Reference Guide

Tutorial 5 – Working with music notation
A great way to compose in SONAR is by using the Staff view. The Staff pane displays MIDI note events
as musical notation. For some musicians, this may be the most familiar and comfortable view in which to
work. The Staff pane provides many features that make it easy for you to compose, edit, and print music.
You can add notes to your composition with simple point-and-click techniques.
This tutorial will introduce you to the tools and features that SONAR provides for working with notation.
Let’s start by opening the Staff view in a new project:
1. On the File menu, click New.
The New Project File dialog appears.
2. Select the Normal template, specify a project name and save location, then click OK.
SONAR loads the new project, which contains two audio tracks and two MIDI tracks.
3. Click on track 3 labeled “MIDI 1”.
4. On the Views menu, click Staff.
The Staff view opens.
Next we need to configure the Staff View tools for the purpose of this tutorial:
1. Change the Display Resolution to the smallest note value.
2. Disable Fill Durations and Trim Durations .
3. Select the Draw tool .