New to Sonar, need a bit of advice for MIDI

Opinions vary and even long time users can be unaware of the most efficient way to accomplish MIDI editing techniques in Cakewalk or Sonar. Nonetheless, Sonar IMHO is one of the very best at editing MIDI. I have used Sonar and its precursor, Cakewalk Pro Audio and its precursor Cakewalk Apprentice, from the very start of the MIDI on PC trend.

I have had these Cakewalk products controlling up to 5 external MIDI ports all at the same time. I have been able to edit MIDI files for not only controlling sound modules, but also for controlling guitar and vocal effects processors, drum machines and stage lights.

There has rarely been an edit I wanted to do and could not figure out an easy way to accomplish that edit within Cakewalk. There are some techniques that other editors do with greater ease, but I always found a way to get the same results in Cakewalk. (Cakewalk did not have the ability to directly interpolate a series of MIDI events into another type of MIDI event but I found ways of accomplishing this using CAL.)

CAL (Cakewalk Application Language) is not as commonly used as it used to be and is not as strongly supported, but if you know or are a programmer, CAL can even be used to balance your checkbook. (You can access dlls). So for the person who uses mostly external MIDI devices rather than audio, Cakewalk and CAL combine to give you an environment in which you can accomplish almost anything you can imagine.

The only limitiation I ever ran into that I could not work around was that I was unable to write a CAL routine to control one device that required a note off event. CAL had a documented note on event but I was unable to find a note off event inside of CAL.