At my wits end.

[Unbroken]

Im a musician from the old school days of reel to reel and four tracks. Ive recently decided to try and evolve into the computer age. I dug deep and picked up Sonar 7, mainly because of the bells and whistles of it seeming to be the end all, be all solution to my needs, but feel I may be in oever my head. The aspect that made it a closed deal was the realism of the drums within the program, and is the main reason I purchased it. I can play around with the midi somewhat, have a very limited understanding of DAW's and can get by with what Ive learned. However, I have not been able to use Session Drummer 2 or program a drum pattern, which is the main reason I bought the thing. Ive read cakewalk forums, and other threads, and went so far as to purchase a tutorial from Music Doctor. Apparently, I have a block as to what they are telling me. What Im trying to do is to hook up my Yamaha DGX-202 and effectivley lay down my own drum tracks. Can someone explain this to me like I was a 2 year old, because apparently I dont get it. Thanks.

 

[Saiza]

I am from the old school also.....It took time and a lot of reading to go digital.......Sonar is a sequencer type program, not so much a midi recording program......A sequencer :look at it as your four track recorder. Where you import midi files that you have done in another program. Then record your bass guitar, guitar and so on......If you want to make midi tracks then you might want to look at Reason 4.0 .....With reason you can do simple drum patterns or any type of instrument.......then you would export it as a wave file. Then take that wave file and import it into Sonar.

 

[ErichS]

You should be able to accomplish this without purchasing another program. Sonar might not be the best MIDI program out there but Cakewalk (Soanr) was a MIDI sequencer way before thew ever did audio.

First things first. Are you able to hook your MIDI keyboard to the computer and have Sonar recognize it?

 

[Dani Pace]

No real advice here, just a word of encouragement. A lot of us older guys had experience with analog recording before we got into the digital side of music. For me, it's been a 6 year continual learning process. If you are not fairly competent with a computer it can get pretty frustrating at times, even if you are a total geek it can get on your nerves. I recall the day I brought Cakewalk Music Creator home and loaded it into my pc. It was a bit of a shocker and I thought "How am I ever gonna learn all this?" The rest is digital history. It's been a slow process and I'm still learning. I recently got brave and left the pc for a Mac and moved on from N Tracks to Protools, it's like starting over again, I guess the learning never stops.

Anyway, welcome to the bbs. The guys and gals around here have been a huge help to me over the years. Ask serious questions and you will get some very helpfull advice, ask lame questions and you will get some pretty strange responses. Kick back, relax, experiment, and above all make friends with the "undo" button on whatever software you use.

 

[jerjabs]

Man...I was right in your same boat a few months ago. I however, was always the artist and not the guy doing the recording. I also use Sonar 7 and like most DAW interfaces...it is one tough bitch of a nut to crack.

I got into DAWs because I wanted to program beats that sounded "real" enough for my to write and record songs with. I first purchased BFD. Over my head. Then I was turned onto EZ Drummer. Man, that was one great buy on my part. If you want EASY, SIMPLE great sounding drums...that is the ticket...that being said, I'm no expert with session drummer but here I go. This is what I do for EZ Drummer and I'm sure it will work for session too.....maybe.

1. Start a new song with only one midi track and one audio track.

2. In the effects bin of the AUDIO track right click and drop in Session Drummer.

3. In the audio track set the output to your audiocard or DAWs main output...the one going to your monitors.

4. In the MIDI track go to where you can select where the output goes and select "Session Drummer"....or what ever it says for that plugin.

5. I've never opened Session drummer but I'd imagine you set up your beat and let her rip!

In EZ DRummer, you simply open the plugin interface...it matches up with your host DAWs BPMs and you simply drag and drop beats/roles etc into your song. It is so awesome-ly easy it's stupid.

Good luck...I have MANY noob questions posted over at the cakewalk forum also.

 

[Unbroken]

whew.....been a while.

I appreciate all the responses. Work has ran me ragged to the point if insanity. I recently sat down one night after an 18 hour day and picked up old faithful and started strumming and within 15 minutes I had something I could really envision and sink my teeth into. Its been so long since Ive been able to tinker in Sonar that I wonder what I actually remember. But Im gonna filter through all the gracious info and see where it leads me. But at least I know that if I stumble acrossed another roadblock, there are fellow musicians here that I can turn to before I start pulling at my follicles. Thankx Guys