Sonar selection behavior

[Starship Krupa]

Background:

I've been trying to pin down why it is that of all of the programs I use, Sonar is the one that I most feel like I have to tiptoe around in it to avoid doing something that I didn't want to do.

I use Ctrl+Z more in Sonar than in any other program. Not coincidentally, I've found it best to map a single keystroke to Select None and use that a lot, too.

This led me to suspect that what's tripping me up in Sonar has something to do with its selection and deselection behavior being something that I'm not expecting. That is, there are common actions that result in objects, or multiple objects being selected that I don't expect to result in objects being selected, and/or there are common actions that I expect to deselect things that don't result in the objects being deselected. So I've been watching out for that. Tonight, I identified something.

The problem:

This has to do with MIDI recording and editing. If I have a MIDI track or MIDI clip selected in Track View, this results in all the MIDI notes from that track/clip being selected. It often happens that I have a MIDI track (and therefore all of its clips) selected due to the fact that I must select the MIDI track in order to have it echo what I'm playing on my keyboard. Having the track selected is as it should be of course, otherwise how does Sonar know which track you want to play into.

However, what happens over and over and over ad nauseum is that I record a MIDI track by playing notes from my keyboard, then I go to Piano Roll View to tidy up the notes. INVARIABLY I click on the edge of the first note that I want to tidy up and end up moving the edges of all of the notes in the track simultaneously. Then I curse under my breath, hit Ctrl+Z, then hit my dedicated Select None key, after which I'm finally able to do what I want, which is adjust individual notes.

I. Am. So. Tired. Of. Doing. This.

I understand that having all notes selected is handy if you want to run quantize on the notes right away, but I usually don't. My most common task after recording is manual adjustment of note start and stop times.

There are plenty of times when I do want my editing actions to affect all of the notes, what I'm saying is that this never occurs right after I've finished a take. Ctrl-A is fine for when I want to do that.

For comparison, I tried the same operation in 2 other popular DAW's. I didn't have this issue with either of them because selecting a track or clip in their track views doesn't select all the notes in the piano roll. In both cases to select all notes, you right click in the piano roll and choose "select all" from the context menu. I was able to go directly from recording the take to editing a note with no deselecting or undoing or any of that mess and it was like a breath of fresh air.

The best solution I can think of is to have the OPTION not to select events with clips much as we now have the OPTION not to select events with arranger sections. It could even have an override, where when you have selecting events with clips turned off, an Alt-Click will select the events.

Edited July 6 by Starship Krupa

[msmcleod]

There's a difference between track focus and selection.

The answer is simple:  If you don't want the clips selected, then don't click the clips.

Clicking anywhere in the track header (apart from the track number) will focus it  without changing selection.  I usually click the track icon, track name or the blank space underneath the MSR buttons.

Clicking on the track number however, will select the track and all clips within it.  This is actually my preferred way of selecting all the clips in a track - especially when used in conjunction with the PRV, as it guarantees that they're all selected - clicking on a single clip may not select others if they're hidden away in a take lane and further down in the project (unless it's the comp clip you're clicking - that's ok).

If you've been used to always clicking clips, I appreciate this may take some undoing of muscle memory!

[Starship Krupa]

9 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Clicking anywhere in the track header (apart from the track number) will focus it  without changing selection.  I usually click the track icon, track name or the blank space underneath the MSR buttons.

Okay, this is the information that I needed.

No, I haven't been clicking on clips, but I have been clicking on track numbers to select tracks. What I need to be doing before I record is click somewhere other than the track number to focus the track without also selecting it.

The difference between selection and focus when it comes to tracks has been a source of mystery for me since I started using Cakewalk, so thanks for setting me straight. This may have a ripple effect in regard to other actions that send me to Ctrl-Z.