Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142

Synchronizing External Video Playback to Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Locating Missing Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

The Find Missing Audio File Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Restoring Missing Audio Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Managing Shared and External Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

viii

4 Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Creating a New Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Using Per-Project Audio Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Creating a New Project File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Setting the Meter and Key Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Setting the Metronome and Tempo Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Setting the Audio Sampling Rate and Bit Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Setting the MIDI Timing Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Preparing to Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Recording Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153

Choosing an Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Arming Tracks for Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155

Auto Arming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156

Recording Music from a MIDI Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156

Recording Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156

Tuning an Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158

Confidence Recording and Waveform Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159

Input Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159

The Audio Engine Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Loop Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Punch Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Step Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Step Record Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Step Pattern Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Recording Specific Ports and Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Input Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Importing Music and Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Importing Audio Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Importing Material from Another SONAR Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Importing OMF Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Importing MIDI Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Saving Your Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Labeling Your Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

File Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

5 Arranging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Arranging Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Changing the Order of Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Inserting Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

Configuring the Display of Tracks in the Track View . . . . . . . . . . 187

Copying Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Erasing Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Track Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Track Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Arranging Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Displaying Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Using the Navigator View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Double-clicking Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Selecting Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Moving and Copying Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Nudge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Nudge Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Working with Partial Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Markers and the Snap Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Showing Gridlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Defining and Using the Snap Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Snap Offsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Creating and Using Markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Working with Linked Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Splitting and Combining Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Take Management and Comping Takes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .210

Clip Muting and Isolating (Clip Soloing) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

Clip Muting with the Default Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Clip Muting with the Alternate Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .214

Audition (Selection Playback) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Isolating (Clip Soloing) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Track Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .216

Adding Effects in the Track View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

Changing Tempos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .218

Using the Tempo Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Using the Tempo Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Using the Tempo View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Undo, Redo, and the Undo History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

6 Using Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

The Loop Construction View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Loop Construction Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

The Loop Explorer View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

Folders Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Contents List Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .232

Working with Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233

Working with Groove Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .234

How Groove Clips Work in SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Using Groove Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Creating and Editing Groove Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Editing Slices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .237

Saving Groove Clips as Wave Files/ACIDized Wave Files . . . . . . .238

Using Pitch Markers in the Track View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

MIDI Groove Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Exporting, and Importing MIDI Groove Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

Importing Project5 Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

7 Editing MIDI Events and Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Event Inspector Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

The Piano Roll View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

Note Map Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Drum Grid Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Notes Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .245

Controller Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246

Track List Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

Opening the View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

Working with Multiple Tracks in the Piano Roll View . . . . . . . . . . 246

Note Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

Displaying Notes and Controllers (Piano Roll View Only) . . . . . . . . . . 248

Adding and Editing Notes in the Piano Roll View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Selecting Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Editing Notes with the Draw Tool and the Select Tool . . . . . . . . . . 250

Adding and Editing Controllers in the Piano Roll View . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

Adding Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

Selecting Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Editing Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

The Inline Piano Roll View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

Displaying the Inline Piano Roll View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

The MIDI Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Displaying Notes and Controllers in the Inline Piano Roll View . . 260

Selecting and Editing Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Copying and Pasting MIDI Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Transposing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Shifting Events in Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Inserting Time or Measures into a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Stretching and Shrinking Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Reversing Notes in a Clip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Adding Crescendos and Decrescendos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Slip Editing MIDI (Non-destructive Editing) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Slip Editing Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Using Slip Editing for MIDI Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Slip-editing Multiple MIDI Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Changing the Timing of a Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Quantizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Fit Improvisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

Snap to Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

Searching for Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Event Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Controllers, RPNs, NRPNs, and

Automation Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

The Event List View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

Event List Buttons and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290

Selecting Events in the Event List View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Event List Display Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Editing Events and Event Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Additional Event Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294

MIDI Effects (MIDI Plug-ins) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

MIDI Effects Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Quantizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

Adding Echo/Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

Filtering Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Adding Arpeggio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

Analyzing Chords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Changing Velocities with the Velocity Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Transposing MIDI Notes with the Transpose MIDI Effect . . . . . . .300

8 Drum Maps and the Drum Grid Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

The Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Creating and Editing a Drum Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

The Drum Map Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Working in the Drum Map Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

The Map Properties Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Saving a Drum Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .307

Using Drum Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

Assigning a MIDI Track to a Drum Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

Opening a Drum Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .308

Displaying Tracks in the Drum Grid Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

Velocity Tails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

Editing Note Velocities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

Previewing a Mapped Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

The Note Map Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .310

Changing Mapped-note Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

The Drum Grid Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .311

Grid Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

The Pattern Brush Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .312

How the Pattern Brush Tool Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Creating Custom Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313

xii

9 Editing Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Digital Audio Fundamentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .316

Basic Acoustics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .316

Example—A Guitar String . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

Waveforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .318

Recording a Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

The Decibel Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .321

Audio Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

Managing Audio Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

Basic Audio Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

Editing Clip Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Moving, Copying, Pasting and Deleting Audio Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Audio Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .324

Splitting Audio Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .326

Bouncing to Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .327

Scrubbing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328

Basic Audio Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328

Using the Normalize and Gain Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

Reversing Audio Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330

Advanced Audio Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330

Removing Silence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330

Extracting Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

Removing DC Offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Slip-editing Audio (Non-destructive Editing) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Slip-editing Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Using Slip-editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Slip-editing Multiple Audio Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338

Fades and Crossfades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338

Using Fades and Crossfades in Real Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338

Applying Fades and Crossfades Offline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

Audio Effects (Audio Plug-ins) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Applying Audio Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Directly Applying Audio Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346

Shifting Pitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346

Stretching Time and Pitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

10 Working with Software Synthesizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

Synth Rack View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

Synth Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

Inserting Soft Synths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

Multi-port Soft Synths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

Inserting a Soft Synth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

Opening a Soft Synth’s Property Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

Playing a Soft Synth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

Muting and Soloing Soft Synth Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

Converting Your Soft Synth Tracks to Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

Automating a Soft Synth’s Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

ReWire Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

Inserting a ReWire Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

Mixing Down ReWire Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Automating ReWire Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

ReWire Troubleshooting Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Stand-alone Synths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Playing a Stand-alone Synth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Recording a Stand-alone Synth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

11 Mixing and Effects Patching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .363

xiii

Preparing to Mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364

Configuring the Console and Track Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368

Mixing MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Mixing a MIDI Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .371

Converting MIDI to Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

Signal Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

Routing and Mixing Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374

Stereo Buses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376

Surround Buses (Producer Edition Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Main Outs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

Metering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

What the Meters Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

Hiding and Showing Meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

Changing the Meters’ Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

Segmented and Non-segmented Meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .381

Changing the Meters’ Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382

Peak Markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .382

Waveform Preview for Buses and Synth Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

Freeze Tracks and Synths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

Using Real-Time Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .386

Effects Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387

How to Use Real-Time Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387

Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

Effects on Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .390

V-Vocal Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

Using V-Vocal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392

Playing Back V-Vocal Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

Pitch Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394

Editing Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

Editing Formants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

Editing Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .398

Context Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398

Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .399

Using the Per-track EQ (Producer Edition Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401

Applying Audio Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402

Applying MIDI Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

The VST Configuration Wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .403

Using Control Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .404

Quick Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408

Using Remote Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .410

Using the Learn Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

Bouncing Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

xiv

Preparing to Create an Audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413

Preparing Audio for Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413

Exporting OMF Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418

Dithering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

12 Surround Mixing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

Surround Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422

Configuring SONAR for Surround Mixing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422

Using Surround Format Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422

Choosing a Surround Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

Surround Buses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

Routing in Surround . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

Downmixing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

Panning in Surround . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

Controlling Surround Panning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

Automating Surround Panning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432

Joystick Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432

Surround Metering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434

Bass Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434

Surround Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

The SurroundBridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

Effect Property Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

Effect Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

How to Patch and Configure Surround Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

