Piano Roll View (PRV) Sometime shows the Midi Drum data and sometimes not?

[Roy Slough]

I am using Sonar now and a familiar problem has arisen with the PRV.

It is helpful to me to see the notes of the drum midi track while I edit a different Midi track and sometimes the note do appear.  
The first attachment shows me editing a midi track called strings while the notes of the drum track are shown. (N.B. at this stage they were a copy of the bass track)

When I changed to work on the Bass guitar, the drum notes disappear.  (second attachment)
I have tried holding down Ctrl or shift as I select different Midi Tracks I want to edit, but the drum info will not persist. (It only shows when the drum track is selected for editing.)

If I were editing the Bass guitar track and then select a different midi track with the Ctrl key held down (e.g. Ample guitar) then the bass notes are visible in a faint display, but this does not work with the drum track.

Any Ideas if I can achieve what I desire? 
Thanks

[msmcleod]

Make sure both the tracks are selected in the PRV's track selector.

[David Baay]

3 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Make sure both the tracks are selected in the PRV's track selector.

I think it has always been the case that giving focus to a track in the Notes pane causes drum-mapped notes to disappear rather than be ghosted because the PRV depends on track focus to 'know' that a drum map should be applied (and which one if there's more than one in the project). Pretty sure I've reported this in the distant past.

The mystery to me is how the OP got the first screenshot as the PRV track selector shows only the Strings track selected.

[Amberwolf]

I dont' know what the pencil icon means in the modern sonar there, but it's lit orange on boht midi drum and strings, but it is not lit on midi drum when the bass is lit.

If it's the same as the "visibility" state (show / hide track) that is in that same spot in the ancient SONAR versions, that would probably be why you can't see the drums with the bass?

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Amberwolf said:

I dont' know what the pencil icon means in the modern sonar there, but it's lit orange on boht midi drum and strings, but it is not lit on midi drum when the bass is lit.

It means the notes will be visible and editable when you click in them if Autofocus is enabled. But unless I'm going more blind than I thought, your screenshots are showing the opposite: where the drum hits are not visible,  Drums and Bass are lit/selected, and in the shot where drum hits are visible only the Strings is lit/selected. The track with the name also lit is currently active/focused for editing. Very odd.

[Amberwolf]

23 minutes ago, David Baay said:

It means the notes will be visible and editable when you click in them if Autofocus is enabled. But unless I'm going more blind than I thought, your screenshots are showing the opposite: where the drum hits are not visible,  Drums and Bass are lit/selected, and in the shot where drum hits are visible only the Strings is lit/selected. The track with the name also lit is currently active/focused for editing. Very odd.

I don't have any screenshots, so I'm not sure what your'e referring to?

 

I was just replying to the OP / other posters about the OP's images, speculating on the differences I can see between the one with teh drums visible, and the one without.  I don't know how the modern Sonar is intended to work for those controls and visibility; just how my ancietn stuff does. 

 

Edited Monday at 11:40 PM by Amberwolf

[David Baay]

7 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

I don't have any screenshots, so I'm not sure what your'e referring to?

Sorry for the confusion. I guess I expected to be getting a reply from the OP and totally overlooked who was posting.

There hase been some evolution of the behavior of the Tracks Pane over time and I forget which version you're using, but the behavior in Sonar is pretty much unchanged from SONAR Platinum: If the track number is lit, the expectation is that the notes of the track will be visible, and if it's not they won't. His screenshots are showing the opposite with regard to the visibility and selection status of the Drums track. 

[Roy Slough]

On 8/11/2025 at 12:31 PM, msmcleod said:

Make sure both the tracks are selected in the PRV's track selector.

 

On 8/12/2025 at 12:13 AM, David Baay said:

It means the notes will be visible and editable when you click in them if Autofocus is enabled. But unless I'm going more blind than I thought, your screenshots are showing the opposite: where the drum hits are not visible,  Drums and Bass are lit/selected, and in the shot where drum hits are visible only the Strings is lit/selected. The track with the name also lit is currently active/focused for editing. Very odd.

Thanks for the comments, I also find it very odd...  When Both Tracks are selected the drum mapped notes disappear and all/any combination of CTRL click or SHIFT click never arrive at both the midi notes and the drum mapped notes being shown. 

If I recall correctly this is the sequence of events where in the first image where the drum mapped notes AND the instrument midi notes appear at the same time.
I duplicated the bass guitar track and replaced the synth instrument with Si-Strings (So I could create some strings based on what the bass was playing).
Then I entered the PRV to begin editing the notes on the newly created string track and voila, I could see the drum mapped notes AND be editing the string track notes.
The track icon in the selector did not have the drum track highlit but the notes were there.  Once I begin selecting tracks in the selector box the drum mapped notes disappear, only showing when the drum track is selected. 
"Normal" non drum mapped midi  tracks show correctly either being ghosted or not depending on the editor (pencil) indicator.

IF the drum mapped notes NEVER appeared alongside other midi tracks I would let it go, but when I can see them sometimes it is irksome that I can't make it happen when I want it to.

Lets hope someone can offer a resolution.........  

[David Baay]

7 hours ago, Roy Slough said:

Lets hope someone can offer a resolution.

I played around with your scenario, and others, but I cannot get the drum map to persist when focus is on a non-mapped track in any circumstance.

I think the best it's going to get is for the Bakers to program the Drum Pane to persist the map assigned to the most recently focused drum track when PRV focus moves to a non-mapped track. If you have more than one drum map in the project, this could potentially lead to a situation where drum hits on a track assigned to another map are displayed in the wrong map but that could probably be suppressed by some additional logic.  If projects only allowed a single drum map to be used none of this would be an issue. It seems to me the only way you support that is to have the drum map display based on track focus.

I'd be curious to see how other DAWs handle this.