Reference Guide

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Working with Percussion
Notation and Lyrics
SONAR lets you control the appearance of percussion staffs in considerable detail. You can display
percussion notes using several different types of noteheads and articulation symbols, and you can
map any percussion sound to any position on the percussion staff (in a percussion track, each MIDI
note value designates a different percussion instrument; mapping lets you display any instrument in
any position on the staff, regardless of the underlying MIDI note value). You can save your settings
as a preset, and use them again on other tracks and in other projects. SONAR supplies a standard
preset based on the General MIDI percussion standard and popularly accepted percussion staff
positions and noteheads.
See:
Setting Up a Percussion Track
Setting Up a Percussion Staff or Line
Ghost Strokes
Setting Up a Percussion Track
Before you use the percussion capabilities of the Staff view, your percussion track should be set up
correctly. This will allow you to hear the proper sounds when placing notes and during playback, and
will allow you to see the correct percussion instrument names rather than generic note names in the
Piano Roll view, Event List view, and Percussion Notation dialog box.
To Set Up a Percussion Track
1. Right-click on the track in the Track pane and choose Track Properties to open the Track
Properties dialog box.
2. Assign the output and channel for your percussion instrument. For example, if the output is
assigned to a sound card that supports General MIDI, use channel 10.
3. Click Instruments to open the Assign Instruments dialog box.
4. Make sure that the output/channel combination used by your track is assigned to a percussion
instrument definition. For example, channel 10 of a General MIDI output should be assigned to
the General MIDI Drums instrument definition.
5. Click OK in both dialog boxes.
SONAR shows the new track output and channel in the Track view, and will use the proper
percussion instrument names in the Piano Roll view, Event List view, and Percussion Notation
dialog box.
For more information about instrument definitions, see the online help topic: Instrument Definitions.
Setting Up a Percussion Staff or Line
The first time you display a percussion track in the Staff view, SONAR picks a default percussion clef
for the track. Tracks with only one note value are assigned the Percussion Line clef. Tracks with
multiple note values are assigned the Percussion Staff clef.