Sonar 3.0 Professional as a notation/staff paper machine?

Hi All,

I had a quick question about Sonar 3.0 Pro, which I own. First off, I am very glad I bought it and it is worth every penny...

However, one area I am not for sure about is notation... will Sonar do everything I want it to do to print out parts of real players, or will I need to look elsewhere?

Some specific examples of problems I've had are:

1) Sonar chooses which accidental to use... for example if I want a "F#" in one measure, then a "Gb" in the next, is there anyway to do this?

2) Sonar doesn't seem to have all those marks... I see crescendo lines and the ability to add dynamics ("f" or "p"), but how about pizz and other articulations, slurs, and so on?

Again, Sonar is great for my audio usage and writing down midi for use with samples... but I'm mostly trying to find out if I can print a presentable score for a, say, string quartet... or will I need to go ahead and buy the 2004 edition of that *other* software?

(btw: if you can add some comments on *how* to do this stuff, that would be great... but I am working my way through the manual right now, almost done with the first 10 tutorials)

Hi Travis,

I haven't have the time to research this yet, but I seem to remember that you could hold down either "shift, control, or Alt" while dragging the specific note to get the enharmonic version. Don't hold me to it, but I'll try to find out for sure or if it does work, please let us know!

If you are working with music that will be printed and performed by musicians, then get a notation software like Finale, Sibelius, etc.

Sonar was not made for this kind of work.

Cakewalk's notation engine has always been just barely adequate, IMO -- except during the brief period they were offering Overture and Scorewriter. Being basically a tightwad and a cheapskate (unfortunately out of necessity), I looked around a good deal to remedy this. If you can afford the stiff price of admission, sure get Sibelius or Finale. But if you're like me, give Studio Ensemble a look. It used to be offered by Midisoft, which went down the tubes a couple of years back. Last Midisoft version was Studio 6.04. But RecordLab (http://recordlab.com), aka Interactive Digital Design, picked it up and is now distributing it. I've been using Studio 6 since the horribly bug-ridden 6.0 days. The version I have, Recordlab Studio Ensemble 6.06, is much more stable. The current version is called Studio Ensemble 2003XP.

Studio Ensemble is the only product I know of that is a notation-based sequencer. In this respect, it even has Sibelius and Finale whupped (or at least it did the last time I d/l'ed demos of S and F, which was a couple of years ago). The sequencer in SE is pretty basic, but good enough if you're using it primarily for composition and/or printing out your compositions -- certainly a lot better than Cakewalk's Staff View. And best of all, it's cheap -- like $79. Print output is very good and the notation-based composition and editing tools are quite extensive. As I recall, however, some symbols (cresc, dim, etc.) are just for looks, whereas others, such as hairpins actually work.

I use Sonar 3.0 Pro only for fast print. Because this is convenient. But when I am going to print a huge data, I use more power systems. It is my opinion.

I use Sonar 3.0 Pro only for fast print. Because this is convenient. But when I am going to print a huge data, I use more power systems. It is my opinion.

I use Sonar 3.0 Pro only for fast print. Because this is convenient. But when I am going to print a huge data, I use more power systems. It is my opinion.

Hey!
This thread is 11 (eleven) years old!!

That interesting and notice that all the people who posted have the same joined date as the thread.. but some already have large post counts. So Nov 4 2003 must have been the first day of this version of the forum. Those people with high post counts must have been in some other type of forum but they brought post counts with them.