Importing Surround Mixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437

Exporting Surround Mixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

13 Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .439

Quick Automation Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440

The Automation Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441

Automation Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441

Recording Individual Fader or Knob Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441

Creating and Editing Audio Envelopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442

Creating and Editing MIDI Envelopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444

Dotted Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445

Using the Envelope Draw Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446

Drawing Envelopes on Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447

Showing or Hiding Envelopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447

Deleting Envelopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448

Copying and Pasting Envelopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448

Resetting Envelopes and Nodes to Current or Neutral Values . . . 449

Envelope Mode and Offset Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

Converting MIDI Envelopes to Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

Snapshots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

Adding Nodes at a Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452

Automating Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452

Automating Individual Effects Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452

Recording Groups of Faders and/or Knobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .453

Recording Automation Data from an External Controller . . . . . . . 454

Reassigning Envelopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454

The Envelope Editing and Node Editing Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .455

Automated Muting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456

14 Layouts, Templates

and Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

Layouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458

Floating Views and Dual Monitor Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461

Template Example: Three MIDI Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462

Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463

Importing Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465

Exporting Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465

15 Working with Notation and Lyrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467

The Staff View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468

Opening the Staff View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469

Staff Pane Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469

The Staff Pane Right-Click Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .469

The Fretboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .471

Fretboard Popup Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

Basic Musical Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .472

Inserting Notes on the Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472

Inserting Notes with the Fretboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .473

Selecting Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

Moving, Copying, and Deleting Notes on the Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . .474

Moving Notes from within the Fretboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475

Auditioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475

Changing Note Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .476

Deglitch Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477

Working with Triplets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .477

Beaming of Rests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .478

Changing the Way Notes Are Displayed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478

Using Enharmonic Spellings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

MIDI Channels and the Fretboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481

xvi

Chords and Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482

Adding Chord Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482

Adding Expression Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

Adding Hairpin Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486

Adding Pedal Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486

Tablature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488

Tablature Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488

Changing Fretboard Texture and Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489

Quick TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489

Regenerate TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489

Entering Notes from the TAB Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490

Single Note Editing from the TAB Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490

Editing Chords or Groups of Notes from the TAB Staff . . . . . . . . . 491

Editing Notes and Chords from the Fretboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491

Working with Percussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492

Setting Up a Percussion Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492

Setting Up a Percussion Staff or Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493

Ghost Strokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494

Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494

The Meter/Key View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495

What Is Meter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495

What Is Key? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495

Opening the Meter/Key View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496

Adding and Editing Meter/Key Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496

Music Notation for Non-concert-key

Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498

Working with Lyrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498

Adding and Editing Lyrics in the Staff View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499

Opening the Lyrics View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500

Adding and Editing Lyrics in the Lyrics View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500

16 Using Instrument Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503

Assigning Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504

Importing Instrument Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505

Creating Instrument Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506

Creating and Editing Patch Name and Other Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . 508

Copying Name Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509

Assigning the Bank Select Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509

Assigning Patch Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510

Assigning Note Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511

Assigning Controller, RPN, and NRPN Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512

Instrument Definition Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513

Why Use Instrument Definitions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513

xvii

What Can They Do and Not Do? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .513

Where Do Instrument Definitions Come From? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513

Start of Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514

17 Using System Exclusive Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517

What Is System Exclusive? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Sysx Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Using the System Exclusive View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Sending Sysx Banks at Startup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Importing, Creating, and Dumping Sysx Banks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519

More about Dump Request Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521

Editing Sysx Banks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521

Sysx View Buttons 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Send . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522

Send All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .522

Receive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .522

Clear Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .522

Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522

Auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522

Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .522

Edit Bytes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .522

Load Bank and Save Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523

Transmitting Banks During Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523

Real-time Recording of System Exclusive Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524

Sysx Echo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524

Sysx .

