Do you have too many song ideas? The Matrix View can help.

by Dan Gonzalez

Do you suffer from having too many musical ideas than you know what to do with? The Matrix View is great way to throw all of your riffs, licks, and leads into one place to mess around with song arrangements and structures.

How does it work?

The Matrix View operates under SONAR’s second audio engine. It’s the same audio engine that allows you to preview and play loops from the Media Browser. This non-linear playback engine is what is utilized during your performances in the Matrix View. All you really have to do to get started is drag audio from SONAR into the Matrix. It will populate a cell and then automatically route to the audio tracks you have set in the Track View. Click on the cell and then you can jump around the interface triggering different musical ideas. When you have multiple cells in one column you can trigger an entire column as well.

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Where do I begin?

Grab some of your ideas – if they are loops then you have even more flexibility when changing tempos. If you want some great loops to work with then be sure to pick up these free loops that Craig Anderton supplied for us during Guitar Month.

After that, setup a simple virtual instrument like Session Drummer or Addictive Drums and drag in some of the supplied MIDI loops that you get with SONAR. I used the Groove Monkee MIDI loops. And yes, what you read was correct. The Matrix View does in fact support both Audio and MIDI simultaneously.

Stacking your ideas on top of the drum loops with your audio ideas lets you trigger entire columns of music at once – making switching from a bridge to a chorus to an instrumental interlude a breeze.

Recording? No Problem.

Once you’re setup just start the main transport playback, activate the Record button in Matrix View and start clicking around the different cells. Your entire performance will begin recording into the Track View.

It’s fun, and the results you get are sure to spark more ideas: