How to Control Sonar Using a MIDI Keyboard

This article is going to show you the cheapest and easiest way to control Cakewalk Sonar. It is the cheapest way because almost every Sonar user owns a MIDI keyboard. We will be using your existing MIDI keyboard as a controller. If your keyboard has many knobs and sliders, you can take advantage of the Controller/Surfaces support in Sonar to save you a lot of mouse movement.

I think you will prefer to control, says the track volume using a slider rather than a mouse right?

Preparation

1. First, make sure that your MIDI Device is hooked up to the computer and that the inputs/outputs are selected in Options | MIDI Devices.
2. Next, you’ll want to go to View | Toolbars and make sure that “Controllers/Surfaces” is checked.
3. Open up Options | Controller/Surfaces. If there are any Control Surfaces already listed here, select them and hit the red ‘X’ to delete them.
4. Now press the yellow ‘Add New Controller/Surfaces’ button and choose Cakewalk Generic Surface. Make sure the input and output port are configured as well.

Click close. You should now be able to see the controller listed in the Controler/Surfaces toolbar. To its immediate right is a field showing the active track and then a button to open up the Controller/Surfaces parameters. Go ahead and open the parameters now.

Now comes the fun part. Let’s say your MIDI keyboards has 8 separate sliders and 8 separate knobs. You want your first slider to control the volume of the first track, while your first knob to the pan of first track. At the same time, the other sliders and knobs will control the volume and pan of their respective track. Follow the instruction below:

1. We want our controller/surface to control 8 tracks simultaneously, so set Number of Track Strips to 8.
2. Set Parameter 1 to Volume, and Parameter 2 to Pan. Since our controller/surface only has two hardware controls per strip, we only need to use two track parameters (there is no need to configure Param 3-16; the MIDI message for these parameters should be assigned to None).
3. Let’s start by configuring the parameters for the first track: set Configure Strip Number to 1.
4. Select Parameter 1 (Volume) by clicking the radio button that’s just left of the Parameter 1 field.
5. Move the first fader on your controller/surface (move it a couple of times).
6. Click Learn. This automatically defines the MIDI message for Parameter 1 in strip #1 (i.e. Volume for the Base Track). You can also type in the desired MIDI message manually.
7. Select Parameter 2 (Pan).
8. Move (twice) the first knob in strip 1.
9. Click Learn. This automatically defines the MIDI message for Param 2 in strip #1 (i.e. Pan for the Base Track). If you know what data value the knob sends out when you move it, check the Trigger Value field to see that it’s the same as the data value that the knob sends out.
10. Next, let’s configure the parameters for track 2 (Base Track + 1): set Configure Strip Number to 2.
11. Now, repeat step 4-9 for the respective sliders and knobs.
12. Finally save the configuration as a preset by typing a name in the Preset field, and then clicking the disk icon that’s next to it.

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