I attended a Sonar Masterclass session today at Nevada Music. I have always believed that no matter what training you receive you always come away with something and today was certainly no exception. Of course it is always better if firstly the subject matter is something you are interested in or passionate about and secondly it is not work-related.

The session lasted just under an hour and covered all the juicy bits of Sonar 8.5. After a brief introduction to 8.5, we started to look at Session Drummer 3 on what looked like a 32" monitor. The sound came through a couple of Roland Wedges, so the drums looked and sounded awesome. We saw how easy it was to :- create patterns with Session Drummer using the sequencer, change velocities of the drum parts,  and add a small amount of swing for example to the bass drum to give more of a "human feel" and less robotic sound. We then looked at the differences between using layers on a track rather than putting individual drum parts on different tracks. The obvious advantages were the savings in effect resources. With the track layers you could apply the effect to the one track but still have access to each drum part in each layer.

We touched briefly on the Matrix. The Matrix seems a strange beast to a lot of people but today for the first time I saw what a powerful arrangement tool this can be. I don't really see myself as a "loop" person but watching this demonstration has given me push to have a go. I like the idea of simply grabbing loops from your PC and dropping them into the matrix. The example that was used in my opinion was very effective. There was a musical loop going to start with that just had a bass drum beat. The second loop was a different riff but had only a hi-hat going. it then went back to first loop. As I sat and listened, I was very surprised by how good it sounded having just the bass drum and then just the hi-hat etc. As a drummer, this is not something I would have necessarily thought of. Simple? - yes but very effective.

I am like many people and use MS Word for most things and was very surprised and delighted to find information on the anouncement of Music Notation for MS Word. What a great idea  - and why hasn't someone come up with this before?

Fancy having a music notation editing product that allows you to edit and publish music notation in a convenient Microsoft Word environment. Apparently musicnotationformsword.com have said this is easy to learn package with fantastic features such as point and click transposing. For composing of music, it can support MIDI keyboards, virtual piano keyboards and guitar fingerboards.

 Those Generous guys at Trash Audio -  Justin and Surachai have just released a Free TR-808 Sample Pack. Did I mention it is free.

Their website http://trashaudio.blogspot.com/2010/01/roland-tr-808-sample-pack.html  has a statement from Surachi that states :-

This little gem has just come to my attention - SpeakerText. It  is a new free web application designed  for video publishers that turns a video’s text transcript into a an interactive search and navigation tool.

SpeakerText Beta replaces the standard YouTube video player and adds an clickable transcript alongside the video, letting you search and navigate within videos using the transcript. As you click on lines of  lyrics, you jump to that point in the video. This is fun with short videos, but could be a very useful tool when viewing longer videos, such as a speech or a concert video.

Here is a great website I have come across :- http://www.melodycatcher.com. - I have just added this to my favourites. Do you have a melody stuck in your head, you can't think what it is but you know how it goes?  The MelodyCatcher is a music search engine in which you can enter a melody or musical line via a simple keyboard-like Java applet interface. The melody is then searched in their database and the closest matches, if any, are returned. Each search result is presented with a link to the original audio file along with its source on the Internet, and a play button for instant playback. Although songs can also be searched using text, what makes the MelodyCatcher different from conventional search engines is that it is not limited to just text. The MelodyCatcher can be highly useful to those searching for songs for which little or no textual data are available, e.g., the song is an instrumental, or the user does not remember the artist, title, or any lyrics samples.

Another great item has been released by Big Fish Audio just before Christmas if you love to produce hip-hop and R&Bmusic - G-SUITE.

Producers Terry Lindsey and Gerald Brooks have used all their expertise and put together 40 hot urban construction kits with 6GB of fantastic content.

Every now and then you come across a really useful product - iZotope's Alloy .Harmony Central state " It's a channel strip plug-in on steroids, sort of like Ozone but designed for tracks, not mastering/buses". The question is does the world need another channel strip?  iZotope's Site - http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/alloy/ states "What it needs is a better way of working with the essential tools you need for all of your tracks and busses.  That's why we designed Alloy.

Those nice guys at Cakewalk are about to release Sonar 8.5.2. It should be available as a free download to Sonar 8.5 users by the end of the year. It has loads of issues that have been resolved and the following are Feature Enhancements - Wow :-

Digital Music Doctor have announced a free update to Sonar 8 - Know it All!, a video training course for Cakewalk Sonar 8. This update covers all of the major new features in Sonar 8.5, the latest release of this popular digital audio workstation.

This training course update encompasses a number of important new features in Sonar 8.5 including the Matrix View, the PX-64 Percussion Strip, Session Drummer 3, Step Sequencer 2, Audio Snap 2, and the VX-64 Vocal Strip.

Sonar 8 - Know It All! contains over 3 hours of interactive videos which cover all major aspects of audio and midi recording, editing, mixing, and mastering using the Sonar 8 Digital Audio Workstation. The Quick Start section reviews the new features in Sonar and contains an introduction to Sonar projects as well editing and mixing.

Cakewalk by Roland have a great DAW for your PC called SONAR.Have you thought about or already purchased the new SONAR 8.5 upgrade? There are NO words to describe this user-made video (except for ‘totally awesome!’). Just watch it and you’ll see:

Sonar 8.5 Funny Video

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