Play two synths with ONE midi track - <Solved by "tip of the week">

I know the topic has been on these forums before ( normally under the description of "Play two synths with ONE midi track?" ). I hav e read these, so please keep with me.
What is the current thinking on how to use 1 midi track to switch between two synths. In my case I have one midi track for violins and in some periods of the piece I want the violins legato and some part staccato, so my mental model is to have two VSTs installed for the two styles of violin required.  I then copy the midi track and have some kind of envelope to control which synth is played during which part of the piece. I'm not sure if this is the best method and how to set up the envelope to make the switch happen. Any best practices gratefully received. Thanks

I'm sure there are plenty of ways to go about this but I'd just copy/paste the MIDI clip into a second track (feeding the alternate synth) then edit the clips in each track to only trigger the right synth at the right time...
 
So create splits at the right spot(s) then delete the sections you don't want trigger the synth OR use the Mute Tool to silence that section OR use the Comp Tool to mute that section.
 
AFAIK I don't think there is a way to route a single MIDI track out to multiple synths but I've been kind of wanting a feature like this. Maybe it does exist. I'm still a novice at the MIDI stuff. However it would indeed be cool to have multi MIDI out abilities like that WITH extra controls to silence/manipulate the outputs individually (kind of like Sends do for audio). Like instead of a send volume it's a velocity control and maybe some kind of pitch/scale snap control for creating intervals from a single note MIDI note clip run (would be helpful for things like horn sections without having to write the actual MIDI for each part).
 
But I digress... the simplest way to me is just doing things VIA editing in the Track View. No fuss no muss.
 
Hopefully I did not misunderstand the questions.

Beepster ... you didn't misunderstand the question, and I had the slice and dice approach as my backstop, but it feels very clunky to have to do it like this. That's why I was wondering if there are any smarter ways that folks on the forum have come up with

Alright, cool. Honestly though the slice and dice (mute/delete/promote/solo/whatever) to me seems like a better option for distinct instrument parts than fiddling with volume automation. I'd only use automation if I wanted to maybe flow into another part... and even then I'd probably remove/mute any clip sections that aren't actually part of the transition (anything that isn't going to be heard is just gone).
 
That's why I brought it up because, at least to me, just chopping out sections I'd don't want heard in the TV is WAY less complicated than mucking around with automation. I find automation in Sonar to be annoying as pizz and would like the Baker's to do some improvements.
 
Unfortunately (unless I've missed something in my studies) you're gonna need two tracks anyway for this and AFAIK removing MIDI info that isn't going to be played/heard should reduce system resource loads (like the Sonar and the synths don't have to read/process that extra data if it's not there).
 
Now if you have a synth capable of mutli instrument stuff then you may want to look into that. I'm not familiar witht he instrument you are using but maybe you can futz with the synth itself to have a single MIDI clip trigger different instruments at different times. That's a different story. I think that gets into channel type stuff and you'd write in control data/automation to make the changes... or something like that. Depends on the synth.
 
Cheers.

If you can use a single element for each articulation you could set Rapture to multitimbral, and use a different midi channel for them. Then, just write your part, set the track channel to None, select the notes for each element and set the proper channel in the Note Inspector. That should do it, I guess.

So a few month's later, along comes a rather elegant solution courtesy of Craig's tip of the week No. 83. I find that by putting the legato violins in one element ( in Dim Pro or Rapture Pro ) and the pizzicato ones in a 2nd element I can then group them as Craig describes and use a single rotary of fader to smoothly move between the two styles, as they are driven by a single MIDI input. This can also be automated. Very cool. Thanks Craig.