INI File Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524

Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525

xviii

18 Synchronizing Your Gear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527

Synchronization Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .528

Choosing Clock Sources When SONAR is the Master . . . . . . . . . . . . . .529

MIDI Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

SONAR as the Slave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530

SONAR as the Master . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .531

Using MIDI Sync with Drum Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532

Troubleshooting MIDI Sync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532

SMPTE/MIDI Time Code Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532

Playing Digital Audio under SMPTE/MTC Sync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535

SMPTE/MTC Sync and Full Chase Lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536

Troubleshooting SMPTE/MTC Sync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .536

MIDI Machine Control (MMC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537

19 Audio File Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539

The Project Files Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540

Project Files and Bundle Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Audio Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542

Global Audio Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542

Per-project Audio Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542

Imported Audio Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544

Backing Up Projects with Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544

Deleting Unused Audio Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546

20 Improving Audio Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547

System Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

The Wave Profiler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

Enabling and Disabling Audio Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

Sampling Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

Bit Depths, and Float Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550

Bit Depths for Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550

Bit Depths for Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551

Bit Depths for Importing Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551

Bit Depths for Exporting Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551

Bit Depths for Rendering Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552

Preparing Higher-quality Audio for CD Burning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552

Improving Performance with Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553

Getting the Most Out of Your PC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553

Mixing Latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

ASIO Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

Queue Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

Status Bar/CPU Meter/Disk Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

21 Appendix A:

Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .557

When I Play a File, I Don’t Hear Anything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

I Can’t Record from My MIDI Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559

When I Play a File Containing Audio, the Audio Portion Doesn’t Play 560

I Can’t Record Any Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560

My Track or Bus Fader is Maximized, But There’s No Sound or Level 561

The Music Is Playing Back with the Wrong Instrument Sounds . . . . . 561

How Do I Use SONAR to Access All the Sounds on My MIDI Instrument? 562

My Keyboard Doubles Every Note I Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562

I Don’t See the Clips Pane in the Track View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562

xix

Why Can’t SONAR Find My Audio Files? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

I Get an a Error Message When I Change a Project to 24-bit Audio . . . 563

Bouncing Tracks Takes a Long Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

Why Do I Get Errors from the Wave Profiler? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564

I Hear an Echo When I Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .564

Audio Distorts at Greater than 16 Bits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564

No Sound from My Soft Synth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .565

My Pro Audio 9 Files Sound Louder/Softer When I Open Them in SONAR 565

I Can’t Open My Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566

SONAR Can’t Find the Wavetable Synth or MPU401 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .566

22 Appendix B: Hardware Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

Connect Your MIDI Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

Set Up to Record Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570

23 Appendix C: New Features in SONAR 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575

V-Vocal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575

Integrated VST Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575

Inline Piano Roll View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575

Streamlined Piano Roll View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .575

Improved MIDI Step Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576

64-bit Audio Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576

Video Output to FireWire Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576

Grouping Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .576

Per/Clip Effects Bins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576

Float File Support and Multiple Bit Depths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .577

Track Layer Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577

Waveform Preview for Buses and Synth Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577

Peak Markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577

Audio Scaling in Buses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577

Cloning Multiple Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .577

Fade Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577

OMF Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .577

Lock Track Height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .578

Insert Multiple Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578

Automation Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578

Snap to Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578

Remove DC Offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .578

New Normalize and Gain Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578

MIDI Scale/Zoom Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578

Audio Meter Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579

Enhanced Preset Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579

Interleave Indicator in FX Bins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579

Track Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579

Track Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579

Tabbed Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579

Add Nodes at Selection Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579

Round Envelope Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579

24 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581

xxi

xxii

Preface

The SONAR User’s Guide is designed to help you learn and use SONAR. This Guide explains how SONAR works and how to use it to create, edit, produce, and perform. The SONAR

User’s Guid

information you need. The User’s Guide also includes a comprehensive index that you can use to find information on any specific topic.

e is task-oriented, with lots of cross-references, so that you can find the

About This Book

The SONAR User’s Guide is organized as follows:

Chapter 1, Introduction, provides an overview of SONAR, installation instructions and basic equipment setup options.

