I always put a Pitch Wheel = 0 and a Controller 121 = 0 at the first of every MIDI track. In Preferences, I have Sonar set to search back for the most recent controller events. This ensures that, if nothing else, I always start a track with no pitch bend and all the continuous controllers reset.
By the way, even though it is not part of your question, I find that Sonar inserts WAY too many pitch bend events. It inserts 8 or 16 per clock tick, which is ridiculous. If I insert pitch bends from, for example, -4096 to 0 over the length of an 1/8 note, I have to highlight that range and run the Thin Pitch Wheel CAL 2 or 3 times (with a vlaue of 2 each time). This is a pain.
Some other notes:
- That CAL program is supposed to ignore 0, 4096, -4096, 8191, and -8192 but I don't think it does. After highlighting the range, I always go into Event List and Control Click those values to deselect before running the CAL.
- When you insert a range of Pitch Bend values, Sonar always puts an extra one at the end. For example, if you insert -4096 to 0, at the end of the event list, after the zero, you will see a random value like -8 or something. If you add events from 0 to 8191, after the 8191, you might see 8174, or something. There is always one last value that is slightly off from the specified end point and you have to delete that event or you will be out of tune.
- Don't forget to add a zero Pitch Bend event a couple of beats after you pitch bending so you synth is reset.
All the above sounds minor, but when you are creating a lead guitar part or steel guitar part that goes across four instances (so you can bend strings individually), all of that extra work gets annoying—and it is easy to make mistakes.