Keyboard shortcut or easy way to deselect notes in piano roll view.

You can do all this with the smart tool. If you have selected a number of notes, and want to deselect a note, simply crtl (left) click on desired note to deselect. Or left click on an empty space to deselect all. To select several notes, right click and "lasso" the notes you want.

I reported this as a bug, but no one seemed to agree.
 
What I do to deselect is click once in the empty pane, not on a note.   The problem, imo, is that you can no longer enter a note in PRV with a single click (without either a tool change or a modifier key, ie the other hand in use).   So every time you touch a note with the dumb tool it gets selected, and then in order to draw in the controller pane, you must unselect that note that was just selected.       And, related problem, every time you click in the time-line, PRV, with even a tiny slide of the mouse, you select things on what sonar thinks is your active track (even if it is not), and again must unselect to do anything useful.    I'd like to configure the PRV time-line to do away with zoom and slip-select and all the other weird places where you can click-in-a-few pixels and do things you don't want.
 

Zargg71
You can do all this with the smart tool. If you have selected a number of notes, and want to deselect a note, simply crtl (left) click on desired note to deselect. Or left click on an empty space to deselect all. To select several notes, right click and "lasso" the notes you want.

Thanks Zargg71- left click did the trick. I thought that left click would draw a note  as in empty space the smart tool becomes a draw tool, but apparently that takes a double click  or click and drag. 
 
Another good option synkrotron - thanks.
 
A configurable tool would indeed be brilliant william:) 

If you double click on the piano roll it places a note, on the line you double clicked on, using which ever snap is currently set, of the same length and velocity as the previously drawn note...
 

williamcopper
So:  I repeat, would like to click for placement, and then be able to adjust.  The draw tool does the single-click placement, but you can't adjust a note with that tool. 

I can certainly understand why you'd want this, but I think the issue might be that a single-click action with the Smart Tool would set up a conflict. There needs to be a tool to select, and selection requires a single click (or at least, it should - double-clicking or key+click to select would get tedious after a while). The Smart Tool has been chosen for selection (or adding a note if you double-click), after which it can then modify the note parameters.
 
If a single click inserted a note, then something else would need to provide the single-click select option because selecting a note would cause another note to be created on top of the note you selected. However, one way around this might be that if you single-clicked where there wasn't a note, it would create a note and if you single-clicked where there was a note, it would select the note. However, this would then preclude placing a note on top of another note, which there are valid reasons to do. I guess a workaround would be that if you wanted to place a note on another note, then you'd have to use a modifier key when clicking.

To be sure, people use different routines.   It never bothers me that clicking in the PRV window sets the Now time, but nor do I ever use that intentionally.   If icontakt configures Sonar to be "one-click set time now" and I configure sonar to be "one-click create note", we'd both be happy.  As to "one-click select" Anderton, I hope you realize that what we currently have is "one-click IN THE RIGHT PLACE" select ... that imo silly division of a tiny note into different areas with different meanings results in sometimes you select a note, some times you get the 'move' cursur, sometimes the stretch cursor and sometimes the edit cursor.    When would you want to select a single note, anyway, other than to stretch, move, or edit it?    I'd also love to left-click-drag to select a group of notes, rather than the current right-click-drag, which is more awkward. 

I've read this thread in it's entirety and to be honest, I see no need to change the current behaviour of the Smart Tool.
 
It is a physical impossibility to do everything with a single mouse click, although the ST goes a long way to fulfilling this need.

It's just a matter of getting used to the behaviour, in my humble opinion... As Jonesey says, you can't get the single click to do everything you want, and, indeed, I'd find using keyboard shortcuts a PITA too, now that I am used to what the smart tool can do.
 

Grem
But I went ahead and really learned to use the Smart Tool the way it was intended to be used, and I have never looked back. I can now edit much more quickly and efficiently. Which is why the Smart Tool was implemented.

Yep, totally agree. In fact, I rarely even bring up the smart tool menu in PRV... Everything I need for my work is right there on the default smart tool.
 
Also, if I click in space on the piano roll, when not meaning to, and a note is placed, I either right click on that note, which deletes it, and I'm in that area anyway so it's not like I'm having to move the mouse hither and thither...
 
Or, if my left hand is by my computer keyboard I will simply hit CTRL+Z which undoes the note placement.
 
EDIT:-
 
I should apologise... I just realised that I'm on a different version of Sonar to everyone else in this thread and so I am not aware of any "enhancements" may have been applied to the current PRV...
 
So, yeah... I'm sorry 
 
cheers
 
andy