Specifications

CHAPTER 2
Projects
In SONAR, all your music data for a single body of work is organized as
a project. A project can be anything from a Top 40 song or a 30-second
radio spot to a full-length symphonic score, such as a movie soundtrack.
Along with the music data, all of SONAR’s settings for a single work are
stored in the project as well. A project is saved on disk as a single file
with a .WRK or .BUN file name extension. The difference between the
two file types is that a work (WRK) file stores only MIDI data and project
settings, whereas a bundle (BUN) file also includes any audio data within
a project. (For more information, see Chapter 4.)
Tracks, Clips, and Events
The music data within a project is organized into units called tracks,
clips, and events. Events, which are the smallest units, consist of single
pieces of data, such as one note played on a MIDI keyboard. Clips are
groups of events. They can be anything from a simple MIDI melody to an
entire vocal performance recorded as audio. And tracks are used to store
clips. For example, a pop song project might contain seven tracks of
music data—six for the instruments and one for the vocal performance.
Each track can contain any number of clips that might represent one long
performance or different parts of a performance. And SONAR gives you
unlimited tracks. The only limitation is the speed of your CPU and the
amount of memory (RAM) you have in your computer. I’ll talk more
about tracks, clips, and events in Chapter 7.
Track View
To work with the data in a project, you have to use the tools called views
in SONAR. Views are like windows that let you see and manipulate the
data in a project in a variety of ways. The most important is the Track
view, shown in Figure 2.3
Figure 2.3
The Track view is the
main window used to
work with a project
in SONAR.
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Getting Started with SONAR — Chapter 2
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