http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/FeatureRequest.asp

To make an idea, take a look to the Noel Borthwick 's avatar.  There's a big message...LOL  The cup of coffee on the music sheet!!!  There not that important!

Just joking!

NOTATION IS VERY IMPORTANT TO SOME OF US!!
 
I use to like editing using events, piano roll and notation (after some quantizing to get rid of some un-needed tied 16 & 32th notes etc). I take it notation would only be available on MIDI tracks. So, does bounce to clips convert audio to MIDI where you can see, edit and print notation? If so, don't we already have notation included in Sonar unless everyone is referring to character add in's - i.e. pedal or cresendos etc.? Or has that changed with X1/X2?
 
Those of you who do not read music, kudos to you if you are playing more than I, IV, V. It takes a little genius, feel and a lot of memory to depend on, just as a jazz musician does with improvisation. However, if also classically trained, composing and trying to write a score, Sonar would be the way to go if good NOTATION were included without having to buy an expensive third party program. You can hear what it should sound "like" from all the different instruments and features available, when you print out each individual part transposed for that instrument in the proper key and clef to put in front of a live or studio orchestra. To print out a lead sheet with chords transposed say for an Eb Alto sax would be very useful to jazz players. Has anyone looked into the Nashville Numbering Notation System used in studio recording and would that be available for composers using Sonar? (Similar to a lead sheet or chord chart but with numbers so you can easily play it in any key.) I have not played with X1 Producer Expanded too much yet. I will move to X2 Producer and do not know what Sonar has improved on or digressed to in Notation as I have not used Cakewalk since the preDAW days of just MIDI when my 486 b/w laptop with Cakewalk Professional for Windows 2.0 MIDI finally died a few years ago. (I just kept buying the upgrades but the hardware requirement always seemed too expensive to upgrade to until now.) I printed out notation using my first Cakewalk program on my Atari ST1040. It was a different file format so when I went to Windows, even though it was printed on a dot matrix printer, I was able to read the score and record the parts quickly again instead of picking out the parts measure by measure, part by part. (Didn't know about direct MIDI to MIDI transfer until after...)

To each his own, but notation is to music as writing and the alphabet are to language.  We can discuss what features need to be included, but it is critical that a program for music creation be able to display music as notation and allow editing in that view.

Sonar does that but it has some very serious flaws.

Great thread here! I guess I have to chip in, for whatever that's worth.

The very fact that I cannot select the notes that are beyond the staves is enough to drive me crazy. I don't necessary use notation to sequence because of realism issues. But it's crucial for:

1. Editing of individual notes. (yes, that can be done in PRV, but not my preference)
2. Global view of my arrangement and composition. I need to see everything to get my harmony, counterpoint etc right. It's not just listening, but also seeing it. You can't visualize it in PRV. As it is, it's a pain to my workflow as I have to resort to paper for certain sections of my music just to see my arrangements. 

The only time I've tried using PRV was more than 10 years ago (on Cakewalk Professional 7).  It's too limited for me and I've never used it since. PRV is basically a useless feature for me. I don't need notation at the level of Sibelius - I just need it to be improved. That's not too much a request, I feel.

Ok - my fault.  

In my last post with an image of the PRV in X2, I mistakenly assumed that there was a separate duation and snap and button for the PRV.  It is actually a separate Snap setting in PRV from the Global Snap setting which was introduced in X1c.
Of course one could ask why the SV doesn't have the option of sharing this separate PRV snap setting, but is suppose the bakers would have you use the HUD while editing in the SV.  

I would prefer to see the note durations, fill durations, trim durations, snap settings, and a scrub button displayed in the header frame of the SV.  (Note draw duration icons were included in Benstat's Sonar Plus add-on in both the SV and PRV, so I can't imagine that this would be impossible).  

Actually, it would be kind of cool if the HUD / smart tool could take on SV related functionality while in the SV.

I'm with you Muzock, and thanks Jonesey for your reply! Much appreciated, I was a little confused...

Well, I still maintain (and have sent in the feature request) that a more 'musical' staff view would be useful.  Something that takes all the notation, expressions, etc and can intelligently create editable MIDI CC's in that I could then further edit in the PRV.  And maybe I could even make stylistic selections (jazz, rock, baroque) that would set parameters for how Sonar 'interpreted' those symbols.
 
Yes, I know this currently exists in Finale with the Human Playback engine and I use it.  But as a compositional tool how nice it would be to have this capability right there in Sonar instead of having to create and export the tracks from Finale! 
 
For score preparation I would still use Finale, I don't expect Sonar to become a full on replacement for that.  But there are so many things I love about Sonar as a composition toolkit that I can't help but wish that Cake would just go ahead and make Sonar my one stop for composing!
 
So my suggestion is, just hire Robert Piechaud (designed the Finale Human Playback engine) and put all us notation geeks out of your misery! :-)  

With 346 messages and 10439 views, I think it shows the member's interest about the staff view and maybe somebody at Cakewalk will take this seriously a little bit more important...
Heu...maybe, I came 20 times myself for that...

Hello,

I was also here for several times to listen to all the other comments to this topic.
Of course I will also vote for better staff view and notation features in sonar. As many members wrote, notation is the language of music and such a powerful daw should have a corresponding level of notation features. For me it is the only thing I´m missing to put sonar on the same level as the other famous daw's.

Kind regards from germany,
Timo

I feel quite sad tbh ... I seems like I won't be upgrading to this new version of Sonar - even though some of the content and features are improved / look great.

A small move like Ben's sonar plus's note icons would have been an improvement...

Will keep an eye out for improvement's via patches.......  gutted..

Hit 'em again...harder, harder... http://www.cakewalk.com/s...ct/featurerequest.aspx

Although I don't have Sonar X2 yet, I still have Sonar 8, the notation does frustrate me. I used to do all my notating in guitar pro until I discovered the notation function in Sonar. I thought it was perfect at first, until I discovered it doesn't allow for grace notes, dead notes, ringing, and other effects that guitar pro and no doubt other notation programs such as sibelius and finale allow. Has anyone gotten around this problem?