Chapter 2, Getting Started, contains tutorials that cover many of the features of SONAR.

The remaining chapters cover all the basic and advanced skills you need to use SONAR to play, record, edit, arrange, and mix your projects.

The appendices contain additional information you can use for troubleshooting, setting up SONAR for use with audio hardware, and SONAR’s new features.

Registering SONAR Today

New Cakewalk products will require product registration. When you register your product, you provide some information including your name and email address, as well as the serial number for your product.

Product registration can be done quickly on the internet or by phone.

To register anytime log onto http://www.cakewalk.com/register, or call 888-CAKEWALK (U.S.) or +(617)-423-9004 (outside the U.S.) between 9 AM and 8 PM Eastern Standard Time. If you live outside of North America, please visit our distributor’s page at www.cakewalk.com/Dealers/International.asp to get the telephone number of your local distributor.

You’ll need to supply your serial number, your name, and a valid email address. In return for this information, we’ll email you a registration code that will allow you to keep using the software forever. We recommend you write this registration code on the serial number sticker for safekeeping.

English

Conventions Used in this Book

The following table describes the text conventions in this book:

Convention... Meaning...

Bold Italics Text that appears in bold italics is a command in SONAR.

hyphen (File-Open) A hyphen represents a level in the menu hierarchy. For example, File-

SMALL CAPS Small caps are used for file extensions (.MID) and file names (AUD.INI).

Open means to click on the File menu and select the Open command.

Getting Help

In addition to this User’s Guide, SONAR includes online help that can provide you with quick reference information whenever you need it. Simply press F1 or click the Help button in any dialog box to find the information you need. If you are new to recording and editing music on your PC, see the online help topic “Beginner’s Guide to Cakewalk Software” for an introduction.

If you need more information than you can find in the User’s Guide or the online help, here are two great places to look:

• Check the Support page of our Web site (www.cakewalk.com) for updated technical information and answers to frequently asked questions.

• Post messages to the SONAR user community using one of the Cakewalk forums. For more information about the newsgroups, visit www.cakewalk.com.

You can also get technical support directly from Cakewalk. In order to obtain technical support, you must register your product. You can obtain technical support for this product in the following ways:

• Visit http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/SONAR/SR5.asp.

• Call Cakewalk Technical Support at +1 (617) 423-9021 on weekdays, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Eastern time. Be sure to have your serial number ready when you call.

Technical support hours, policies, and procedures are subject to change at any time. Check our Web site for the latest support information.

xxiv

Introduction

SONAR is a professional tool for authoring sound and music on your personal computer. It’s designed for musicians, composers, arrangers, audio and production engineers, multimedia and game developers, and recording engineers. SONAR supports Wave, MP3, ACIDized waves, WMA, AIFF and other popular formats, providing all the tools you need to do professional-quality work rapidly and efficiently.

SONAR is more than an integrated MIDI and digital audio authoring software package—it’s an expandable platform that can function as the central nervous system of your recording studio. With drivers for common high-end audio hardware, full support for audio plug-ins, software synthesizers, MFX MIDI plug-ins, and MIDI Machine Control (MMC) of external MIDI gear, SONAR can handle your most demanding projects.

In This Chapter

About SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Computers, Sound, and Music. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Installing SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Starting SONAR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

SONAR Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Windows Taskbar Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Screen Colors and Wallpaper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Starting to Use SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

English

About SONAR

SONAR is the flagship product of the Cakewalk line of integrated MIDI and digital audio sequencers for the Windows platform. SONAR has a comprehensive feature set that makes it the single most productive tool for sound and music authoring. Here are some of the ways you can use SONAR.

