Total Newb, please be gentle.

The easiest way to get notes into the computer is with a MIDI keyboard. However, you can also enter notes via the Staff View, allowing you to generate a MIDI track from notation. But if you're composing on a piano, it's probably going to be easier to get a decent MIDI keyboard controller and play each part while recording the MIDI data.

As for preventing the "cheap sound of most MIDI sequences", well that's the $64,000 question, isn't it? Most sequences sound cheap because they are quantized, making them sound too machine-like. Also, when you play a MIDI sequence using your computer's built-in sound card (with its built-in sound fonts) it'll always sound like a computer game because the quality of the sounds themselves is poor. This is unrelated to the quality of the MIDI file itself.

You can avoid those problems if a) you actually know how to play an instrument and b) you are willing to invest in quality software instruments. I suspect you qualify under the former, but the latter depends on how much money you really want to invest in this endeavor.

What I started with was a synthesizer. It was my data-input device as well as my tone-generation device. From there I added more synthesizers, both hardware and software. I also upgraded my audio interface and speakers. Altogether, I've spent about $10,000, not counting computers, on my current setup. That's neither the low nor the high end of what a person might spend.

P.S. Don't worry, the eviscerator squad hangs out on the Producer forum. They never venture here in the Techniques forum.

"I don't own a keyboard or anything like that.. and I guess I am just trying to find out if that is even really needed (of course I have a standard keyboard on my computer :) )

I guess what I want to know is if I write a piece of sheet music... can cakewalk/sonar read it?

How do you prevent the cheap sound of most MIDI sequences? "

Welcome to the forum! Assuming I understand your questions correctly; I recommend at least a MIDI controller keyboard if you want to play MIDI (EMU Xboard 49 for example) and you can play drums, orchestra, keyboard....anything on it. In sonar 8, you can write music into the staff view and it will play back for you, but first get MIDI working. You'll need to learn how to insert a soft synth to do this...........see the instruction manual! To overcome the cheap sounds, I always use soundfonts, which you can insert into one of the included soft synths. I guess my comments will be either helpful or totally incomprehensible to you

For what it's worth, I use MIDI to add orchestra, percussion, solo instruments such as sax, and nearly always play them on the keyboard as opposed to writing into the piano roll or staff view. I record a lot of audio; acoustic guitar via a mic, mixer, then straight into the soundcard, electric via mic, but mostly DI, and vocals of course via mic. For playback, the soundcard goes out to a decent quality stereo amp and speakers. To me, these are the basic essentials, but it depends on what sort of music you're trying to do. Everybody reading this will want to know at least what sort of soundcard you have in your PC.

......and that is pretty much what the previous replies have said!

Have fun and let us know how you get on!

Part 1.

Sheet music (notation) is very low resolution compared to an actual performance. Sheet music is just not enough to convey what happened. It has worked as a kind of guide for many years but it still requires a human to convert that into a real performance. So even if you could some how get the notation into the computer so it could trigger sounds of a synth, what you hear would not be musical just a fancy click track to give you a rough idea of how the melody goes. To add to the problem the sound of a instrument can very even when playing two of the same note. Again it takes a human who knows how to play that instrument to make the output musical.

So in the popular music production world notation had to be replaced with an electronic method of capturing a performance that would yield higher resolution (timing) and also record at least a limited number of other aspects of the performance other then when in time a note happens.

Enter MIDI. MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) was invented so the folks that make keyboards and drum machines could have they actions of the keys or pads converted to a digital signal, not only to trigger the sounds inside one device but it could be sent over a wire to a different device to trigger sound in it. By some small miracle all of them were able to agree on a standard and stick to it for decades. Some even came up with a way to store this information and play it back, very much like a player piano plays a paper scroll. This was called a sequencer and Cakewalk Sonar and other software like it do this job now. There are even plugins that do the job of the synth and make all the sounds right inside the computer. You can also record audio in the same project.

So to recap. To compare the old player piano and tape deck with a modern system. The computer (with software) is the encoder that punches the holes in the paper (and plays it back). MIDI is the paper scroll, plugins are the player piano that makes the sound. And the computer can also be like a tape recorder and record the sound of other things to go with that sound. All of those elements of a song end up in a document called a "project". In Sonar each project has a file that controls everything and a folder full of audio (wav) files if you recorded any of that.

As if that were not enough Sonar is also most of the rest of the recording studio, complete with a mixer, effects boxes (also called plugins). There is complete automation of everything via bendable lines called envelopes that can be put over each track in track view. These can control the movement of controls on the virtual mixer, effects, synth plugins, everything. The details of what the lines do are recorded in the project as "events" very much like the events in a MIDI track. It's just data. It's a fantastic new way of producing music.

A modern 'classical' composer who teaches at a local college (and has been commissioned by orchestras) told me that he was so use to composing from a piano with paper and pencil that it took him a long time to make the jump to computers and midi for composing. But once he did he said he could get a months worth of work done in a day. And, he no longer had to try to imagine how the instruments would sound together, he was able to now hear it with immediate feedback.

If you use Sonar with good soft synths and perform the piece on midi controllers (like a keyboard) then you shouldn't get that midi sound you refer too. The resolution for Midi in sonar is 960 ticks per beat which at most tempos we're talking less than a ms between ticks for resolution... we're talking the time it takes a sound wave to travel a foot or so. And for dynamics there is a scale of 0 - 127. All that is to say, you can get a very natural sounding performance from midi.

ORIGINAL: fep

A modern 'classical' composer who teaches at a local college (and has been commissioned by orchestras) told me that he was so use to composing from a piano with paper and pencil that it took him a long time to make the jump to computers and midi for composing. But once he did he said he could get a months worth of work done in a day. And, he no longer had to try to imagine how the instruments would sound together, he was able to now hear it with immediate feedback.

If you use Sonar with good soft synths and perform the piece on midi controllers (like a keyboard) then you shouldn't get that midi sound you refer too. The resolution for Midi in sonar is 960 ticks per beat which at most tempos we're talking less than a ms between ticks for resolution... we're talking the time it takes a sound wave to travel a foot or so. And for dynamics there is a scale of 0 - 127. All that is to say, you can get a very natural sounding performance from midi.

The software synth can also help a lot. Some will respond with subtle differences even when receiving two of the same note and the same velocity.

There are other aspects of realism also. For example on the GigaPiano sound that came with my Gigasampler software synth even the pedals make a soft "clunk" like you would hear if you listen to someone play piano in a room. I didn't even notice it till I was using headphones to work on a song with only piano where the last chord was to decay into silence. I was checking the fade to make sure it was all there and when the MIDI event for lifting the sustain pedal happend I could hear the soft "clunk". I just thought wow... who thought to do that when making the samples ? On some software synths you can even get a graphic of the microphone setup and move them around to vary the sound just like you would if you were a studio engineer tying to get the track right as it was recorded. Very cool stuff.

No need to spend $10k on a keyboard. A controller keyboard (makes no sound of its own but is used to control a soft synth within Sonar) can be had for just a couple of hundred dollars brand new in the box. Low end synthesizers (that do make their own sounds) can be bought brand new for a couple of hundred more. Many controller keyboards connect to the PC via USB. Older models will require a MIDI connection which might necessitate you purchasing a small MIDI interface (less than $100) to get the MIDI information from your keyboard into the PC and and into Sonar. Recording audio (singing or guitar playing, for example, or the sounds from a synth keyboard) will require an audio interface which can come in the form of a PCI card that mounts inside your computer, USB, or Firewire.