Here's an example sonar project for the community

This is an actual working, largish, complete sonar 8 project. So you can see what somebody else's project looks like.

I learned a bunch over the years from the sample Cakewalk project files. (Those Grandpa Mojo Project5 demos were a hoot! Taboo Style made me go out and buy Dimension Pro.) I'm always looking for more examples to procrastinate, er, learn from. So, in that spirit (learning AND procrastinating), I toss another example project file out to the community. Use it as you see fit (for your educational use only, please). Consider it one way to do things in Sonar. (Or one way NOT to do things, your call.) If it gives you some ideas, great. (Unless those ideas involve angry mobs with pitchforks outside my window, in which case you can forget I was ever here.) It's a complete work that I put together over the holidays for fun. ("Complete" meaning I'm completely not touching it anymore, it is what it is!)

You can hear my audio rendering of the file here (my soundclick page): http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8572923 and you can download the zipped CWP project file here (my home page): http://www.adamczyk.com/images/(counter)theme.zip.

Couple of things you should know. It's a project done (almost) completely in the Cakewalk world, using Producer 8.5, Rapture and Dimension Pro. No wav audio files needed in this puppy, just the CWP that's in the zip. I probably have some third party prog/multisample files loaded in a few of the synths (sonic foundry, for example), so you may or may not be able to load a few tracks exactly right. You can still look at the project and heck, just substitute your own favorite synth patches for any that don't load. You'll likely improve the project!

In the project, there's a bunch of synth tracks, lots of automation envelopes, some basic compression tricks, reverb effects, and <egad> dynamics in the arrangement. It uses a fair amount of horsepower when all is loaded, so consider holding down the shift key if you load it on your spare 386. You might think it a simple project or you might find it sophisticated. Hah, guess you'll have to download and open it yourself to find out. Hope you find it useful.

Thank you for being a brave one!

This is interesting post, seeing how someone else put's together a song and with no wave files.

thanks for posting!

Michael
Michael

Jay/midimind

Thanks for the compliment. Yeah, cinematic. The File stats says 12,000+ events, which is sort of meaningless (I bet envelope curves inflate that number?), but sounds impressive. (There's also an ungodly amount of time recorded in the stats, but that's because I tend to leave projects sitting open even when I leave my daw, so they are staring me in the face, looking forlorn and neglected, when I return--otherwise, I'd never get back to them. So on the one hand, most of the time recorded by Sonar, I was doing nothing to the project. Or....was I subconsciously working on it anyway while at work, and so that time away _should_ be counted?) Now all I need is the video footage to go with it! I'm looking forward to hearing/seeing your remix. What a cool idea.

Michael White

Brave is one word for it. I was working on this project and realized it was fairly self-contained within the "cakewalk family of products", so why not hand it over to the cakewalk community for scrutiny? Well, I hemmed and hawed all during working on it, then finally made the decision to do it (publish the raw project, warts and all), then STILL took a week of hemming and hawing before actually ftping the files. Now that it's there, I'd do it again (next time, hopefully with less than a week of h&h), if it seems of use/interest to folks.

Sickvision (that's not your real name, is it? :-)

Thanks for checking it out. I agree, it would be neat if more users published projects, but having done so, I can truly understand why we're hesitant to do so. When one is staring at the misapplied equalizer settings and ill-advised voicings and sloppy keyboard runs, I think my blaming the resulting audio on a lousy MP3 encoding would be met with skepticism. It's hard to make excuses for what is clearly my doing. (Oh, except the "boing-boing" track, which doesn't do the--what? ping pong balls?--quite right and I think that's Dimension Pro's <minor> fault.) On the other hand, I get to take credit for anything that went right, I don't have to credit any plug-in for that. I took a bit of inspiration to publish from the Pat Metheny Group, who publishes scores of their albums online. (Other folks do too, like Wendy Carlos, who I'm sure feels safe in the knowledge that no one could ever recreate what she does, even if she spelled it all out on a recipe card for you.)

I'm sorry you couldn't load the project. I'd be happy to help diagnose the issues if you'd like. What sort of errors/results are you getting/not getting? I would think that Dim Pro and Rapture should load regardless of how they are installed, assuming they load correctly for you anyway.

You raise an important point about the 3rd party plug-ins making collaboration and sharing difficult if not impossible. Thinking about it, my druthers would be to toss 3rd party stuff in favor of collaborating. So it's a choice one makes. Do you/I/we think the advantages of collaborating, for example, trump the advantages of having a wide choice of effects? There's no right answer here, only wrong ones if they get in the way of one's route to success (however one measures that).

Kev999, hearing that it was worth the effort is a nice compliment. Thanks.

Um, ah, yeah, sorry about the size of the thing. In hindsight, maybe something a bit more compact would have been a better first example. Well, all I can say in my defense was when I made the decision to publish the project, it wasn't so-o, er, meaty. (And I figured, worst case, a user could always just hold down shift while loading, to avoid all the plug-ins, and at least look at it. Learning exercise, right?)

Sonartist (love that screen name),

Thanks for the comments. Especially thanks for them being so positive.

The second part that you mention (actually a bunch of things in this piece), sort of just hopped into the work one evening and I didn't have the heart to cut and paste it to another file and say 'wait your turn, little idea'. 

Um, doesn't everybody here talk to their projects once and a while?

Very helpful! Thanks!

I just stumbled across this from your post in another thread, and I can't wait to download it and try it. I don't have Rapture, but I have other synths I could substitute, as you suggest.

I'll be checking out your post in the Techniques forum, too. Thanks again!