Music Composition and Exploration

SONAR is a powerful music-composition application, providing tools to record your own musical performances; enhance or improve the quality of those performances; and edit, arrange, and experiment with the music. With a few simple clicks of the mouse, you can arrange, orchestrate, and audition your composition. Fully integrated sequencing allows you to combine the convenience and flexibility of MIDI composition with the high-quality sound and subtlety of digital audio sound recording and reproduction. Change the feel of a piece by locking it to a musical groove, or add delicate delays, anticipations, or echoes that add richness to the music.

SONAR displays and lets you edit your music using standard musical notation and guitar tablature, so you can adjust individual notes, add performance markings, and print individual parts or full scores. You can graphically draw tempo and volume changes, or add lyrics to display on-screen or to include with printed scores.

Remixing

SONAR’s Groove clips allow you to import, create, export and edit loops, making it possible to quickly change tempos and keys for an entire project. The Loop Explorer view lets you preview loops in the project’s tempo and key before dragging and dropping them onto a track.

Game Sound Development

There’s no better tool than SONAR for composing music for electronic games. Clip-based sequencing lets you create and reuse musical themes freely, so you can associate musical sections with game characters, locations, objects, and actions. Your creations can be saved and replayed using the compact MIDI file format, which adapts its sound automatically to the target hardware for the best possible sound reproduction.

Sound Production and Engineering

If you want to produce music CDs or master tapes, SONAR has virtually everything you need from recording to mixing and mastering. Multichannel recording lets you capture studio or live performances track by track. Reconfigurable buses provide full control over your mix. Real-time stereo effects like chorus, flange, reverb, and delay/echo can be applied as track inserts, in effects loops, or to the master mix. SONAR supports 44.1 KHz sampling for CD-quality sound, 24-bit/96 kHz sound for DVD-quality sound, and lets you choose from lower or higher sample rates as well. All audio effects are 32-bit floating point for faster processing and high-quality sound reproduction. Many effects now support 64bit processing for pristine quality.

Web Authoring

SONAR is the ideal tool for developing and producing music and sound for the World Wide Web, because it lets you save your work in the formats that are most commonly used on web sites: MIDI, MP3, and Windows Media Advanced Streaming Format. Any SONAR project—musical composition, audio clip, commercial spot, jingle with voice-over—can be stored in a web-compatible format with a few simple mouse clicks.

Film and Video Scoring and Production

SONAR has many of the tools you need to execute audio post-production projects quickly and efficiently. SONAR provides chase lock sync to time code for frame-by-frame accuracy when

synchronizing audio or MIDI to film or video. Or, you can turn chase lock off to conserve CPU power. SONAR provides high-quality time stretching and sample-accurate editing with zero-crossing detection so you can make the fine adjustments you need in record time. In addition, SONAR’s support for video files gives you convenient synchronized access to digitized video, making film and video scoring easier than ever.

Flexibility

SONAR works the way you want to work—you can customize screen layouts, toolbars, and audio and MIDI system configurations to make your work more efficient. SONAR integrates with other sound editing tools so you can access them in an instant without leaving SONAR.

Computers, Sound, and Music

This section provides some background on the different ways that computers store and play sound and music. Computers work with sound and music in two different forms: MIDI and digital audio.

MIDI

MIDI (short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is the way computers communicate with most sound cards, keyboards, and other electronic instruments. MIDI refers to both the type of cables and plugs used to connect the computers and instruments, and to the language those computers and instruments use to talk to each other. The MIDI standard is accepted and used worldwide. Almost any electronic instrument you buy today will have MIDI connectors and can be used with other MIDI instruments and with your computer’s MIDI interface.

The MIDI language conveys information and instructions, both from the computer to the instrument and from the instrument to the computer. For example, if your computer wants your keyboard to play a note, it sends a MIDI “Note On” message and tells the keyboard which note to play. When your computer wants the keyboard to stop playing that note, it sends another message that stops the note from playing.

