Good deal - Glad you can move on and happily use the current KP2 for your JABB work.
I doubt if Sonar would ever develop a staff view which is independent from the other views, because Sonar is strictly a MIDI/Audio application, not a notation program. I use the staff view to do some editing, but of course it Does effect what happens in the MIDI data. But you'll notice that if you haven't quantized your notes, the staff view will round notes off so they're presentable as long as your loose input hasn't been Too far out of the pocket. - Be sure to have the two buttons at the top turned on which quantize the note display.
But with Sib, Finale and other notation programs focusing their power on producing sophisticated charts, they'll always be way ahead of sequencers for doing that job. Some people think that in the future the two apps will be combined into big monster programs that do it all, and maybe so - but that certainly isn't the case at the present time.
When you say you haven't figured out how to export a MIDI file into Finale - you don't mean that literally do you? I mean, you know how to get the file in there, but it just looks like hell, right? -
The detailed response Snorlax posted here for you really has it spelled out - Your MIDI file has to be very clean and quantized to give Finale a chance to display what you intend. You can't really use the same version of the MIDI file in both apps. "Loose" for Sonar, "Tight" for Finale.
I know how to export the midi file from Sonar and import it into Finale. That's the easy part but, yea, it looks like hell in Finale but I think I can figure out, with some experimentation, how to import a midi file that will look decent!
Be sure to follow Snorlax's post. He's explaining that a MIDI file intended for importing into a notation program has to be properly quantized. That's the main thing to deal with.
Notice he's saying that a clean MIDI file will "minimize" the amount of fixing up that needs to be done in Finale - but it doesn't eliminate it.
Just understand that you're never going to get a MIDI file so that it opens up looking instantly tidy and correct in Finale.
I use Sibelius and wrestle with the same problem you face in Finale. I just got through spending a solid two weeks working on an old project, first reducing the number of instruments in the score, then producing a decent sounding demo of it in Sonar - THEN making a special version of the MIDI file for bringing in to Sib. I spent 6 hours with the file in Sib yesterday and it'll probably take me that much more time today, to get it Almost right. And this was the cleanest MIDI file I've ever worked with in Sib! The point is that it just takes time. It can get very tedious. All the work I just described was for a 3:00 piece.
I make a lot of use of a Sib plugin, "renotate" - it does 90% of the clean up work instantly. I'm sure Finale has a filter that does the same thing.
There's a setting you always need to have set in Sonar when using JABB or any Garritan Library, and it's possible you haven't done that.
In the top menu bar, choose Options. Choose Project. Choose MIDI out. Where it says "Zero controllers when play stops," UN-check that box. The default of On works fine for most synths, but for the Garritan instruments, it turns cc1 to Zero every time you stop playback in a project and you have no sound when you push Play again.
It's possible that's a problem for you. You Must do the above.
Secondly, you don't just insert a cc1 value at the beginning of a track and leave it at that. Maybe that's not what you're doing, but you must understand that cc1, which by default is what your Mod Wheel generates, must be recorded continuously in a project so the volume is fluctuating in a natural way throughout a piece.
The first thing I said, about un-checking the "Zero controllers" box could well be your problem, because even with some value of cc1 at the top of the track, that should sustain that volume at that level even if you're not properly recording or drawing in more cc1 value.
thank you for the advice! You'd be correct about the mod wheel CC1 being set to zero when the sequence stops so I did uncheck the option that you talked about. The other problem that you stated, recording the mod wheel in real time at the beginning of the track, I didn't do because I entered some trombone notes for chords from the staff view and not in real time! So I do believe that the JABB is not designed to work like this! This is what I'm beginning to realize about the JABB. Playing in the parts one by one is something I'm not quite use to yet.
Glad that was indeed your problem, ronboykin. The need to keep that "Zero controllers" box un-checked is one of the major problems people have when they first start using Garritan Libraries in Sonar.
In your new post you said, "...The other problem that you stated, recording the mod wheel in real time at the beginning of the track, I didn't do because I entered some trombone notes for chords from the staff view and not in real time! So I do believe that the JABB is not designed to work like this! This is what I'm beginning to realize about the JABB. Playing in the parts one by one is something I'm not quite use to yet..."
You seem to have some basic misunderstanding of how MIDI works, so let me help by replying to those specific points:
1) You can enter MIDI data in multiple passes with several different methods. What is done in MIDI is that layers of data are input either through the use of a MIDI controller (such as a keyboard) or with a mouse - and you can combine methods. So it doesn't matter that you had your Trombone notes inserted by hand in the Staff View - you could then record cc1 data with a Mod Wheel in real time.
2) You talked again about having the cc1 data at the beginning of the track. Yes, you need to have some value of cc1 before the first note in a track, and as pointed out above in #1, that could be inserted by hand or recorded in real time. But then you want the cc1 data to continue once the notes start. You have a chord - now the chord can have a stronger first attack, and then swoop down a bit, emulating live musicians. That is with cc1 volume data either inserted or recorded.
3) When you're adding cc1 data by hand, in Sonar you need to hold down the Ctrl key in order to make sweeping curves of data, otherwise you'll yield only single events.
4) JABB most certainly is designed to work as you described. Like all soft synths, the instruments can either be played or inserted. When people are using a notation program with JABB, for the most part they're inserting individual notes - that is no problem.
5) Playing parts one by one is simply the basic way of working with MIDI, it's not unique to JABB. You play the line for one instrument, then move on to the next instrument. And you'll notice the JABB instruments are monophonic like their real world counterparts - You wouldn't want a Trombone which is able to play chords, for instance, since a Trombone can produce only one note at a time. So to build a chord, you would use a variety of Trombones, each on their individual tracks in Sonar.
So - You said you're starting to realize some things about JABB, but the things you listed in this reply aren't correct. There has to be a basic inexperience with MIDI involved in your problems of working with JABB - because the library is essentially like using any other soft synth library.
Thank you for that Randy! I can see that you're probably a old hand at using Sonar! I actually do understand midi quite a bit. I'm quite new to Sonar and the JABB library. Using the mod wheel controller as a volume control is new. I come from using Cubase SX and Logic and I have programmed midi from real time sequencing. I do believe that I used the score editor in Cubase when I first got the JABB to test it. I think Sonar is a little different in the way it handles the JABB library than Cubase SX. With my situation, you can't just draw in the mod wheel controller, in Sonar, and get a sound out of the JABB. It just doesn't work even when I uncheck the option to return the mod wheel to zero after stop unless I record the mod wheel controller at the beginning of the track in real time! I think the JABB manual says that you have to do this! What it doesn't say is that it may not work in Sonar unless you do this! I think this is the case with the way Sonar handles the controllers! This what I believe to be the case!
Everything seems to working out with Sonar and the JABB but is there a way to get the tracks to scrub in the piano roll editor or the staff view? JABB instruments that use the mod wheel don't seem to scrub in these editors! I'm still learning what the library can do and I'm getting into some type of workflow here. Just practicing with some Mancini scores and hopefully I'll have some music to post with me playing guitar against a big band. Maybe I'll have some vocals along with this too! It's a very tedious process!
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