Awinant .. don't worry mate, so long as you have the focus then you will get it. Seeing as you have splashed out serious $$ then I am sure you will stay the course. The learning curve at the very beginning can be a bit steep but patience and resolve will get you over it. After all, Sonar is a serious piece of kit, you can't expect to learn it over night.

Good news is that at least you are starting out with the tutorials, I wish some others on here would do the same and we probably wouldn't have so many of the same posts every month. At least now you know that any midi file needs to be routed through a synth, right? WTG! You are learning! :)

I appreciate everyone's help and advice again! Yeah, for me it would have been helpful had the using soft synth tutorial been first. 

My problem with a lot of help files and tutorials out there is they often start with "how to change the color scheme of  icons" and equally unimportant stuff. 

For me the ideal tutorial would go something like: 1. insert soft synth, get sound coming out etc (and explain the difference between a midi track and a midi/audio mixed track) 2. Figure out how to construct a basic drum beat (perhaps using the very cool step sequencer or PRV...)
3. Basic editing in PRV and track view.

Cool group of people replying, and one thing to be certain, no shortage of replies which makes this a very helpful forum!

it'd probably be more helpful to have forum where people just getting started out in professional grade software can help each other out, rather than be chastised by "ye of immense knowledge" for not reading a manual. in this day and age no one has time to read about how to do something as simple as enable MIDI in a DAW. i know i for sure am looking for a quick fix. many of us are more musicians than anything, not interested in making a career out of learning the ins and outs of a program. does a wealthy person who buys a Ferrari know anymore about his car than the guy who drives a Nissan Maxima? no. he just knows he wants the best money can buy. he wants to stick the key in the ignition and start driving. not worry about looking under the hood.
 
i'm trying out Sonar on a trial basis before i buy. right now i use Mixcraft 5. couldn't be more easy and i didn't need to read the manual. very intuitive. the problem that many like myself and awinant run into is we foolishly think every application has that same intuitive quality. simple things should be intuitive. on Mixcraft there isn't any "select output channel for MIDI". you insert a MIDI track, tell it what MIDI device you want to use then select what softsynth you want to control. simple as that. i figured out how to insert a softsynth into Sonar (i use z3ta+), but i didn't really spend too much time trying to figure out why i couldn't insert a 2nd instance of z3ta to play over the first track. i only fiddled around with it for like 15 minutes so i expect to become more proficient over the next 2 weeks. Sonar certainly looks like its a DAW for the big boys.

http://www.mp3unsigned.com/Showband.asp?id=23941


This is my first song, thanks to all your help! Let me know what you think!

By the way, I'm struggling here with ending the MP3 exporting. I purchased Cakewalk's version (19.99) after installing the LAME encoder, yet it's still using the lame encoder.

And, I can't seem to cut out 30 seconds of silence at the end of the song (is this an MP3 exporting thing or some way of marking the end of the song within the file?)

Ah, yes there are often forum replies that's in a variation of 'read your manual!' but that is only to reduce redundancies since for those who have not read, the information that many of us offer would be the exact same thing. Please don't take offense to that. Think of it as just a filtering process to keep the forum streamlined.

With that being said, I hear from students & friends who often ask "Can someone explain what the manual is saying in plain English?" I get that. In fact, many of us here do...I think, hehehe. Many of us learns things differently and depending on prior knowledge level, one explanation may explain everything or may make things more confusing. Well, that's what this forum is for. We all try to chip in our own approach to understanding functions of Cakewalk & general recording process and hopefully in this vast pool of experience & expertise, you would find the solution to your problems and maybe come back to help others out in the future.

Now, the last 30 sec. of silence at the end, you can trim out the silent parts of the recorded clip by doing 'slip edit. (just grab the end of the clip & drag left until desired end point of your song)' Or when exporting, you can select only part of the recording that you want to export leaving out that undesired 30 sec. of silence at the end.

Good luck!

Maestro- I don't think it is a slip editing thing. My clips all end where I want the song to end, and all volume levels go to negative infinity at the same time... Did you check out my song? Curious to know what people think.

Just to be sure, open the project and press Ctrl-End and see if the actual end of all clips is where you expect them to be... making sure you scroll in the track pane in the event an audio track is out of view.

I listened. I particularly like the contrast between the melody, which was typically more agressive in texture as well as interval of pitch/note changes, while the bed was more ethereal. On a constructive crit note: I thought the drums sounded a little to organic and "real" for the genre, and I thought that some of the synth changes were unstructured, maybe an intent, but again seemed out-of-sync with the genre. If there was an intended A-B-A-B-C-B-like structure, I would only have dominant sounds change at the transitions between sections. Like the old rule that a drummer shouldn't change to a ride cymbal from the HH in the middle of the verse, but at the chorus.

Hi awinant-

This is my first song, thanks to all your help! Let me know what you think!

Congratulations!

You'll no doubt get more responses if you post this to the SONGS forum.

-Susan

Matty-

Awesome, thanks so much for the constructive criticism as well as the advice about the ending.

I did the CTL END thing and still couldnt figure it out for like 5 mins, finally got it though... turns out it was a near invisible node I didn't notice until I zoomed in on every track.

I know what you mean about the drums. You know, I don't know any rules about drumming, but I will keep what you say in mind. I think I get it anyway. I can't pin down which synth changes you are referring to specifically (or was it all of them)? You are saying I should try to follow more of an ABABCB structure?

Thanks again, got the song trimmed down!

Alex