The MIDI language has many other instructions, such as messages to change the sound that is used to play the notes (the bank and patch), messages used to work the sustain pedal and the pitch-bend wheel, and others. By sending the right messages at the right times, your computer can control your electronic instrument and make it play music.

MIDI information can be sent on 16 different channels. You can set up your MIDI equipment to listen for messages on all channels or on only a few.

MIDI files contain all the MIDI messages and timing information that are needed to play a song. MIDI files can be read and played by many different programs, including SONAR, and can even be played by programs on other types of computers. MIDI files have the extension .

There are several important advantages of the MIDI format:

• Large amounts of music can be stored in a very compact form

• Different parts of a piece can easily be assigned to any instrument you can imagine

• The music contains information on notes, tempos, and key signatures that makes it possible to display and edit the piece using standard musical notation

The primary disadvantage of MIDI is that the quality of the music a listener hears will vary depending on the MIDI equipment the listener is using. For example, MIDI usually sounds much better on an expensive synthesizer than it does on an inexpensive sound card.

MID.

English

Digital Audio

Digital audio is a simple way to record and play sounds of any type. It works like a tape recorder—you record something, then later play it back. Digital audio stores the sound as a long series of numbers.

Sound Waves

Sound waves are vibrations in the air. Sound waves are generated by anything that vibrates; a vibrating object causes the air next to it to vibrate, and the vibration is passed through the air in all directions. When the vibrating air enters your ear, it makes your eardrum vibrate, and you hear a sound. Likewise, if the vibrating air hits a microphone, it causes the microphone to vibrate and send electrical signals to whatever it's connected to.

These vibrations are very fast. The slowest vibration frequency you can hear is about 20 vibrations per second, and the fastest is around 16,000 to 20,000 vibrations per second.

Recording Digital Audio

To record digital audio, your computer monitors the electrical signal generated by a microphone, an electric guitar, or another source. At equal intervals of time (for CD-quality sound, this means 44,100 times a second), the computer measures and saves the strength of the electrical signal from the microphone, on a scale from 0 to 65,535.

That's it. Digital audio data is just a long series of numbers. The computer sends these numbers, in the form of electrical signals, to a speaker. The speaker then vibrates and generates the same sound that was recorded.

The primary advantage of digital audio is the quality of the sound. Unlike MIDI, a digital audio recording is very rich, capturing all the nuances, overtones, and other characteristics of the sound exactly as performed. The main drawback of digital audio is that it takes up a lot of disk space. To record a 1-minute segment of stereo, CD-quality digital audio, you need about 10 megabytes of disk space.

On the PC, digital audio is usually stored in Wave files (extension .wav). There are many programs available that let you create, play, and edit these files. SONAR reads, writes, and lets you edit Wave files.

Installing SONAR

SONAR is easy to install. All you need to do is choose the folder where the program and sample project files should be stored.Before you start, make sure you have your serial number handy. Your serial number is located on the back of your CD case.

Installation note: If you choose to not install the Sample files, you will not have the necessary content to use the tutorials in Chapter 2.

To Install SONAR

1. Start your computer.

2. Close any open programs you have running.

3. Place the SONAR CD-ROM in your CD-ROM drive.

If you have autorun enabled, the SONAR AutoRun menu opens automatically, showing you a dialog box with several buttons. If autorun is not enabled, you can open the SONAR AutoRun menu by selecting Start-Run and entering d:\AutoRun.exe (where d:\ is your CD-ROM drive).

4. Click the Install SONAR button.

Note:

If you exit Setup without completing the installation, choose Start-Run, type D:\AutoRun.exe (where D:\ is your CD-ROM drive), and click OK. This will reopen the AutoRun window, and you can click Install SONAR to start installation again.

5. Follow the installation instructions on the screen.

You can also install SONAR by choosing Start-Run and running the application named from the CD.

