Keyboard Shortcuts are at the heart of any DAW’s workflow, and SONAR X1 is no exception. And the QWERTY keyboard is still the central way in which we use those shortcuts and interface with our DAWs in general.
Traditional keyboards aren’t labelled for anything other than a particular language. However, the custom made, slimline, SONAR X1 LogicKeyboard has SONAR’s default Keyboard Shortcuts printed right onto its 125 multi-colored keys.
When we designed SONAR X1 we took many of the old, not-so-logically organized Shortcuts, threw them onto the table, and reorganized them into Shortcuts that we thought would be not only easier to remember, but also into groups of like Shortcuts that go together, which we call Key Clusters.
For example, show/ hide video thumbnail pane used to be ‘L’, which, when you think about it, makes no sense at all. In X1 we changed it to ‘V’ (for video), which makes perfect sense.
Yes, if you’re a longtime SONAR user you may have had ‘L’ tattooed in your brain and had no problem remembering what it did. But when you stop and think about it, why would ‘L’ open and close the video thumbnail preview pane? Shouldn’t it turn Loop on and off? We thought so, which is why that’s what ‘L’ now does in SONAR X1.
And with the LogicKeyboard, ‘L’ is even easier to get to as its highlighted in blue and has SONAR’s loop symbol printed right on it, which gives it a very ‘control surfacy’ kind of feel.
However, keyboard Shortcuts that use ‘L’ don’t stop with project loop on/ off. We assigned Shift + L to set loop points at selection, and Ctrl + L to turn on and off Groove Clip looping on clips. Those three Shortcuts make up the ‘L’ Key Cluster.
Below are my personal favorite Key Clusters that I use to no end on a daily basis.
‘F’ Key Cluster
F = Fit Tracks to Window
Shift + F = Fit Project to Window
‘Q’ Key Cluster
Q = Quantize
Shift + Q = Open Input Quantize Menu
Ctrl + Q = Input Quantize On/ Off Per Track
L Key Cluster
L = Project Loop on/ off
Shift + L = Loop to selection
Ctrl + L = Groove Clip Looping on/ off
Of course, Keyboard Shortcuts can be customized, rearranged, and even imported and exported from the Key Bindings menu in SONAR’s Unified Preferences View. You can even spotlight search for specific Shortcuts and also bind them to MIDI controllers right from that view.
However, if you find yourself hunting and pecking for Shortcuts on your current QWERTY keyboard and you’re looking to speed up your workflow, have a look at LogicKeyboard’s SONAR X1 keyboard today.