SONAR X1 Reference GuideSONAR X1 Reference Guide
Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commit- ment on the part of Cakewalk, Inc. The software described in this document is furnished under a license agreement or nondisclosure agreement. The software may be used or copied only in accor- dance of the terms of the agreement. It is against the law to copy this software on any medium except as specifically allowed in the agreement. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, for any purpose without the express written permission of Cakewalk, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Cakewalk, Inc. All rights reserved.
Program Copyright © 2010 Cakewalk, Inc. All rights reserved.
ACID is a trademark of Sony Creative Software, Inc.
Cakewalk is a registered trademark of Cakewalk, Inc. and the Cakewalk logo are trademarks of Cakewalk, Inc. Other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
Visit Cakewalk on the World Wide Web at www.cakewalk.com.
Getting started
If you want to get up and running quickly, please use the following tutorials, which are tailored to learning specific tasks in SONAR. If you are new to Cakewalk products, you may want to start at Tutorial 1. If you have used previous versions of Cakewalk, or you want to do a specific task, choose from the following tutorials:
“Tutorial 1 – Creating, playing, and saving projects” on page 95
“Tutorial 2 – Using the Browser” on page 107
“Tutorial 3 – Recording vocals and musical instruments” on page 113
“Tutorial 4 – Playing and recording software instruments” on page 119
“Tutorial 5 – Working with music notation” on page 127
“Tutorial 6 – Editing your music” on page 137
“Tutorial 7 – Mixing and adding effects” on page 145
“Tutorial 8 – Working with video” on page 153
“Tutorial 9 – Exporting, CD burning and sharing” on page 163
“Glossary” on page 1799. A list of defined terms.
“Introduction” on page 51. An overview of SONAR’s features and functionality.
“Troubleshooting” on page 1177. Answers to frequently asked questions.
“New features in SONAR X1” on page 1237. Descriptions of new features in SONAR X1.
Note: This documentation covers SONAR X1 Producer, SONAR X1 Studio, SONAR X1 Essential and SONAR X1 LE. The documentation indicates if a feature only applies to a specific edition of SONAR X1. For a list of key differences between each edition, see “Comparison” on page 1245.
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1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 About SONAR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Publish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Music composition and exploration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Remixing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Game sound development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Sound production and engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Web authoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Film and video scoring and production. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Publishing music on the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Burning audio CDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Flexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Computers, sound and music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Digital audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Setup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Audio connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 MIDI connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Changing I/O devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Starting SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
SONAR basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 SONAR file types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Opening a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Working on a project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Screen colors and wallpaper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Color presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
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Starting to use SONAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2 Tutorial 1 – Creating, playing, and saving projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Creating a new project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Opening project files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Playing project files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Configuring your sound device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Setting the tracks outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Playing the project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Looping project files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Saving project files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3 Tutorial 2 – Using the Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Finding and previewing audio loops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Previewing MIDI groove clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Adding loops to your project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4 Tutorial 3 – Recording vocals and musical instruments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Troubleshooting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5 Tutorial 4 – Playing and recording software instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Adding an instrument track to your project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Recording MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Manually entering MIDI notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
6 Tutorial 5 – Working with music notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Printing your notation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
7 Tutorial 6 – Editing your music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Moving clips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Splitting Clips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Cropping Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Undo and Redo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Table of contents
8 Tutorial 7 – Mixing and adding effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Volume and pan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Adding effects (FX). . . . .…