I wish the next version of Sonar's staff view would....

I wish the next version of Sonar would enable the user to place numbers or letters next to the note heads in staff view. (Useful for harmonic analysis.)

Any more good ideas for staff view?

Thanks in advance,

Ron

I’m for beefing up the input of rests as well.

Right now we can select the duration of the notes being entered.
It would be nice to have an extra button that would cause rests to be entered instead of notes, with the same duration that the note would have had. This is a common feature on a lot of notation software and I don’t think it would be hard to implement in the code.

--Carl

Be able to disaplay a keyboard instead of a fretboard.

I know staff view is not intended as a full-blown notation program but it screws up in ways that are SO amateurish it really doesn't deserve a place in a product which is otherwise so state-of-the-art. I've found workarounds for many of the things I've encountered but the following are severe limitations that I've not found any way around (FYI, I'm using Sonar 2.2):

Triplet support is miserable. You can't print triplet 16ths or 32nds at all. If you have anything less than a full beat's worth of equal-value triplets, it tries to show them as duple divisions (for example, I'm working on a piece now which has a piano part with a repeating pattern of a LH octave on each beat (in a 2/2 bar) followed by 5 triplet 8ths in the RH to fill out the beat. Sonar insists on notating the RH as 16th rest, 8th note, 16th note, 3 triplet 8ths...even when I quantize to precise triplets.

If you have anything resembling multiple voices on a line...even if it's simple stuff like some notes of a piano chord sustaining for different durations, Sonar's algorithms often produce nonsense (readable but amateurish...for example, the piece I'm doing now has one section in which the piano RH plays a chord in whole notes while another "voice" has a rhythm of six 8ths plus a quarter note. Sonar insists on turning the whole notes into dotted halves and making the last quarter part of the lower "voice"! In another part of the piece, it tries to turn some simple arpeggiation into complex multiple voicing with lots of extra rests).

If you have a chord with multiple accidentals, they are lined up instead of being staggered so you frequently can't tell what they are since they partially obscure one another.

The split point on trebel/bass systems is global for the part so you have to find a closest fit and live with it...even if that gives you nonsense like arpeggios in which a single note keeps popping over to the other staff (I work around this by treating the piano RH/LH as seperate tracks but then they don't get barred together and I've got at least one pianist I work with who finds that very annoying).

You can add dynamic marks and hairpins but no articulation marks.

The closest you can come to adding tempo indications is to put them under the staff using the dynamics tool. That sort of works but it's pretty crappy looking and, if you have a dynamic marking you want to add to the beginning of the same passage, you have to string them all together. Workable but amateurish.

When I need to produce serious scores of a work I'm developing in Sonar, I'll export it to an SMF and pick it up in Finale (although I think that's going to give way to Notion once I save up some more money!) However, in a situation like I'm working on now (I'm working with a choreographer and the music keeps changing as the dance evolves and I'm doing this in Sonar because I'm giving her synthesized tracks to work from before we bring in real musicians), it's not viable to continually re-export and go through all the tweaking over and over (I've NEVER had an SMF import flawlessly into Finale). These are exactly the times I want to rely on Sonar to produce decent scores and it's been a particularly big letdown on the current project.

There's a lot of things I like about Sonar but Staff view isn't one of them.

FYI, I've submitted the above (and other, pickier suggestions) via Cakewalk's Feature Request page...let's see if that makes any difference.

I'm a dedicated long-time CWPA/SONAR user...but...

Given the recent trend with the CW/SONAR line, don't expect any improvements in the staff view. SONAR has evolved into a sophisticated recording studio but has abandoned the traditional composer in the process. I would probably forgive them the shoddy staff view if they would make it possible to view and edit the staff or piano roll representation directly in track view on the midi tracks, in place of the marginally useful read-only graphic of the midi events.

I have and use Sibelius. It's great for producing professional scores, but has poor midi support, and no better really in the newest version. I have not used Finale, which I assume is excellent also.

But take a look at Overture 4, whose features have been announced. They're going in the right direction for traditional composers who use VSTi's as their sound sources. It operates somewhat like the SONAR staff view, but is much more sophisicated, with direct on-screen editing of controller data. It is evolved from an earlier Cake product...Scorewriter, I think.

BTW, I have to say that I prefer implicit rests and the ability to drag notes/phrases around on the staff. The explicit rest stuff and the persnickity note entry is the thing that makes Sibelius so difficult to use. No dragging of notes/phrases possible there and it's easy to erase an existing note when you think you're adding notes to build a chord.
Also, having a scrub tool in the SONAR staff view is a major plus.
Otherwise, I generally agree that staff view is...well..."dated" may be too kind a description.

I already wrote about this in a previous thread, but coming from a short stint (very short) with FL Studio, I was surprised to even see a staff editor.

Sonar's piano roll is a magnificent improvement over what I was used to as you can display and edit the parts of multiple instruments overlapping eachother on the same page.

My real wish is for the same thing to be possible in the staff view...the tablature/fretboard to be precise. Oh sure you can display multiple instruments, but each gets it's own tablature, stacked on top of eachother. If I could click one string on the fretboard and have it add a note for one instrument one the corresponding string in the tab view, and click another string and have it add a note for a different instrument on it's corresponding string in the same tab view, my true six-string composing suite would be complete and I'd do all my work in the staff/tab view. Alternatively each string could echo on different midi channels, but you get the idea. The ability to compose complex guitar parts with per/string bends in one tab view, without having to manually change string settings for every note would just so totally rule.

As it stands, doing it in tab view is too tedious in it's current state and I'm content to juggle two or three instruments (pseudo-six-string) in the piano roll instead.

Bruce,
I picked on your post because I like your notion of cooperative notation and sequencer apps, which would solve many problems for us traditional score-oriented types.

ORIGINAL: FLZapped
Programs that can sequence well, can't notate worth dog poo.

A quick look at Logic Pro might change your mind. It's a fine piece of software (yeah, Mac only), and the notation is far better than SONAR's.
Same may be true for C*B**E or N****O. I haven't checked.

ORIGINAL: FLZapped
Maybe Cakewalk should invest some time in developing a reasonable notation program of their own

They did and got rid of it. It's now Overture 4...I think...which is now looking very good.

ORIGINAL: FLZapped
...can be "rewired" into their other programs for those who also need quality notation.

This is a great idea and probably the reason it hasn't been done is....

ORIGINAL: FLZapped
....the only bridge is MIDI

The problem here is that there are a number of other actions besides notational ones that imply changes to the score that have no midi counterpart (delete a "Meter/Key" entry comes to mind). It would involve developing a protocol like midi on steroids to communicate the editing activities from one side of the fence to the other.

It would sure be cool, though.

ORIGINAL: billp

Bruce,
I picked on your post because I like your notion of cooperative notation and sequencer apps, which would solve many problems for us traditional score-oriented types.


Programs that can sequence well, can't notate worth dog poo.

A quick look at Logic Pro might change your mind. It's a fine piece of software (yeah, Mac only), and the notation is far better than SONAR's.
Same may be true for C*B**E or N****O. I haven't checked.

Well, I'm not a Mac biggot....

ORIGINAL: FLZapped
Maybe Cakewalk should invest some time in developing a reasonable notation program of their own

They did and got rid of it. It's now Overture 4...I think...which is now looking very good.

I'll check it out.

ORIGINAL: FLZapped
...can be "rewired" into their other programs for those who also need quality notation.

This is a great idea and probably the reason it hasn't been done is....


....the only bridge is MIDI

The problem here is that there are a number of other actions besides notational ones that imply changes to the score that have no midi counterpart (delete a "Meter/Key" entry comes to mind). It would involve developing a protocol like midi on steroids to communicate the editing activities from one side of the fence to the other.

It would sure be cool, though.

Hi Bill,

Well, if it were an "all cakewalk" program, the native cakewalk file format could be used, eliminating the "MIDI bridge." Of course, MIDI is still the order of the day when it comes to driving hardware. (Yeah, I'm a hardware biggot, because I use both a laptop and tower system with a common hardware synth)

I realize there are some things that cannot be notated directly. Pizzicato, or staccato - although they could be "interpreted"(And in the case of notation to sequencer, rules could be developed to "generate" the correct sequencer articulation - man that would make life so much easier!)

Slurs though, you're stuck from the sequencer to notation (although, some sequencing rules could be implemented that would allow slurs to modify the sequencer portion of the file for articulation puroposes - man would that be cool, or what).

Holds would be another sticky wicket(I currently use drastic tempo changes to "simulate" a hold. But tempo changes, key changes, are all available in the midi file.

There are tons of other things that I haven't even touched on. There is a notation prgram called Igor, which has massive amounts of programming to add smarts to the sequencing that is instrument dependant. For example, the automatic rolling of chords on a Harpsicord, or knowing the limits of hand stretch when playing a large chord on a piano, etc.....However, it is written in LISP and is really slow. and sometimes chokes on large files. I have had several conversations with the writes of the program and they appear to be about the most accessable developers around. They have the same problem as the other notation programs - creating a definition file for your particular hardware, nightmarish is an understatement. Almost all manufacturers provide an INS file for cakewalk software though.

BTW - oddly enough, Cakewalk DOES pick up piano pedal from a midi file, whereas Sibelius and Finale miss it - go figure.
And finally, no one seems to know how to properly handle glissanados.

-Bruce

Hi,

My problem with Staff view is that musicians reading it live (with the rest of the midi stuff happening) have a problem when the time line gets towards the end of the line. Only one line is displayed leaving them in mystery as to what's ahead. In variably they make a mistake as the window updates at the end of the line.  For that split second there is no way of knowing what to play.
Sonar needs two lines of staff displayed. It can be done with a button. With the time line running along the top line, getting near the end you can see what's coming on the second line. When the window updates the second line jumps to the top and a new second line enters. 

I've been asking for this for some time. Hopefully it will come about in the staff view update that's coming.

Does anyone know another way around this problem?  

Brian Leathlean - Eclipse Music - South Africa

David0329


I'm not certain about the details of Sonar's file formats but, unless I'm mistaken, they're trying to do everything off the same data stream and that's the fundamental problem. The piece I'm working on now is ultimately going to be played by live musicians but for which I need to provide intermediate, synthesized versions for a choreographer to work from. As such, I'm trying to keep things unquantized so she's got a reasonably musical working soundtrack but heavily quantized for notation purposes. The real solution (and I think some of the better sequencing programs do this) is to store performance and notation data seperately so that you can say something like "Notate this note as a quarter-note starting on beat two but play at as a dotted-eighth starting 10 ticks after beat two").

FYI, I haven't gotten my hands on it yet (and probably won't for a while since it's quite expensive) but, for traditional composers, especially those working with orchestral instruments, NOTION looks like it could be a god-send in the arena of great notation programs that sequence really well.

Have you tried toggling on the Fill and Trim Durations buttons in Staff View? That should round the notes up or down visually to give a quantized view but still plays the notes unquantized.

Kev999

I wish the next version of Sonar would...

How many versions of Sonar have been released since this thread was started?  I counted 6.

Oops. Missed that. Guess Dave probably no longer cares. Or maybe he's been waiting a very long time for a solution.