I am following along with the video about using step sequencer with Session Drummer 3.  I got to the point where I click on the little squares or do Fill Every..., and when I click on the play button, the sound produced does not work right.  Many hits are missed, and there are hits where there are no squares filled in.  I deleted the first one I tried, and this one is doing the same.  What would cause this?

That's a new one for me.

I happen to use Step Sequencer all day long, as I really like it for entering drum sequences.  I am in the middle of creating all-midi versions of a bunch of Bill Bruford tunes, and have note-for-note transcriptions that I am using to put all the parts in.

I don't see this behavior in Step Sequencer.

Couple of questions for you - and also I will try some tests using SD 3 and will also post back on that, in case it in particular has some issues when used with Step Sequencer.

So,the questions:

1.  Have you tried using Step Sequencer with any other synth?  This would just be to try to determine if it is a global SD thing or not.

2.  Do you have any latency issues just playing soft synths in general in Sonar?

3.  Can you elaborate on the 'Fill Every' comment in your post?  I am curious as to what you are asking it to do.  This is so I can try to duplicate the effort and see what happens on my system.

4.  Have you tried testing where you do a SEPARATE test of clicking on the little boxes, versus adding in the Fill Every thing that you are also doing?  I just want to see if those two functions have some issue combined, versus behavior when used separately.

Sorry for all the questions.  I have some time today, and would be quite willing to try to duplicate any tests per what you post back.

Bob Bone

Side note - on the Bruford tunes, only the drums are transcribed.  I still have to figure out all of the stellar playing by Jeff Berlin, Dave Stewart, and Allan Holdsworth - adding dimensionally daunting to the effort.  Sorry for the side note. [;ease disregard if you don't care.

:)

Bob Bone

1.  Have you tried using Step Sequencer with any other synth?  This would just be to try to determine if it is a global SD thing or not.
 
No.  Other than drums, I've never tried to use step sequencer.

2.  Do you have any latency issues just playing soft synths in general in Sonar?
 
I never have in the past, but I haven't used softsynths much at all -- mainly TTS-1 as an output for MIDI tracks.

3.  Can you elaborate on the 'Fill Every' comment in your post?  I am curious as to what you are asking it to do.  This is so I can try to duplicate the effort and see what happens on my system.
 
Where you drag across a line of the boxes to fill them all in (such as for hi hat hits).

4.  Have you tried testing where you do a SEPARATE test of clicking on the little boxes, versus adding in the Fill Every thing that you are also doing?  I just want to see if those two functions have some issue combined, versus behavior when used separately.
 
Yes.  Both.  It sounds like it is playing parts of a pattern from somewhere else.  Could it be somehow connected to the patterns it will play when I click on the A-H in the SD interface?

Sorry for all the questions.  I have some time today, and would be quite willing to try to duplicate any tests per what you post back.

Thanks so much for your help.  I've always used the piano roll for doing drum parts, and it has been quite a while since I even tried that.  When I saw the video about using SD and the step sequencer, I got pretty excited about it because it is so visual.

1.  Please DO try using Step Sequencer with some other synth, so that the problem's SOURCE can be determined as either being something with SD or not.

2.  I enter some bass parts using Step Sequencer, and I drag to fill lots of boxes on the same line all the time - then go back and ctrl+drag to merge them (that's the Sonar term for creating a musical 'tie').  I have zero problems with this, and it saves lots of time.

3.  There is no 3 - please try what's in item 1 above and post back.  :)

Bob Bone

OK, this is now even stranger...I just loaded the SI-Bass softsynth, randomly clicked on squares, and get no sound at all.  I can click on drums in SD and strings in SI-Bass and get sound, but nothing when I try to play the sequencer.  Output is to Master, and other sounds work on the computer.

Question on bass parts -- is there a way to tie together different notes to get a long slide (like a player sliding down a string for several notes)?

Thanks for your help.  I'd probably do more with SONAR if I could get the bugs worked out of my workflow.  :-)

for bass notes and using the bass instrument that comes with sonar,id use the piano roll view,its much easier to get those sustaining notes your talking about.
sequencer is mainly for drums though im sure its improvisable if you try.

have you checked your snap settings?
im not sure if that would skip over notes or not.
but it may considering its value is what controls note variations.

Well, sometimes when dragging my mouse to fill a series of boxes, my aim sucks (not optimal) and that causes some of the boxes to be skipped.  I just go back and click on the couple that were missed and all is well.

As far as the SI-Bass, I have no trouble there, so it is likely a routing issue, OR the range of notes in that Step Sequencer clip is outside of the playable notes for the SI-Bass.

Just thoughts there - check your routing on the associated audio track.  SI-Bass does load a default bass sound - it's the one I use.

On the concept of creating a musical 'tie' in Step Sequencer, that is accomplished by first clicking on the boxes involved with what you want to tie together, then you go back to the first of these boxes, click CTRL and drag across the boxes you want included in the tie.

The documentation describes this, but in Sonar-land a musical 'tie' is labelled as a Merge.  Look it up in the doc if you have further questions on that.  I only merge/tie boxes for a single note, so I can't speak to creating a slide effect by trying to tie across multiple rows.  I CAN tell you that if you have adjacent boxes on different rows checked that it approximates it.  I yould recommend that if you want a more realistic slide, that you do so outside Step Sequencer, and apply a pitch bend to slide the pitch - just set the range of it to however far you want to go and have at it.

Hope the above helps, 

Bob Bone

Something else about what is happening.  I've been just clicking on squares.  It is set for 4 measures of quarter notes.  It will play the kick drum if I click on the first beat of the first or last beat of the fourth measure, but nothing between.   The others are about the same thing.  It's like the middle of the grid doesn't exist.  All I can say is, pretty weird.

I have no clue.

Please detail exactly how you have tracks/synths set up, assignments and such, and also detail the exact steps you go through to get into a Step Sequencer clip where you are having these problems.

I am just trying to see if in seeing detail I can spot something thus far not apparent.

Bob Bone