Just upgraded to Sonar 4 from Cubase SX, and am having problems with the Piano Roll keys in Sonar: when I click on them, they won't play anything.

I have a MIDI track laid out, and all recorded notes are visible in Piano Roll view. I can scrub across the notes, move them, edit them, etc., and can hear what I've changed when I scrub or press play. However, whenever I click on a piano key representing a note on the keyboard in Piano Roll view in order to preview the note, no sound comes out. I've looked at the included help file, searched FAQ's and Forums, but haven't found any solution or anyone else with this problem.

FYI, I have a Korg ES-1 drum machine hooked up to my computer. I can record into Sonar and Sonar will play what I've recorded just fine. But the only problem I have is that when I want to edit in Piano Roll view, I can't preview each note by pressing a key on the piano on the screen, so I have to either scrub across the notes to hear them or just guess which ones they are. In Cubase, all I had to do to preview a note was simply click on the piano keyboard in the user interface, and the note would play.

I'd LOVE to hear your suggestions on this seemingly simple topic which has caused me so much frustration, time, and grief.

Thanks!!!
-TS

maybe you have multiple midi tracks selected for the current piano roll view screen and one of them is masked? ie: not selected ...

How do you have the instrument definition for the midi track. What are you using for an output port? What are your computer specs?

ORIGINAL: securis

Just upgraded to Sonar 4 from Cubase SX, and am having problems with the Piano Roll keys in Sonar: when I click on them, they won't play anything.

I have a MIDI track laid out, and all recorded notes are visible in Piano Roll view. I can scrub across the notes, move them, edit them, etc., and can hear what I've changed when I scrub or press play. However, whenever I click on a piano key representing a note on the keyboard in Piano Roll view in order to preview the note, no sound comes out. I've looked at the included help file, searched FAQ's and Forums, but haven't found any solution or anyone else with this problem.

FYI, I have a Korg ES-1 drum machine hooked up to my computer. I can record into Sonar and Sonar will play what I've recorded just fine. But the only problem I have is that when I want to edit in Piano Roll view, I can't preview each note by pressing a key on the piano on the screen, so I have to either scrub across the notes to hear them or just guess which ones they are. In Cubase, all I had to do to preview a note was simply click on the piano keyboard in the user interface, and the note would play.

I'd LOVE to hear your suggestions on this seemingly simple topic which has caused me so much frustration, time, and grief.

Thanks!!!
-TS

Well, I feel like kind of a dunce.

I checked my settings again, and after playing with the piano roll and the track settings for about half an hour, I checked my MIDI track settings. The input and output have been set to my MIDISport in/out #1 and have been recording and playing back just fine, but apparently I didn't have the Channel set correctly. I clicked on the "Ch" setting (MIDI Channel), and noticed that channel 10, the channel I'd been recording off of, wasn't selected. I selected the correct channel, went back to Piano Roll view and, lo and behold, found out that the simple Channel setting was causing my Piano Roll to not play notes when clicked.

So I apologize to you guys if you feel like you wasted time in assisting me; I'm still not sure exactly what the difference is between MIDI In/Out and Channel settings. Why is it that Sonar would record MIDI from my MIDISport input #1 (from drum machine) and play the same MIDI back via the MIDISport output #1 (to drum machine), even if Channel 10 wasn't selected as the correct channel? I don't understand exactly why there would be sixteen channels to pick from in the MIDI track if there's only 1 input/output available for each track. It seems to me that for one MIDI track, I can input/output from/to one drum machine, on one channel, so setting the Channel # is redundant if I/O's are already set.

Thanks for your time, feedback, and willingness to share knowledge!

-TS

Many times when using the piano roll view, the keys play the notes at the beginning, but when selecting a note bar in the time chart, the note is not heard anymore and the keys on the left become silent. Most of the times this problem is due to the velocity of the notes in the piano roll being previously set to ZERO, which can be confirmed by selecting a note bar with the mouse right key, and accessing the data at the "note properties" popup window. To fix the problem, all the notes velocity should be raised up from ZERO.