Hello everyone-  I know that there are many here using key-switch VST instruments.   Lately, I have been recording parts with my Yamaha WX5 using the Tenor Sax from Chris Hein Horns Solo, vol. 1.5  which has a number of key-switch articulations.  As I was working on my latest project I wanted to play around with the sax's various articulations.  Because I couldn't always remember notes that trigger specific articulations I had to put up a chart for reference which really slowed down the process.  After much frustration I began to think that there must be a better way! Lo and behold it struck me that there is a better way thanks to Sonar's Media Browser.    Sonar has the cool feature where we can drag a clip from the Track View to the Media Browser and save it there.   I could simply enter the trigger note in the Track View and drag the note/clip to the Media Browser, then give it the name of the articulation and the next time I needed that articulation I could simply drag the clip from the media browser to the track where I want the articulation played.  So, my Media Browser now has a folder for CHH horns Tenor Sax with articulations for trill, flutter-tongue, run-up, etc. and I no longer need to look at the instrument's key-switch chart.  As time goes on as I use my other key-switch instruments I will gradually develop media folders for each instrument  with all the articulations that I use the most. Thank you Sonar for having such a great Media Browser!
 

Good tip.
 
Personally, I use Drum Maps for keyswitches but this does necessitate building a separate map for each instrument

Thanks for this tip, Michael
I'm useless at creating Drum Maps, so this is a nice addition to my arsenal.
All the best.

My main downer on this method is that what happens if you don't like the artic, you picked the wrong one or simply want to audition different ones?
 It seems you would have to drag it out of the track or delete it, then drag another one in.
Using a drum map it's extremely quick just to drag the keyswitch note blob up or down to whatever you want.

Bristol_Jonesey
My main downer on this method is that what happens if you don't like the artic, you picked the wrong one or simply want to audition different ones?
 It seems you would have to drag it out of the track or delete it, then drag another one in.
Using a drum map it's extremely quick just to drag the keyswitch note blob up or down to whatever you want.

Someday, I will try and learn more about the drum map.  Never have spent any time with it but since you are using it for key switches I might try it for that.  Could be cool.
 
Dragging the articulation clip from the media browser takes just a split second.  I drag it to an empty take lane or a blank duplicate instrument track I set up only for articulations.  If I don't like it I can just delete it or mute it or drag it to another part.  You can also use the media browser to audition the articulation by clicking on the clip to make it play like you do other grooves in the browser.  To audition it you would need to Change Preview Output to the key-switch instrument.

I wrote an extremely detailed tutorial on setting up drum maps for use with EWQLSO & the Play engine.
 
I'll try and dig it out but it's not for the faint hearted!!
 
But it will certainly serve as a good grounding on creating & editing drum maps.
Plus, you only ever have to do it once if they are saved as a track template afterwards
 

Bristol_Jonesey
I wrote an extremely detailed tutorial on setting up drum maps for use with EWQLSO & the Play engine.
 
I'll try and dig it out but it's not for the faint hearted!!
 
But it will certainly serve as a good grounding on creating & editing drum maps.
Plus, you only ever have to do it once if they are saved as a track template afterwards
 

Hi, Bristol,
would you mind sharing your tutorial?
Thanks, Atsuko

Ok, don't say I didn't warn you..........
 
Ok, here goes, I’ll describe it step by step which hopefully you can follow.
1.       Insert an instance of Play. You want MIDI Source activated, along with First Synth Audio Output
2.       From the Player view, click Settings. Under “Other” you need to make sure that “Midi Channel Assignment” is set to “Automatic Increment”
 
3.       From the Play gui, make sure you’re in Browser (not Player) and load an instrument. Pick one that contains a Master Keyswitch file. For this exercise I used 11Violins (11V KS)
 
4.       Switch back to Player and make a note of how many articulations are listen in the central section.  11 Violins has 29 Articulations, but the bottom one in the list – Release Trails – cannot be mapped as an artic as isn’t mapped to a note number. So  the number of artics we’ll be mapping is 28
 
5.       Now, go back to Sonar. Ignore the audio track for now. First thing to do is to make a clone of the Midi track.
 
6.       It’s also probably a good idea at this stage to rename the instance of Play in the Synth rack. Just call it strings for now.
 
7.       Name one of these to something like \\\\ EW 11v KS \\\\ and name the other one Strings – 11 violins. It doesn’t really matter what you call them, as long as you can distinguish between the 2 types (which will eventually end  up as being 1 for Keyswitches and one for Midi notes & CC’s)
 
 
8.       From your designated KS track, click on the Output field and select Drum Map manager
9.       At the top of the page, select New
 
10.   Under “notes” in the central section, hit New 28 times. The 28 is the number of artics we’re going to map as outlined in step 3
 
 
11.   Now, when you’ve done that, scroll back up to the top of the list which should be note 0(C0). It doesn’t really matter if it says anything different, but it should be note 0.
 
12.   Now here’s a potentially tricky bit. We need to remap both the In Note & the Out Note fields. And to make matters worse, Sonar & EW mappings are different by 2 octaves. What Sonar say is C2 (Note 24) EW says is C0 (Note 24) so you have to work out what note ranges in Sonar need to be mapped. I actually prepared a very simple spreadsheet in Excel which does this for me – all I have to do is read off the note as defined by EW and look at the relevant entry under Sonar. The last articulation in the EW Player reads “D#2 – Qleg Sord”. My spreadsheet tells me that D#2 in EW is note 51 in Sonar.
13.   Double click the In Note and type in 51. The note designation will turn to Eb4. Do the same for the Out Note field.
 
14.   Now move down to the nest pair of In & Out note fields and type 50. Repeat this until you get to the end of the list. You should arrive at note #24 (C2 sonar – C0 EW)
 
 
15.   Go back to the top of the list. Under Name, double click and enter a new description. Again, this should be something that will make sense once you’re viewing it in the PRV. I used “11V Ks – Qleg Sord”. Repeat this for all the artics.
 
16.   Now we need to adjust the “Channel” Parameter. Hold down Ctrl + Shift and select the top entry. Scroll down to the bottom, keep ctrl + shift held and select the bottom entry. The entire list should now be selected.
 
 
17.   Keeping ctrl + shift held, select the channel from the drop down box which corresponds to the Channel number in the Play gui (top left, underneath Midi Port)
 
18.   Now do a ctrl + shift + select of all (28) entries under “Out Port”. Select the instance of the Play vsti you’re working with (Strings)
19.   Now click ok and you’re finished with the drum map.
 
20.   Back in Sonar land, on your Ks Midi track, click the Output field again and point the output to the drum map you just created. This will normally be the last one in the list
 
21.   Now switch to your cloned Midi track. Under the Channel field, select the Midi Channel we’ve just set on the Drum map.
 
22.   Select both Midi tracks and hit Alt + 3 to go into the prv. You’ll need to drag down the top part of the screen to view the drum map. Make sure that under “view” you’ve got “Show/Hide Track Pane” selected
 
23.   Now, hopefully, if you click any of the notes/artics in the Drum Map, you’ll see he corresponding articulation being selected on the blue keys in Play
 
24.   Clicking on the “regular” keys in the “normal” prv should now provide you with sound
 
All of this sounds extremely convoluted, but it’s much quicker to do in practice than it is to describe it.
Now, you won’t be content with just 11 Violins as you only source of strings, so you need to add more instruments.
1.       Back in the Play Browser, select another instrument and loads it’s Master Keyswitch file.
2.       Click “Add” to add it to Play
 
3.       The Midi channel should automatically increment
 
4.       Now it’s a question of going back to step 4 above, making a note of the number of articulations.
 
5.       Clone both of your existing Midi channels, change their header description in the same way as our first one. You might also want at this stage to consider putting similar tracks into Folders – one for your keyswitches and one for your Midi notes.
 
6.       Follow the above steps again but this time you every time you have to enter or change a Midi channel, use the newly incremented number indicated in the Play gui
 
7.       Now you can go back to the prv and under tracks > Pick tracks – select all 4 Mid tracks you’ve generated.
 
8.       Remember to select, from the Track Pane, in Pairs – in order to work on a single instrument – 1 for the Keyswitches and one for the Notes/Controllers
 
You can repeat all of the above for as many instruments as you want to load into 1 instance of Play, subject to a maximum of 16 (The Midi Channel limit)
Now, it’s probably a good idea as you go along to also start cloning your audio tracks for each instrument you add. Yep, that now makes 3 tracks for each instrument. Cumbersome I know, but judicious use of the Track Manager can really help here. You certainly don’t want to see any of the Midi tracks in console view, so hide them there, and there’s no real benefit for being able to see the Keyswitch tracks in Track view, so hide them there.
On your audio tracks, increment the Input parameter for each instrument you add. This makes auditioning the different instruments really easy. Name them and put them in folders.
Once you’ve repeated this for all the strings (Section & solo), Brass & Woods you’ll probably end up with a fair number of tracks.
Percussion is slightly different in that no Keyswitches are provided, instead, each instrument is laid out chromatically on the keyboard
I’ve set up different folders, one for “Metals”, one for “Woods” etc. All you need to do here is increment each Midi channel as you load them. Currently I have 2 instances of play set up for percussion, but I’ve not finished with this yet, so a 3^rd will be added in due course.
The Midi limit of 16 channels can be a bit of a problem here, as Metals, Drums & CymBong all contain over 16 instruments, so if you want to load all of them, they’ll need to be split across 2 (or more) Play instances.
 
I hope this helps, I really do. At least you only have to do this once! Save it as a template. You can of course set it up so that initially, your synths are disconnected to speed up loading times, also, during composition, you can easily unload individual artics from the Play gui, thus releasing them from memory.
 
This setup is currently eating up 7GB of RAM.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Incidentally, this is the post that inspired me to write the above:
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1965558
 

Hi, Bristol,
thank you so much!!
Cheers!