My Sonar Producer Expanded is a fabulous music production tool...

Sonar X1 is such a big help to me... I have a musical idea, I insert a piano or plug in a guitar, hit record, a minute later I have it recorded. I run it thru the Pro Channel, beef up the sound, copy and special paste it about 20 times so it loops, export to a wav file, burn to cd, put the cd into my truck's cd player, go for a short road trip while listening to the musical idea, come up with more ideas to add to it,  and repeat the whole process. 
 
Other times I'll load up Session Drummer find a loop and jam to it till I come up with something cool....Sonar is working as solid as a rock for me and let's me concentrate on making music...
 
Even my simple sound checks are turning into song ideas....
 
This is good.
 Very good.
 
 
 
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next time when you add session drummer to your timeline take a small 2 bar part and right click it/convert to step sequncer/mess around with the beat a little so they alternate every other 2 bars.
then simply right click on it again and/bounce to clips/now the clip is back to its original state.
you see its important as a musician to find originality in ourselfs in every little part,its what makes us better as musicians.
by changing your beats up a little bit you are forcing yourself to look deeper withing to find that original person and not using some preset that your going to hear in john doe's song and a million other john doe's.

using presets and creating parts.add cybal crashes and snare drums to accent those breaks and heavey strumming will open up a whole other world for you and make you a better artist painting with wider brush strokes.

i like your creative process and your attitude.  :)

Amen, brother.  Very similar to what I do.

Hey, Bub. Have you ever considered something like this? http://www.amazon.com/Ken...ger-iPod/dp/B0007XXHNW

I think they just have a high defect rate. If it doesn't work I'd just return it. Not sure how much they degrade the sound though.

Blank cd's are cheap so it's not a problem for me. Plus it gives me a permanent record of my song idea for future use. A USB stick would get erased. Cd's also act as a back up for me, so if an idea gets lost on the computer, I have it on cd. You know what they say, "if it's not backed up, you don't really have it."

Don't ya know that X1 sounds bad at least according to the golden eared users of PT.

I find your findings in line with my own but then I don't claim to have golden ears. Educated yes, golden no.

Bub


Most new cars come with USB ports now to listen to music from thumb drives. My cars don't have a USB port because they are too old, but I can't wait for the day when I burn my last CD. What a waste it is to throw a couple tracks on it to do sound checks in the car and then throw it out, but I do the same thing you do.

Another cool way to do it is if you have a newer cell phone, you can transfer files to it via bluetooth from your laptop, and as with the USB ports, newer cars have bluetooth, and you can stream that way directly from your cell phone without a thumb drive.

That USB thing is the only way to go - no more trial CD's just like you said Bub just put it on the stick - plug it in and boom it is reading it and playing it.
 
Technology  what would our lives be without it????

CD-RW (rewritable CD's) are playable in most car CD players, and I think you can re-write an audio CD 1000 times before they fade out, are you guys not using these to listen to your mixes ?

You must have a huge rack of CD's by now ?

I'm probably wrong, but I thought you had to finalize an audio CD before it will play, and once you finalize a CDRW, it can't be used again?

I agree with you dj, it is good to have the CD's for future reference. I recently came across some stuff I did back in the late 80's that I have long since lost the projects for. It was a thrill when I popped the CD in and rediscovered a few lost memories. One in particular was a Christmas song I did instrumentally that I had long forgot about that I had used my 1967 Fender 12-String on.

Bub


I'm probably wrong, but I thought you had to finalize an audio CD before it will play, and once you finalize a CDRW, it can't be used again?

I agree with you dj, it is good to have the CD's for future reference. I recently came across some stuff I did back in the late 80's that I have long since lost the projects for. It was a thrill when I popped the CD in and rediscovered a few lost memories. One in particular was a Christmas song I did instrumentally that I had long forgot about that I had used my 1967 Fender 12-String on.

Finalized usually just means you can't add more to the session which, on a normal CD means it will be closed and can't be used again. With a re-writable you just do a quick format to erase the directory structure and you can use it again. You can't add tracks in different sessions per se, but you can delete what's on the disc and start over.