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)

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?

You need to right click a note to bring up note properties and type in what you want. As far as I know there is no way to do this for a selection of notes -- i.e. change 16 bars-worth of Gb's to F#'s -- if anyone knows a way, I'd love to hear about it. Unfortunately, SONAR's algorithm for deciding which enharmonic variant should be used is not very clever, so 50% of the time it'll be wrong.

Generally, the notation features of SONAR are somewhat underpowered compared to the rest of the application. Hopefully they will be improved in a future update.

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!

Andrew - At first I didn't know how that was different than what I already was doing, but then I noticed the word "type" ... so yeah, if I put a little "b" or "#" or whatever by the letter, that works! .... thanks!

Glen - I tried the three keys you mentioned, and none worked for me... but since I'm going through the manual anyway, I'll keep an eye out and report back if I find it... thanks!

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.

Thanks robprado... I do know of Finale, but was trying to avoid mentioning their product on this forum (i.e. that *other* software).... I mostly just sequence, but next quarter in college I'll need to do some notation and trying to avoid spending $200 on software just to use it on one project... I am hoping to find out how much I can push Sonar 3 before I bust, I guess...

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.

Print Music ($56.97) is a lite version of Finale, but I think you won't miss Finale at all when using Print Music.

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.