SETUP.EXE

Uninstalling SONAR

When you installed SONAR, the setup program placed an Uninstall icon in the Start menu. To uninstall SONAR, click the Start button and choose Programs-Cakewalk-SONAR 5 (Studio Edition or Producer Edition)-Uninstall SONAR 5.

Setup

You can install SONAR on any computer that runs Windows XP or x64 and has a sound card or built-in sound module. If you want to hook up other devices, like a MIDI keyboard, an electric guitar, or a microphone, you need the right cables, and you need to find the right connectors on your computer.

Before you install SONAR, take a minute to register the software so we can let you know when updates become available and provide you with technical support. To register anytime log onto http:// www.cakewalk.com/register, or call 888-CAKEWALK (U.S.) or +(617)-423-9004 (outside the U.S.) between 9 AM and 8 PM Eastern Standard Time. If you live outside of North America, please visit our distributor’s page at www.cakewalk.com/Dealers/International.asp to get the telephone number of your local distributor. You’ll need to supply your serial number, your name, and a valid email address.

To connect a MIDI keyboard to your computer, you need standard MIDI cables or a MIDI adapter cable, such as the one available in Cakewalk’s PC Music Pack. One end of the adapter cable should have two 5- pin DIN connectors that connect to your keyboard or other MIDI device. At the other end, you need a 15-pin connector to connect to a sound card through its MIDI/joystick port.

If you have a dedicated MIDI interface, lots of electronic music gear, or work with many different music software packages,see

Before you attach or detach any cables from your computer, you should shut down your computer and turn off the power to all your equipment. This greatly reduces the chance of electrical damage to your equipment while plugging and unplugging cables.

English

Audio Connections

There are several types of audio interfaces (soundcards). CardBus (PCI), USB/USB2 and FireWire are the most common. Laptops can use an audio PCMCIA card. Many audio interfaces also have MIDI inputs and some have built in MIDI synthesizers as well. This section covers the various audio connection options.

Analog and Digital Inputs

There are two basic types of audio inputs, analog and digital. Analog inputs allow you to connect a guitar, mic or other instrument to your computer directly. The audio interface converts the analog input to digital. Digital inputs allow other digital devices to connect directly to your computer. Common digital inputs include external analog to digital converters, popular guitar processors like the Line6 Pod, and other digital recording systems like the ADAT decks. Analog inputs are very common, and are standard in virtually all consumer sound cards (the ones that come with your PC). Digital inputs are becoming more popular and are very common on professional and mid-level, “prosumer” interfaces. Analog inputs allow you to record a mono or stereo signal (assuming you have a stereo input) while digital inputs allow you to record 1 to 8 signals depending on the type of digital connection.

The following table describes the various analog inputs and outputs:

Type of Analog Input/Output… Description...

Balanced (XLR, phono or RCA) a mono input/output

Unbalanced (TRS) a stereo or mono input/output

The following table describes the various digital inputs and outputs:

Type of Digital Input/Output… Description...

S/PDIF Sony/Philips Digital Interface—capable of carrying a stereo signal, S/

ADAT Lightpipe Up to 8 channels of simultaneous transfer. If you want to import your

TDIF Tascam Digital Interface—up to 8 channels of simultaneous transfer.

AES/EBU Often referred to as simply AES, this type of digital connection uses a

Read your hardware documentation carefully to determine what kind of digital connections, if any, you have on your audio interface.

To Connect an Electric Guitar to Your Computer

• If your sound card has a 1/8 inch input jack, plug your 1/4” mono guitar cable into a 1/8” stereo adapter, and then plug the 1/8” adapter into the microphone input or line input jack on your computer sound card.

• If you use a professional or “pro-sumer” sound card, there is probably a 1/4 inch input jack on your

PDIF is transmitted via RCA, Toslink or more rarely BNC jacks (singlepin cable-TV connections)

old ADAT material without any signal degradation, this is the connection you should use.

modified XLR cable to transfer a stereo signal.

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