Sonar Platinum Templates

Hi,
For years, when I wanted a new project, I'd just new, maybe take 16 Audio or MIDI or whatever, then add what I needed, etc. For some reason, this time I scrolled on down and in SONAR Platinum (at least) there's like a whole new world of possible templates. Mastering templates. Specific Mix templates. Showcase templates. Oh, this looks interesting.
 
So, I chose Showcase Songwriter (that being what I mainly am), and created myself a project.
 
Some of it looks fairly straightforward. Session Drummer track. Check. An audio track for vocal, one for guitar. Check. A bass and piano track. Check So I dumped my MIDI drum track into the Session Drummer track, okay, good. I've never used Session Drummer, but it sounds nice. I dumped my bass and piano MIDI tracks into their appropriate tracks. But now the problem starts. The only sound I can get out of anything is drums. The bass and piano tracks are stone cold silent.
 
Okay, so I figured, "I don't what I'm doing. Maybe I should RTFM* and figure out how to use these Showcase (and Mastering) templates." But all I could find was an article that said these various helpful templates existed, not what to do when they didn't seem to work.
 
Is there a missing piece here? When I've used MIDI tracks before, I just imported my MIDI tracks, added a soft synth, and away you go. With this Showcase marvel, I'm not even sure how to add another synth or how to hook it up. When I did add another soft synth, I was still only presented Session Drummer choices for any new MIDI tracks.
 
So...

1. What to do to get bass & piano working?
2. How to add other MIDI tracks? (probably related to #1)
3. Is there a FM** to read that gives more detail on how to use these fabulous new templates?

Thanks in advance for your help. And of course for all the fish. 
 
*If you are not familiar with "RTFM", it means "Read The F%#King Manual"
** Hence "FM" means... well, you get it it.

This won't be helpful for the problems you've encountered, but I've had similar experiences going back to X1.
 
Thankfully, I'm completely over them, but what I've found is that templates are great, but are mostly CW-centric.
Specifically in terms of midi, my routings really get screwed up in templates with what I mostly use (Spectrasonics, NI and IK stuff).
 
When Omnisphere first came out, Spectrasonics had a tutorial on how to set up a multi in Sonar, and they pulled it shortly after 8.5 became X1, then I started having problems with Miroslav stuff. 
 
At first I was very defiant about it, but I learned to create my own templates with any kind of midi data in it, because I could delete the midi faster than I could reset my midi channels in the inspector or console view.
 
I think there were a couple of people here that experienced it, but I freely admit I was in a very tiny minority.
 
I love templates (will love them more when we can fully design our own GUI) but please learn how to make your make your own.
 
I've never had a problem with the audio templates though, and what is that guitar in your icon?  Looks sweet.
 
 
 
 

OK, as to your specific questions...
So...

1. What to do to get bass & piano working? Well, you need a midi track, set the input to your keyboard (ie, you want it to get the midi info from your keyboard... omni works fine unless it's multitambril), and then set the output to you synth/bass/piano or whatever you want from the list that pops up(click the "o" for output, below the "i" for input... you probably don't need to set channel unless you're using multi timbral instruments like Omnisphere...  Once you've selected where the midi is to go (say your piano vst) go to that track (the instrument track) and select it's input in this case, the "Piano" and send it's output to the master...(or sub or aux track or patch point... you got lots to learn... vids...)
2. How to add other MIDI tracks? (probably related to #1)  This is easy... when you pull an instrument from the browser into a new track it brings up the box that lets you click, "add midi track" or something like that.  If you forget you can just go to "insert" in the top menu and click midi track...and set it to send to the new instrument... 

chuckpuckett
...
The guitar, btw, is an Ibanez. I mainly bought it for the cutaway, very useful in gigs for the kind of music we play, when I need to play up on the neck. I've since changed to a black Martin cutaway, with much better tone and plays better. Actually one of the best guitars I've ever had. Here's a video of one of my songs we played at a recent gig, featuring the Martin, if your interested:
 
https://youtu.be/DvTIIXiSsDM

Good song, Chuck. Love the Martin.
 
I like your female vocalist's voice. Your daughter?
 
And I was going to make a joke, asking you if you know the bass player's name, but I found it in the video's notes. He's got a name alright. Kinda hard to pronounce. I'll stick with "Bob". 

I recently discovered the project templates as well. I didn't realize they were added back in Hopkinton. One thing I noticed in the mix templates is that they have a bunch of hidden busses. Check the routing on all your tracks to see where they're going.

