Reference Guide

124
Tutorial 4 – Playing and recording software instruments
Try to create a melody using this technique. You might find that you can only create 16th notes or
longer. If you want 32nd notes or triplets, specify the desired Musical Time resolution in the Control
Bar’s Snap module.
Figure 23. The Snap to Grid module.
You can now draw notes at shorter distances from each other.
To specify the duration of new notes, select the desired duration in the Control Bar’s Tools module.
Figure 24. The Tools module.
What if I already have a project that contains MIDI tracks?
If you already have a MIDI track that you would like to play through a software instrument, the steps
are a bit different.
Let's start by opening a sample project.
1. On the File menu, click Open.
2. Navigate to C:/Cakewalk Content/SONAR X1/Tutorial Projects.
3. Click on the file named Latin.cwp and click OK.
If you press Play, you are not likely to hear anything. That's because this project does not contain a
software synth for the MIDI tracks to play through. Since there are 11 tracks in this project, it would
be best to use one synth track and route them all to the same instrument. Some instruments, such
as the Cakewalk TTS-1 can output more than one type of sound. These instruments are known as
multi-timbral synths. They know what notes are played through each sound based on the MIDI
channel they are sent over. If you examine each track in this project in the Track Inspector or
Console view, you'll notice that each one is set to its own channel. No two tracks share the same
channel.