Complete Amateur

Hey everyone - picked up Sonar Artist so I could play around with it while I'm at sea and evidently I assumed too much - hoping there'd already be basic instructions and how-to info available inside the program. I'm at sea and can't sit in front of a computer, maintaining a constant connection via satellite internet; streaming videos and what not all day long. Do you guys know if the Sonar University is available for download or if Cakewalk as a book available that I could pick up via kindle errr something? Tried emailing Cakewalk directly but evidently their email support functions aren't working.

Right. I hope you didn't pay too much for it, as the old Cakewalk went out of business and is no longer supported.
But BandLab bought the program and is now giving it away for FREE! It's now called Cakewalk By BandLab.
With earlier programs, you could download local Help, but I don't know if that was available with Artist.

Hmmm, if the "complete amateur" is referring to knowledge with the program, the best start would be to read through the reference manual and play with the included tutorials that came with Artist (hopefully you downloaded both of those with the installation). The references mentioned above assume a certain level of proficiency in some cases, so not sure how effective they would be for you. The tutorials and demos (if you got those... but they are traditionally massive), will let you look at "functional" projects, so you can "save as..." to a new project name, play around inside at will and recover the original if you should mess it up.
 
So much of learning the program comes from playing around in the GUI and knowing what all of the buttons, icons, and menu items actually do/mean; and the reference manual + tutorials/demos is a good (probably best) start. A vast majority of what you will learn in Artist will translate fully to CbB when you get a chance to install it, so learning the ins and outs of Artist isn't going to set you back when that time comes and it won't be a wasted time investment.

I heared about little Free Apps to download Youtube Vids.  Cakewalk stuff is available on Youtube, there you have it. And there are a lot more Vids on YT  - lot to learn . . . beside of that, I wouldt mention the installed tutorials and the reference book too, as well as material from  Anderton and Garrigus 
 
Cheers :) 

https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=toc.html