Mistergreen
I recently discovered the project templates as well. I didn't realize they were added back in Hopkinton. One thing I noticed in the mix templates is that they have a bunch of hidden busses. Check the routing on all your tracks to see where they're going.

The Mastering, Mix and Showcase templates are documented in the Hopkinton e-zine, pages 7-12.

I'll repost some information I shared on track templates over at V.I. Control awhile ago: 
Me:
Sonar allows for unlimited "track" templates you can bring into any song... full on setups/effects/routings/instruments/subsmixes/effects sends/prochannel setups/patchpoints/etc...available in 10 seconds (vs. lots of time to set them up) and you can just pull whatever you want into any song... and more as you work on it...no track template limits... saves a HUGE amount of time, preserves total flexibility (as opposed to the 300 track song template approach most use for song orchestrals...)
Can't imagine living without this... Indeed, often while doodling around I'll decide I like bits of a new set up, just flag them, and "viola!"... a new template...1 to a million tracks, doesn't matter... including multi instrument settups... coming up with adequately descriptive names is the hardest part of the process!
 
Tack: Vastman said: ↑

Sonar allows for unlimited "track" templates you can bring into any song... full on setups/effects/routings/instruments/subsmixes/effects sends/prochannel setups/patchpoints/etc.

 
With Sonar, can you have routing references between templates? For example, say I have a mix template, that sets up a busses for mixing, reverb, etc. And then I have another template for, say, Strings. Can my strings tracks have a send to the reverb bus created by the mix template, and not actually part of the strings template? If so, what happens when you pull in the strings template before the mix template? Does it understand the dependency, or does it ignore the sends that fail to resolve?
 
Hi, Tack... sorry for the delay... up all night mucking round with OT's new METROPOLIS ARK 1 and spend all day at work gardening in a semi-oblivious state As to your question, Sonar's track template system is quite intellegent... For example, I have a couple very different vocal package templates with mains and harmonies and sends to "reverb" and "delay". These effects are full setups with the programs I like to use for my voice... One template routes the Harmony tracks to a submix buss "Harmonies" and the other just routes them to the mains... As long as the busses are labeled the same, it doesn't duplicate them... which ever template you load first creates them and the next template looks to see if they're there...if so, it uses them.I have another template with the addition of a nectar2 harmony set up sending to a "Nectar" buss... in that case it looks for the buss and not seeing it, it creates it. And it automatically uses the verb/delay busses... If you want 2 different delay busses, using different delays, you just label the other one "delay2"...Saves settings per track, so they can all be different.It's great for spreading the load among cpu cores for multi-instruments like Falcon, which aren't multi-core... just add the same template for another instance of Falcon to distribute the load better...Of course, it gets tricky if you save a kontakt instance as a multi as any changes will be lost when the original multi is brought up again. In such cases I've learned to avoid saving multis I might want to add to as templates... but the basic track set ups are lickity split...they effectively become a track multi, not a multi contained in Kontakt so changes can be made and saved ...
 
I'm still new at this "template" thing and ain't lookin' for huge templates as each song is unique. It's why I just love the "track" templates... as I can create flexible chunks of instrumentation quickly.The templates deal with both mix and instrument setups as one but I can't see any reason why you can't have a mix overlay of busses proceed or overlay material... With Sonar's recent monthly additions of new things like patch points, I haven't had the time to fully explore any problems, but the basic system of prescreen/add if needed, should preclude any problem. Wish I wasn't working on gardens for money or I'd have more time for such stuffThere's only one frustration with the track templates... they don't save the colors assigned to the various tracks/folders. It is a feature request many have voted on and we expect it to show up in some monthly update.Have no idea how Cubase or Logic work but  Ableton and StudioOnev3 do NOT have track templates...You can trial SPlatinum for 30 days. I'd be curious how a real "orchestrator" would deploy this tool.
 
BTW, I  think I heard patch points and aux tracks are now included...don't recall when and haven't used this yet.

Hi. The default project templates defaults to C:\Cakewalk Content\SONAR Platinum\Project Templates
And track templates to C:\Cakewalk Content\SONAR Platinum\Track Templates
All the best.

chuckpuckett

1. What to do to get bass & piano working?

Not sure. I just loaded the template to see if there was a problem, and it worked when I used a MIDI keyboard controller. You can right-click on an Instrument and choose "Split Instrument Track" to see the MIDI track and whether it's getting signal from a controller.