Reference Guide

54 Introduction
About SONAR
About SONAR
SONAR is the flagship product of the Cakewalk line of integrated MIDI and digital audio sequencers
for the Windows platform. SONAR has a comprehensive feature set that makes it the single most
productive tool for sound and music authoring. Here are some of the ways you can use SONAR.
Next topic: “Publish” on page 54
Publish
Publishing usually means printing your music; it’s one way to share your finished product with other
performers. After you’ve recorded and arranged a song in SONAR, you can produce printed lead
sheets and small scores with lyrics for sharing. You can also share the music files themselves.
SONAR will save your music in a format that you can put on a web site or email to other people.
Next topic: “Music composition and exploration” on page 54.
Music composition and exploration
SONAR is a powerful music-composition application, providing tools to record your own musical
performances; enhance or improve the quality of those performances; and edit, arrange, and
experiment with the music. With a few simple clicks of the mouse, you can arrange, orchestrate, and
audition your composition. Fully integrated sequencing allows you to combine the convenience and
flexibility of MIDI composition with the high-quality sound and subtlety of digital audio sound
recording and reproduction. Change the feel of a piece by locking it to a musical groove, or add
delicate delays, anticipations, or echoes that add richness to the music.
SONAR displays and lets you edit your music using standard musical notation and guitar tablature,
so you can adjust individual notes, add performance markings, and print individual parts or full
scores. You can graphically draw tempo and volume changes, or add lyrics to display on-screen or
to include with printed scores.
Next topic: “Remixing” on page 54.
Remixing
SONAR’s Groove clips allow you to import, create, export and edit loops, making it possible to
quickly change tempos and keys for an entire project. The Browser view lets you preview loops in
the project’s tempo and key before dragging and dropping them onto a track.
Next topic: “Game sound development” on page 55.