Event filters

When you select individual clips, or select portions of clips by dragging the Time Ruler, you automatically select all the events that fall within the designated time range. Sometimes you need finer control over which events are selected. For example, you might want to:

Select the notes that are played in a certain octave, so you can copy them to another track

Select and boost the velocity of notes that have a velocity below a certain threshold

Find the first patch change event on a particular track

Select and change the duration of all notes that occur on the third beat of any measure

The Event Filter dialog box looks like this:

Figure 368. The Event Filter - Search dialog box.

A. Check to include this type of event B. Enter the range of values for the events you want

Different types of events have different parameters, as shown in the table:

This event type	Has these parameters
Note	Pitch, velocity, and duration
Key Aftertouch	Pitch and pressure value
Controller	Controller number and value
RPN/NRPN	RPN/NRPN number and value
Patch Change	Bank and patch numbers
Channel Aftertouch	Pressure value
Pitch Wheel	Value

The event filter only accepts events that meet all the specified ranges. This means that a note event must fall within the pitch range, the velocity range, and the duration range in order to be included. The event filter can also be used to accept events that occur in a range of channel numbers, beats, and clock ticks.

You can choose either to include or exclude the events that meet the specified criteria. To exclude events within the designated range and select the ones outside the designated range, select the exc check box for that value range.

The event filter can also be used to identify several special event types: audio, System Exclusive events, Lyrics, MCI commands, envelope shades, and a few others. You do not enter a range of values for these special events; Sonar finds all events of the types you choose.

The All and None buttons help you set up the event filter the way you want:

Click this button	To do this
All	Set the event filter to include all events. You can then modify the value ranges to narrow down your search or uncheck the types of events you want to exclude.
None	Set the event filter to not include any events. Starting from a blank slate, you can check off the types of events you want to find or select and enter the desired ranges of values.

In any place in the event filter where you would normally enter a pitch string, you can also enter the pitch by pressing a key on your MIDI keyboard. Also, you can use the question mark in place of the octave number as a wild card. This lets the event filter accept a single note, regardless of the octave. For example, the pitch string C? will match a C in any octave.

Selecting events

The Edit > Select > By Filter command is used to refine a selection by applying an event filter to an initial selection. You can use this command any number of times to refine the selection even further. Before using this command, use any of the selection commands and tools to create an initial set of selected event. You can use the Edit > Select > All command to select all events in the current view.

The Track view cannot display individual selected events. As a result, the Edit > Select > By Filter command will not necessarily change the appearance of the Track view. Sonar applies the event filter rule, but the change is not visible. However, once you change the selection in any way (for example, by clicking on a track number or by clicking in the Time Ruler), the effects of the event filter are erased. If you want to use the filter, you must choose Edit > Select > By Filter again and click OK to use the same filter values.

Note: The shading of a clip in the Track view indicates how many of the events in the clip are selected. If the clip is shown in solid black, all events in the clip are selected. If a portion of a clip is shown in medium gray, all the events in that time range are selected. If the clip is shown in light gray, only some of the events in the shaded time range are selected.

To select events using the Event Filter

1.	First, select an initial set of tracks, clips, or events.

2.	Choose Edit > Select > By Filter to display the Event Filter dialog box.

3.	Set up the event filter to find the events you want.

4.

Click OK.

Sonar searches the currently selected events and weeds out those that do not meet the requirements of the event filter.

Example: splitting left-hand and right-hand parts

Suppose you recorded a keyboard riff on Track 1 but want to split the left and right hands apart into separate tracks so you can edit them separately. Suppose that all the right-hand notes are above C4. Here’s how to proceed:

1.	Select all of Track 1 by clicking on the track number in the Track view.

2.	Choose Edit > Select > By Filter to display the Event Filter dialog box.

3.	Click the None button to clear the dialog box.

4.	Select the Note check box, and enter a minimum value of C4. The maximum should already be set to C9.

5.	Click OK. Sonar selects all the notes from C4 up.

6.	Choose Edit > Cut to move the selected notes to the Clipboard.

7.	Choose Edit > Paste and paste the events to a different track.

Process > Find/Change

The Process > Find/Change command is an extremely flexible way of manipulating the data parameters of events. It works something like the search-and-replace function in a word processor but with scaling rather than simple replacement.

This command uses two event filters. The first event filter lets you set up your search criteria. The second event filter is used to define the replacement value ranges. When an event satisfies the search criteria, its parameters are scaled between the search ranges and the replacement ranges. This permits transposition, inversion, key signature changes, and other operations to be accomplished with this one simple command.

In the second Event Filter dialog box, the check boxes and value ranges for beats and ticks are ignored. Only the replacement value ranges for the selected event types are used.

The Process > Find/Change command understands a wild card octave number in the second event filter to mean, “replace the original note with a different note in the original octave.” Using octave wild cards for both the search and replacement event filters lets you, for instance, change all E-flats to E-naturals, preserving the octave of each note.

A few examples will illustrate some of the many uses of the Process > Find/Change command. These examples apply to the note event type, though the command can be used on any type of event.

 

Parameter	Search range	Replacement range	Effect
Pitch (key)	From C2 to C4	From C4 to C6	Transposes all notes in the search range up two octaves
Pitch	From E2 to E2	From Eb2 to Eb2	Converts all Es in octave 2 to Eb in the same octave
Pitch	From E? to E?	From Eb? to Eb?	Converts all Es in all octaves to Eb in the same octave
Pitch	From E? to E?	From E? to Eb5	Converts all Es to Eb in octave 5
Pitch	From C1 to C8	From C8 to C1	Inverts all the notes in the specified range
Velocity	From 0 to 127	From 80 to 127	Compresses the velocity values into a narrower range
Velocity	From 0 to 127	From 127 to 0	Inverts the velocity values (makes loud notes soft, and soft notes loud)
Duration	From 0:01:00 to 0:02:000	From 0:01:000 to 0:01:000	Converts all notes that are between a quarter note and half note in length, and makes them all quarter notes
Channel	From 1 to 1	From 2 to 2	Changes all events on MIDI channel 1 to MIDI channel 2
Channel	From 1 to 16	From 4 to 4	Reassigns all events to MIDI channel 4