K dub


All you have to do is have your set list with the individual voicing for each song stored in a project file. Then when opening the project, have the individual keyboards assigned to consistent midi channels (i.e. keyboard one is always on midi channel one etc...), and once the project opens, it automatically sets each individual keyboard to its appropriate settings by loading the voice and assigning the routing.

What I was uncertain of was whether multiple keyboards could be played at once ... or whether you'd only hear the one where the midi channel was highlighted. We're going to have 4 separate keyboards with multiple people playing multiple parts at various times, so the ability to have Sonar play multiple plugs by multiple people inputting at once is critical. 

Oh you can totally do that!!  the one thing i would recommend though is have an audio interface unit that's capable of multiple outputs so the output of each synth can go to separate physical outs.  that way mixing and leveling for the engineer will be a bit easier and you don't have to worry about levels and mixing so much in sonar - just do from a console. it'll minimize the clipping you might get.  i use a m-audio fast track ultra 8x8.  http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may08/articles/fasttrackultra.htm


another thing i would do though - because you might run into midi latency - is, if possible, use usb outs from the keyboards to separate usb ports on the computer you'll be using. 

I love Sonar, but you should take a look at Brainspawn Forte for what you are trying to do. http://brainspawn.com/ind...rticle&id=44&Itemid=66

wow thats a lot of money for a bitt of software. not even an established company.

Actually, Swamptooth, Brainspawn is a lot more established than you might think. Major Broadway tours like Wicked use it for all their keyboard rigs, and there's no way a huge-budget show like that would allow their performances to be driven by some fly-by-night software. $150 is pretty cheap too, considering what it does. Don't go by the "Producer Edition" cost, btw - that may be $500, but it includes a 10-seat license and some other minor trinkets.

Hi Kevin,

It is totally possible to do what you're talking about with Sonar, but Brainspawn's Forte is built exactly for this kind of scenario. My project, Kicksville, has 8 different computers on stage, and we depend heavily on Forte. We also use Sonar, but its role is as the master source for audio playback, patch change info to the Forte rigs, and feeding timecode/controller info to video and lighting. All our keyboard sounds, guitar/bass FX, drum kit processing, etc., are handled by Forte. And it rocks....In 5 years of playing live, we've never had a system go down (knock on wood...). We did use Sonar for a little while in the way you're talking about, but it was kind of clumsy. Forte is a much better solution. Hope this was helpful!

ok nkow im kinda curious... the way i use sonar live comsists of quite a bit of on-the fly audio manipulation... for example i work with a sci-fi spoken word performance act where i do music and sound fx for pulp fiction style stories. i get something a week before for five or six stories "rampaging robot massacre on an island" and put together about 8 or 9 tracks of audio i can fade in and out between and  manipulate fx on then about 15 or so patches for vsts i can play or trigger patterns in matrix view. this is all dependent on where the stories go - which i have no clue of until the night of the performance. it helps to see the project in sonar because i have midi clips and rhythmic patterns set up as time cues both for me and the sppoken word performer so that he can then adjust his story live based on musical  cues and feels so its a back and forth. i can also have sonar send sysx to my controller to change layputs and mappings and such.  can all that be done on one instance of forte??

@f@ker - the worst was having a guitarist show up with a tube amp... ten seconds in a tube blew and he hadnt brought extras. or an acoustic. weak.

Hey - I attempted to gig live with Sonar, and ran into an insurmountable problem, that of project load time.

I have a crazy fast computer, and it just does NOT load projects fast enough for live performance.  When we used to have people up dancing on one song, we would lose them every time because of how long it took me to load a new project.

I switched completely to Brainspawn's Forte several years ago 5 I think, and haven't looked back since.

Forte is ground-up designed for CPU-efficiency, lightening-fast preset switching, complex zoning, and complex layering of sounds.

What would sometime take close to a MINUTE to load in Sonar, EVERY SONG, is instant in Forte.  Further, I set things up to do preset changes using a midi foot pedal board - the Behringer FCB1010, so I didn't even need my hands to go from song to song.

Forte even allows you to hold the chord of one song, and keep it playing, while underneath you have already switched the preset to another for the next song.  When you lift your fingers and play again, you are already on the new preset, with ZERO gap going from one to the next.

You also get midi remapping, sequence-triggering, and can have up to 4 zones on every preset.  Separate midi routing is built in to every preset, as well.
+1 +1 +1 +1 +1 on Forte for live performance.

I LOVE X2, but it is not designed for live performance, and the limitations in trying to warp it into use in live performance are too easily exposed, and affect any hope of smooth transition between songs.  With Forte, it's instant.

Bob Bone

And I forgot to add that due to the instant switching and the chord-holding during switch that I talked about in my last post, I can also switch presets multiple times within 1 song, so that using the same midi controllers (I use 2), I can be triggering a sequence for an intro, then playing brass on the first note of the verse, then switching to strings for some guitar solo, then back to something else, without having to leave playing on the same controller.

Being able to also do all of the above with the 2nd controller gives me unparalleled combinations of playing configurations, and it is all instant.

Forte has another feature that you can choose whether or not, on a preset by preset basis, you want any samples to be reloaded when switching presets where a sample-based sound is loaded.  This means that if I tell it NOT to reload samples unless there is an explicit instruction to load a different set of samples, that even though I switch presets from say a sample-based piano to a minimoog patch, then come back 10 minutes later, it is STILL an instant switch back to the sample-based piano sound, because it left those samples loaded.

Switching from project to project in Sonar has to load up samples EVERY time.

Download Forte's 30-day trial and play with it.  You'll see.

Send me a PM and I will continue anybody's discussion on Forte use.

Bob Bone 

Although I use Sonar for recording and I can't reccomend it enough, I use Cantabile (http://www.cantabilesoftware.com/) for live.  I have four keyboards connected to the computer.  There was a small learning curve for routing (and it still confuses me a little bit when I create new sessions) but I can switch between song set ups very quickly.  Once you figure it out it's so much easier.  I have a "set list" that includes every song I'm going to play and then I can just switch around song-by-song.  Since the synths are already loaded the only thing it's doing is changing patches so there is no waiting for a synth to load when I change songs.