Some ideas about Sonar X2 MIDI stuff.
Since I saw that there was a new arpeggiator UI in X2, I was interested in trying it out -- and the arpeggiator IS nice.
I hadn't done much with the MIDI Inspector in Sonar X1, so I took some time to investigate it now as I got familiar with X2.
I noticed some irregularities (or, perhaps, confusions that I may have):
The first is that some of the MIDI Inspector tools replace or enhance the MIDI FX in the FX bin - quantize and arpeggiator work much as the MIDI FX do.
But they work differently and the arps use different types of patterns, etc. I don't know how to get something into the ARP pattern format.
But the real bizarre thing is that Snap to Scale does not alter MIDI input, it's just placed here for some reason, but it is an editting tool aid.
It would be nice if Snap to Scale worked like MIDI FX - Transpose. It has a great Scale Manager (that the MIDI FX does not use at all).
It looks to me as if a bunch of older products, like Project5 patterns, etc., and older Direct X tools are mixed together in here instead of having a much better integrated MIDI subsystem.
In short, the MIDI Inspector could look a bit like the ProChannel and get a nice face-lift and better integration with the rest of Sonar.
I posted another thread about using the Scale Manager in the PRV to show the Tuning in effect. It would be nice to load the Tuning in the MIDI Inspector and the whole track is 'attuned' to that scale including MIDI transpose on input.
Another thing that needs better integration is the arpeggiator patterns. Sonar has PTN files, ARP files, and SSP files, but no unified way of importing or exporting all these various patterns. A good arpegiator should be able to use a tuning file and a pattern file as well as some sort of algorithm file.
So, in short, the future MIDI section of Sonar should have three things integrated:
- Tunings that apply to an entire track (or project) and are set up and maintained by the Scale Manager or something like it.
- Patterns that may be used in MIDI Clips, Step sequencers, or Arpeggiators, etc, maybe controlled by the Step Sequencer engine or something like it.
- An arpeggiator algorithm generator that is currently missing - some way to express musical phrase shapes, fractal patterns, etc. I'm asking a lot for this last one, it is completely missing now.