Instruction Manual

470 Editing MIDI Events and Controllers
Changing the Timing of a Recording
Accenting beats in each measure. Create a sample measure containing
note events at the desired accent points. Give the notes on the accented
beats a greater velocity and the others a lesser velocity. Select the
measure, copy it to the Clipboard, and then choose Process-Groove
Quantize. Set the velocity strength as high as necessary so that the notes
get accented the way you want.
Stealing that feeling. Suppose you have a dry piece that was composed
and entered into SONAR with a rigid sense of timing (for example, using
step recording). You’ve recorded a bass line that has exactly the off-beat
rhythmic dynamic you want for the dry piece. You’d like to force your other
tracks to share that feel. Copy the bass track to the Clipboard; from the
Groove Quantize dialog box, select the Clipboard as the groove source;
choose a resolution value roughly on the order of the duration of the bass
notes and a window of 100 percent. SONAR aligns the melody note events
with the nearest bass notes.
Synchronizing rhythm and solo tracks. If you want to preserve the
unique rhythm of each track but want to synchronize them together in time,
try a larger resolution value and a smaller window. For example, suppose
you have one track with a highly stylized drum beat and another track
containing a jazz solo with some very nice runs in it. The drum beats fall
primarily on quarter notes, but the solo consists of runs of fast notes that
aren’t quite sixteenth triplets. Copy the drum track to the Clipboard, and
groove quantize using a quarter-note resolution and a window of perhaps
10 percent. SONAR aligns the solo notes near the quarter-note drum beats
but maintains the feel of the solo during the fast runs of notes in between.
Correcting off-tempo tracks. Suppose you have both rhythm and melody
tracks recorded, but the melody was played erratically. First, copy the
rhythm track to the Windows clipboard. Then use groove quantize with a
whole-note resolution, a window of 25 percent or less, and with the Scale
Time option selected. The Groove Quantize command will synchronize the
melody track with the groove source at roughly measure boundaries, while
maintaining the relative timing of the notes in each measure.
Fixing a bad verse. Copy a good verse to the Clipboard. Then change the
selected range to cover only the bad verse. Perform a groove quantize
using the Clipboard contents as the groove source. The rhythms of the two
verses then match.
Fit Improvisation
SONAR lets you record music from a MIDI controller without requiring that
you use a fixed tempo. In fact, if you record without using a metronome, you