Need helping recording MIDI track (notes "clumped together")

Hi... I'm sure I'm missing something very obvious but I've spent two days now trying to figure it out myself to no avail. I have my MIDI keyboard and sound module hooked up to the computer and I've inserted a MIDI track into a new project. All the default settings seem fine since when I play the keyboard the sound module is triggered and the meter in Sonar is moving, so it seems note data is being received and transmitted properly. I then arm the track and hit record and start playing. I don't hear a metronome even though by default I expect to since there's a metronome bus. I stop recording a few seconds later and if I look in the staff view I can see the notes I hit but they are all clumped together at the beginning of the staff. It seems like what's happening is it records, but the now time cursor isn't scrolling so everything gets clumped up, for lack of a better term. Like I said, I'm sure this is something stupid and obvious on my part, but every tutorial I watch, every document I see, shows them doing exactly what I'm doing but it of course works for them so I'm at a total loss. Thanks very much!

Hi Greg, Sonar X1 Producer, Windows Vista, onboard audio and not sure about the MIDI interface... it's USB, a single in/out cable, but not sure about make or anything like that... it's a cheapo interface :)

The first thing that springs to my mind is that you have input quantize active and set to whole, but even then you'd get notes grouping at the beginning of each measure not just the start of a clip. Is the display scrolling if you leave it recording for a while?

Check that in the track's inspector. Input quantize is about halfway down in the right hand strip, there's an on/off for it there. Make sure you area looking at the MIDI tab if you're using an instrument track.


The metronome is turned on and off by the icons to the right of the nowtime display in the transport module of the control bar. F3 is the keyboard shortcut for turning it on & off. Make sure that the metronome buss is routed to an audio out that you can monitor if your interface has more than one. Other settings can be adjusted by right clicking on the on/off icons I mentioned above.

Hi guys, Thanks for all the suggestions. I should clarify what I'm seeing... simply put, when I hit record, I don't see any scrolling as I expect. I've used a number of DAWs in my time and I've never seen this happen. You click record, the timeline begins to scroll (the now time cursor in Sonar of course) and you're good to go. Here though, nothing happens, except the notes I play are all in one place. In other words, it very much looks like the MIDI setup is correct... note data is being transmitted from keyboard to PC, and from PC to sound module (because I can hear what I'm playing just fine), but because it's not scrolling everything I play, while recorded, is in one place. I tried launching the app as administrator, that was a good suggestion, but it made no difference. I tried importing a song, which did play. When I tried to record on a track it did the same thing as before: nothing scrolled. I confirmed quantize is off, but it makes no difference on or off. The metronome routing seems correct, but I still can't get it to play... of course, that makes sense if there's no scrolling happening. I CAN record at any point in the song it seems... wherever I manually place the now time cursor is where I record, but it never budges from that spot. One thing I do notice is that the now time cursor line has arrows pointing both ways at the top... as tacman7 says, it visually looks like it expects me to set a start and stop point, but nothing I've tried allows me to do that (I've tried clicking it with ctrl/shift/alt held and dragging it, right-click, I've tried setting loop points and such, none of that seems to matter). So if that's the case I don't know how to correct it (and it's a pretty stupid interface since by default I'd expect it to be set at the beginning and infinity so I can just start recording). I'm still at a loss. Any other thoughts? Thanks again folks!

A screen shot of your Track View, especially the Now time with the arrows would be invaluable

That's my step recording theory gone.......

Can you play a project back okay? One with Audio & MIDI in it?

Woo-hoo, I finally got it! It seems like a combination of things... first, the metronome by default got mapped to the metronome bus, which is logical, but for some reason it doesn't work that way. If I either use a MIDI note metronome (which I don't want) or use the master bus or specify my sound card directly, then it works... but only AFTER I flip it to MIDI note and back for some reason. The other part seems to be that by default the MIDI sync output port is selected as my USB MIDI cable and it only works if I uncheck it. I frankly am not familiar with that setting but I noticed the difference in one of the tutorial project, which DID play all along, so I took a shot. Weird thing is, if I start a new project and change both those things it STILL doesn't work right away, I have to flip the settings once or twice before it seems to "stick". But, eventually it does and recording works as expected from then on out. Thanks to everyone who offered up help, I definitely appreciate it!