Week 163: How to Be a SONAR Power User No, I’m not going to trot out the old joke…
Q: What’s a “power user”?A: Someone who reads the manual! …because a program like SONAR is so deep, you may need to use only 20% of what it can do - and you don’t really need to read about the rest. But, you
do want to be a power user in the aspects that matter the most to you. And you certainly want to know the program basics and what options are available, so you can choose which options are most important to you. Here’s what I recommend.
1. Click on every drop-down menu in every view, and look at every item in the menu. If you don’t know what something does, click on Help, and use the search or index function to find the topic.
What got me thinking about this was a long-time user who was unhappy that deleting a clip also deleted automation…but it doesn’t have to, if you know that “Select Track Envelopes with Clips” is under the Track View Options menu. And if you want to know whether notes are lining up with the grid, you can place the Vertical Grid Lines
in front of clips instead of behind them (you’ll find this under the View menu).
Or maybe you’ll see a View option like “Fit MIDI Content” but have no idea what that is. Choose
Help > Documentation, type Fit MIDI Content into the search box, filter the results for your SONAR version (if you're using the online help)...and raise your SONAR IQ.
Ever check out the drop-down menu for a Row in the Step Sequencer? There are all kinds of useful options in there. And if you dig down deep enough in a step sequencer row’s drop-down menu, you’ll find the delightful Step Play Probability—just the thing to make repetitive percussion parts far more interesting.
Even better, note that many of these menu items are eligible for key bindings.
2. Right-click to call up context menus, and look at every item on the menu. You never know what kind of context menu options will show up. For example, did you ever check out the split options that are available when you click on a clip and choose “Split”? It’s a pretty comprehensive dialog box. Or if you don’t know where a Clip came from, you can right-click on it and choose “Associated Audio Files.”
Sometimes you’ll also find duplicated functions. For example, if you want to access the row options in the Step Sequencer, you don’t have to select a row, go to the Row drop-down menu, select another row, go to the Row drop-down menu, etc. Just right-click on a Row, and all the Row options are at your fingertips.
3. Go through Preferences to know what every preference does. Preferences are key to SONAR working properly, so make sure you know what all the options represent. If you don’t know what something does, well, there’s a Help button.
Extra sub-tip: Often you’ll see a question in the forum from someone asking what to do when experiencing audio dropouts. My answer: When the toast notification pops up that says there’s been an audio dropout,
click on its Help button and go through the recommended solutions until you find the one(s) that works. When I experienced dropout problems at one point, that’s what I did…problem solved.
4. Key bindings speed up your workflow. Analyze the way you work, then translate some of your common motions into keyboard shortcuts. For example, I often change gain with vocal phrases, and sometimes use normalization. So, I made keyboard shortcuts to bring up the menus for Gain changes and Normalization. I can whip through a vocal file to even out levels so fast it would make your head spin—and I don’t need to add much compression afterward, either.
5. Try out options you haven’t tried to find out what they do. Let’s take “Fit MIDI Content” as an example. At first, I thought it didn’t work because I was expecting the PRV and inline PRV to zoom in or out as appropriate to fit all the notes within the PRV. But after playing around, I realized it fits MIDI content by zooming vertically. This turned out to be real useful for seeing if keyswitches in Kontakt (that can be a much lower pitch than the part itself) were present for the notes being played.
Trying things is also a great way to learn things you didn’t expect to learn. I’m always surprised at the forum posts that ask questions like “What happens if I do this?” Just “try this” and find out—you’ll probably learn other tricks in the process.
6. Save a pretty complex project with different data types as a “Test Project” (or use the Demo projects now included with SONAR if you’re in a hurry). That way you can try things and check out new features without worrying that you’re going to mess up a
real project.
7. Read the Tech+Music eZine. It tells what’s in the latest update. So does the documentation, but the descriptions in Tech+Music sometimes go into more detail, and include real-world examples of how to use a feature.
I already know what some of you are saying…”but I don’t want to spend time learning a software program, I just want to be able to push buttons and have everything be epic.” But it doesn’t work that way. Just as learning a musical instrument requires practice, so does learning a DAW. Fortunately, you’ll find that spending just a couple of minutes learning some new feature when you have SONAR open will yield rich dividends after a fairly short period of time. Besides, the more you know, the more fluid you’ll become with the program…and often, 5 minutes spent learning will save you hours in the long run.