help with drums in Sonar

Posted on

Member Since: Nov 22, 2004

I've got great help from Noize and dB on some Sonar topics and I'm hoping for you guys can help me out once again. :)

I've been doing drums (1 finger for snare, 1 finger for kick LOL) thru my Roland keyboard and then editing them in the piano view to fix sloppy notes. Yes, this is an extremely TEDIOUS process and takes forever this way.

I know Sonar has drum functionality but I'm wondering how to go about starting making my own loops and do I map them thru MIDI to a kit on my keyboard or are there kits available with Sonar? (I have version 3)

Can someone give me some tips on how to get started or if there is a tutorial available anywhere on the dub dub dub?

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Prince CZAR-ming
Member
Since: Apr 08, 2004


Sep 29, 2006 11:44 am

Hey there Jackson5.

It's easy as 1-2-3 =)

sorry, couldn't help it.

Anyhoo, I'm not a user of sonar, but i've heard that it's a good midi engine, so you should be able to make it work.

Here's a link for a acoustic drum soundfont:

www.naturalstudio.co.uk/ns_kit7freedownload.html

from natural studios. Download the soundfont (68meg). You may have to put the unzipped file (.sf2) in a soundfont directory, so sonar can see it.

then, probably, load the soundfont in a channel, and open the piano roll for that channel.

Now here you can use the mouse, to map in the notes on the piano roll, or you can use the Roland keyboard to input them. The keyboard would be acting as a MIDI controller at this point.

I would think you can also map the output of the midi file to the roland, but you may like the soundfont better.

Hopefully Noize or dB can shed more detailed light on this, as I'm not a sonar user.

Just wanted to throw out some ideas, and that soundfont at you, maybe get you started along.

hth

Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002


Sep 29, 2006 08:36 pm

You should be able to use one of the synths in SOnar. Open the SynthRack view and the click on add instrument. This will open a menu of available DXi and VSTi if you have any VSTi installed. I forget if Sonar 3 came with any drum synths but I believe it did. Then you simply load a kit and away you go. There should be some midi drum patterns in a subfolder of Sonar. But youcan as well play any patterns back out via midi to your Roland and use its drum kits as well.

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