I work in Finale 2011b with mostly Garritan sounds. I'd like to be able to alter the start and stop times of a score's staves to eliminate or reduce the "midi organ effect." Can I do that in Sonar X1 Essential? Or do I need Studio or Producer to do that? Thanks.

In midi this is easy. 

I work in staff view mostly since I was taught to read music the traditional way.... on a staff. 

So in staff view... right click the note. this opens the note properties window and in it you can adjust the start, duration, pitch, velocity and more. 

  So you're talking about doing this work in Sonar X1 Essential, right?

I never work in staff view, but in PRV you can just select the notes you want to change and then (with the smart tool (F5)) place the mouse pointer at the start or the end of any of the notes and drag left or right to change the start/stop time.

All the selected notes will change in the same way

In my opinion, it's much easier and makes more sense musically to work solely in the PRV to do this type of work.

Reason? Well, I've noticed over the years that with certain soft synths, if you have note lengths which extend right up to the start of the next note Sonar will sometimes "miss" the new Note On message, so I'll drag the end of the first note back, not by much, maybe a few ticks but this guarantees that the first note will finish sounding and a new Note On message will be generated when the sequence reaches the new note.

This type of detailed editing is impossible in the Staff View, where a 1/4 is a 1/4 note and will always be a 1/4 note.

Bristol_Jonesey


In my opinion, it's much easier and makes more sense musically to work solely in the PRV to do this type of work.

Reason? Well, I've noticed over the years that with certain soft synths, if you have note lengths which extend right up to the start of the next note Sonar will sometimes "miss" the new Note On message, so I'll drag the end of the first note back, not by much, maybe a few ticks but this guarantees that the first note will finish sounding and a new Note On message will be generated when the sequence reaches the new note.

This type of detailed editing is impossible in the Staff View, where a 1/4 is a 1/4 note and will always be a 1/4 note.

Depends. If you select multiple notes in the staff view of the same duration it's just as easy as the PRV to drag the slider in the Event Inspectors duration box and alter the notes' duration by a few ticks. If they are different duration or to opjust open the Length dialog and enter 99%. If someone is more comfortable in Staff view I wouldn't suggest learning a whole new method is easier than making the odd extra mouse click now and then (or key click if there are Key Bindings). That being said I also learned to read from the day I started playing and I read notation fluently but I still prefer working in the PRV.
 
Arthur, what exactly do you mean by "alter the start and stop times of a score's staves"? So far people are discussing moving individual notes around but I'm curious as to what you specifically mean by this. Staves are not notes so I'm a little confused.

Bristol_Jonesey


In my opinion, it's much easier and makes more sense musically to work solely in the PRV to do this type of work.

Reason? Well, I've noticed over the years that with certain soft synths, if you have note lengths which extend right up to the start of the next note Sonar will sometimes "miss" the new Note On message, so I'll drag the end of the first note back, not by much, maybe a few ticks but this guarantees that the first note will finish sounding and a new Note On message will be generated when the sequence reaches the new note.

This type of detailed editing is impossible in the Staff View, where a 1/4 is a 1/4 note and will always be a 1/4 note.

I have noticed this same thing myself when working in staff.... but it is easily remedied. It happens mostly when I am editing or manually inserting a new note. It never happens when I play the parts in on the keyboard. It will happen there only if I go to edit a wrong note or add a note. Then I must be aware of the overlap principle. 


In staff, a quarter note doesn't (actually) have to be a quarter to sound like a quarter. well.... let me explain. If you set the note default resolution to quarters, you will get quarters (for manual input only), and if you have one quarter playing the same pitch followed by another exactly the same and they overlap by as much as one tick yes... the off/on signals will get lost. This happens when the snap to grid is turned off..... thus allowing the full quarter note to be placed on the staff exactly where you click, and not necessarily on the beat. It might be 10 ticks past the beat (2:02:010) but to the ear it sounds right, 10 ticks is hard to hear but midi never misses it......BUT... if that occurs, you simply right click to get to note properties and lower the duration number by a few ticks and waa laa, you have the notes sounding properly and when you reduce a note by a few ticks, your ear can not hear that difference. 


If you prefer to edit in staff or PRV... it really doesn't matter... you can do it from either screen... it just depends on what YOU feel more comfortable working with.  PRV may actually have some advantages in that you can draw in envelopes of velocity and a few other things more easily. 

You might want to look into using the Event Inspector. Check out the following video for more info...

* Cakewalk SONAR: Event Inspector Editing
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/video.asp?ID=7

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

Hey Scott, you shouldn't be here!!!

You should be writing X2........

So you're talking about doing this work in Sonar X1 Essential, right? Or can it be done in all its versions? This information would help me decide which Sonar X1 version to purchase. Thanks.