Instruction Manual

92 Tutorials
Tutorial 1—The Basics
• Mute a track and play a track solo
• Change a track's instrument
• Play a track on a MIDI instrument
If you have not already done so, please read at the very least MIDI, Digital
Audio, and in the Introduction chapter. If you have little or no experience
with music software, read the Beginner’s Guide to Cakewalk Software in
the online help. If you have time, also read the Introduction chapter for
basic background information about projects, tracks, clips, the Track view,
and the Console view.
Next Step: Opening a Project File.
Opening a Project File
SONAR stores MIDI and digital audio data in project files. The first thing
you need to do is load a project file.
To Open a Project File
1. If you haven't already done so, start SONAR.
2. Choose File-Open.
3. In the Open dialog box, navigate to the directory in which you installed
SONAR, double-click the Tutorial folder to open it and select the file
TUTORIAL1.CWP.
4. Click the Open button.
SONAR loads the project and opens the Track view. Feel free to move and
resize the Track view to better fit your screen.
Next Step: Preparing for Playback
Preparing for Playback
Before you can play a project, you must choose the outputs for both MIDI
sounds and audio sounds. By choosing the outputs, you are telling SONAR
from which outputs you want to hear the sounds.
You may have a sound card with a built-in synthesizer, or a MIDI keyboard
that produces sounds. We will discuss using these with a project later on in
the tutorial. First we will explore using a software synthesizer to hear a
project’s MIDI tracks. A software synthesizer is a software program that
produces various sounds through your audio interface or sound card when
the soft synth program receives MIDI data from a MIDI controller or
sequencer program. When you insert a software synth, you need to assign
the output of the MIDI track to that software synth.