Cakewalk Sonar Default virtual piano keyboard

[August Spencer]

Too short. Cakewalk by bandlab had 6 octaves. How to get back full keyboard.

[David Baay]

I think you must be remembering some 3rd-party keyboard app.

[tparker24]

7 hours ago, David Baay said:

I think you must be remembering some 3rd-party keyboard app.

Cakewalk indeed has a virtual keyboard:  Views | Virtual Controllers | Piano Keyboard.  Or shortcut: Alt+Shift+0

[David Baay]

17 minutes ago, tparker24 said:

Cakewalk indeed has a virtual keyboard

The question was about how many octaves are displayed at once.

Edited Tuesday at 03:15 PM by David Baay

[August Spencer]

Opinions but no answers.

Presently, and verified, Cakewalk by Bandlab opens 5 octaves of virtual piano which is very convenient for inputting melodies, chords etc mostly without shifting scale.
The new Sonar opens the same GUI but with only 2 octaves. This requires constant shifting scales, an unneeded nuisance.
In addition, I now find that I cannot edit Velocity in Piano Roll View in the new Sonar, whereas Cakewalk can easily. 

[Will.]

On 9/2/2025 at 9:32 AM, David Baay said:

I think you must be remembering some 3rd-party keyboard app.

Press the letters "Z" for octaves DOWN and "X" for octaves UP. 

[matt]

My version (most recent) of CbB only has 3 octaves!   Is there a setting for this somewhere?

Honestly if I was used to 6 octaves this would drive me batty, I am sympathetic.  Having to shift up and down is not the same and not acceptable.  But, as I mentioned, I only have 3 octaves in CbB.

[57Gregy]

On 9/2/2025 at 1:06 AM, August Spencer said:

Too short. Cakewalk by bandlab had 6 octaves. How to get back full keyboard.

The only thing I saw in Help is this: "Sonar automatically detects whether or not you are using a touchscreen, and sizes the Virtual Controller accordingly. The optimum size is displayed for either touch or mouse input, regardless of screen resolution."
Maybe someone with a touchscreen can check out if they can get more keys.

[Bristol_Jonesey]

2 hours ago, 57Gregy said:

The only thing I saw in Help is this: "Sonar automatically detects whether or not you are using a touchscreen, and sizes the Virtual Controller accordingly. The optimum size is displayed for either touch or mouse input, regardless of screen resolution."
Maybe someone with a touchscreen can check out if they can get more keys.

I've got a touchscreen on my laptop.

This is what I get. And nothing is draggable or expandable 😄😄😄😄😄

I think something is broken

 

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

I think something is broken

That is definitely not right, and nothing like what I get. 

I have two laptops with different display resolutions but scaling adjusted to give very close to the same amount of realestate in Sonar. One is touch and one is not. The touchscreen shows two octaves and the non-touch shows three. The keyboard on the touch screen is much bigger, using approx. 60% of the screen width while the keyboard on the non-touch screen uses only about half that. But both are displaying the octave and hold controls amd full key lengths.

[Bass Guitar]

This is the only view of the keyboard I've ever had since day one! That screenshot must be yet another wonderful graphic issue with new Sonar. 

[AB99]

Does  a free piano vst not get you where you want to go?

Best Free Piano VSTs 2025 I Tested 28 Plugins https://share.google/NkRKCv4dIdU8qIim9

[August Spencer]

Good to see that I am not crazy about the oddity in New Sonar's virtual keyboard GUI behaviour compared to Cakewalk by BandLab. 

Also, I am not looking at a piano VST, I have plenty of excellent piano sounds, but thanks for the suggestion. Maybe it will have to be  a workaround if Sonar does not fix its virtual keyboard pronto.  Really, the Virtual Keyboard GUI should be a user's choice in octave coverage instead of a mysterious hard coded imposition.

To be clear, the built in virtual keyboard is just that and is not a sound VST module. Therefore, it generates a MIDI note message but Cakewalk or Sonar outputs to any desired sound. Very useful for inputting difficult passages note by note...

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Bass Guitar said:

This is the only view of the keyboard I've ever had since day one!

If you had a touch screen, it would be big in Platinum the same way it is in Sonar - probably even bigger because Platinum doesn't use vector graphics which are, in fact "wonderful", notwithstanding the handful of teething problems that some (not all) have encountered, depending on their display hardware, monitor setup, O/S configuration and project layouts which are infinitely variable.

[AB99]

6 minutes ago, August Spencer said:

Good to see that I am not crazy about the oddity in New Sonar's virtual keyboard GUI behaviour compared to Cakewalk by BandLab. 

Also, I am not looking at a piano VST, I have plenty of excellent piano sounds, but thanks for the suggestion. Maybe it will have to be  a workaround if Sonar does not fix its virtual keyboard pronto.  Really, the Virtual Keyboard GUI should be a user's choice in octave coverage instead of a mysterious hard coded imposition.

To be clear, the built in virtual keyboard is just that and is not a sound VST module. Therefore, it generates a MIDI note message but Cakewalk or Sonar outputs to any desired sound. Very useful for inputting difficult passages note by note...

I hear you.  And yes it would be great if it was at least 88 keys.  I was hoping that one of the piano VSTs might be useful to trigger other sounds perhaps on another inserted track.  I have not tried it myself, at least not intentionally!

[Bass Guitar]

4 hours ago, AB99 said:

I hear you.  And yes it would be great if it was at least 88 keys.  I was hoping that one of the piano VSTs might be useful to trigger other sounds perhaps on another inserted track.  I have not tried it myself, at least not intentionally!

Depending on the VST but most have the option of midi output. That becomes an option for the input choice for midi and instrument tracks. 
But the  vst GUI doesn’t generate midi data it is only for previewing or the sound. 

 

For myself I have never used the virtual mouse keyboard but often use the QWERTY keyboard on my laptop. If you practiced for a month or so you could get pretty good results. 

Edited 20 hours ago by Bass Guitar

[David Baay]

2 minutes ago, AB99 said:

I was hoping that one of the piano VSTs might be useful to trigger other sounds perhaps on another inserted track.

I'm not aware of any VSTs that send MIDI to a virtual OUT from the UI keyboard, but it's possible such a beast exists.

[Base 57]

I never use the virtual keyboard. But this thread made me curious enough to check.

I get the same 3 octave keyboard in Sonar, CbB, and SPlat.

[August Spencer]

The great variety of Virtual Keyboard GUI's shown by this thread readers point to some odd coding thereof and an undesirable octave reduction in new Sonar.

Here are my screenshots of my Bandlab Cakewalk version and the new Sonar one on exactly the same laptop, monitor, etc. 

Cakewalk opens a nice 5 octave keyboard, clear and unclaterred whereas new Sonar only 2 large unwieldy 2 octave keyboard. For the record.

[David Baay]

2 hours ago, August Spencer said:

an undesirable octave reduction in new Sonar.

Whatever is going on is not new to Sonar. On my non-touch screen laptop CbB has the same small-sized three-octave keyboard as Sonar. And on the touchscreen, they both have the larger 2-octave one which makes sense for touch-playability. I don't think I have ever seen more than three octaves in any version of SONAR/CbB/Sonar on any machine.