CAKEWALK SONAR - Working with Lyrics

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Working with Lyrics
SONAR lets you create, edit, and display lyrics, the words and syllables associated
with notes in a track. Lyrics can be the words to a song, the text of a vocal passage,
a narration to be read along with the music, cues of some type, or text totally
unrelated to the music. Each word or syllable in the lyrics must be associated with
a note in a MIDI track. Each MIDI track can have its own lyrics.
Although lyrics can logically be associated with digital audio data, you cannot
actually place lyrics in an audio track. If you want to create lyrics for an audio
track, you must create an auxiliary MIDI track to hold the lyrics.
You can enter and edit lyrics in two ways:
• Using the Lyrics tool in the Staff view
• Using the Lyrics view
• Inserting lyric events in the Event List view.
The Staff view is usually the preferred location for entering lyrics, since you can
see the notes with which the lyrics are associated. The Lyrics view can also be used
for entering or editing lyrics, but its main strength is that it can display lyrics in a
larger, more readable format. You might use the Lyrics view to display song lyrics
during recording and playback, so performers can see the words and sing along.
You can make the font size in the Lyrics view as large as desired, so that the lyrics
can be read at a distance from the monitor. During playback, the current line in
the lyrics is enclosed in a box and the current word is highlighted.
Lyric events are similar to text events. Like any other event, they occur at a
particular time. They contain text, just like general-purpose text events, but
generally they contain only a single word (or syllable of a word). As events, Lyrics
can be edited in the Event List view (see “The Event List View” on page 318).
Adding and Editing Lyrics in the Staff View
The Staff view displays lyrics below their associated track. If the track is split into
treble/bass staves, lyrics are aligned with notes in both staves, but are displayed
below the treble staff.
When a lyric word or syllable spans multiple notes, a trailing underline or series of
regularly spaced hyphens is automatically drawn, following conventional lyric
notation practice.