Our Favorite Views in Sonar 8
All modern DAW’s (Digital Audio Workstations) offer multiple views of your project. Like just about anything computer based there are multiple ways to do the same thing and perhaps part of what makes a personal computer – personal. We selected the three views that we use the most in Sonar 8 when working on a project and listed some of the things you can do from each view.
The first view is called the Track View and probably where we spend most of our time. It allows access to most everything you need when working with MIDI or audio based data. In the MIDI world you can set volume and channel information along with panning and reverb levels. You also have access to the MIDI bank and patch commands allowing you to select the instrumentation used in your arrangement.
If you work with audio tracks, similar to above, you can set all of the various levels. In addition, you can access any of the built-in effects processors that you may want to add to a a track. Out of the box Sonar provide a nice selection of reverbs, compressors, delays, flangers… the list goes on.
Sonar 8 Track View
If we are not working in the track view than you will probably find us in the event list view. While this is used in the MIDI world only, it allows you to drill down to an individual note or any other MIDI event and make adjustments to a single event. For example, you may have one track that has cymbals crashes on it and find that one event is considerably louder than all the others. A quick fix is to bring up the event list view, find the offending cymbal crash, and change the velocity up and down to match the velocity of the other cymbal crashes.
Sonar 8 Event List View
As we have stated to work with more audio data, we have also started working with the console view. Pretty much as the name implies, it brings up a virtual console similar to a physical mixer you would find in a studio. You can use the console view for both MIDI and audio tracks and also with projects that contain both track types. All of the same editing features found in the track view mentioned above are available in the the console view.
Sonar 8 Console View
We would be interested to hear and learn how you use the different views available in your favorite DAW. Drop us a note – We might just start using a new view!
