lyrics / chords visual cues

Hi there,
sorry I'm new to this so I haven't got all my terminology up to speed yet. (also I hope this is in the right place)
I have been trying Cubase elements for a while and although it seems ok I have always got on better with Cakewalk daws so I thought I'd have a go at Sonar x3 as well. One feature I did like from elements was that I could create a chord track. I can achieve a similar audio effect in Sonar but the only thing I miss is the visual cues you get from the chord track itself (as in, as the track scrolls through you can see the names of the chords as you get to them, which is handy for me as I don't have the best memory). I was wondering if there happens to be a way to achieve a similar effect in sonar?
 
Thanks for your time

SONAR has a big enough toolkit that many times, you can do something that comes pretty close to features (like "varispeed") that other programs have. For example, I created a "Chord Library" folder in the media browser with a variety of chords made up of MIDI data that last a measure. I just drag them into a project into the top track, and because the clips are named, they indicate the chord progression. But you can also have a real-time readout of the chord progression using a feature of Strum Acoustic - this is really handy when I'm writing a song and trying it in different keys. Strum Acoustic's readout follows the chord progression so I can just follow along without having to learn the song in different keys while I experiment.
 
There's more information that relates to this in an article I wrote for Sound on Sound magazine, although I've refined the technique considerably since it was written.

I'd love to see a chord track that could be in a floating window and move in time showing at least 12 measures (always two measures behind where you are, highlight where you are and nine ahead).
 
Or something like that.

I use staff view for this.  I first match the temp (if it's an imported mp3 or whatever) then add chords, and also markers for the sections (intro, bridge, chorus, etc).
 
Works pretty well, although it would be nice if staff view got a few tweaks to make it easier.

I have an approach I use for most songs that may be a suggestion to think about.

1. I create markers that make sense in the song. No surprises there.
2. For every song I work on, I reserve the first track to be my visual of the parts. I create a one measure midi block of nothing (no sound) at the start of the song and repeat paste it exactly starting at the start of each measure out for 120 or so measures. So I have 120 or so 1 measure blocks on one track.
3. I use the Clip background color selections to color ranges of blocks differently. If you look at the Inspector pane and click on the tab for Clip you can easily get to the background clip color setting for any range of clips you've selected. This makes it easy to see where the verse and chorus and bridge parts are by having different colors for different sections - displaying across one track at the top of the Track View.
4. For chord changes I do sometimes use the markers to help remember those.

But potentially, you could use the method in 2-3 above to use clip names, Rename clips as needed, to show chords. Just an idea until Sonar is more elegant in this regard.

1. Edit menu - Select All - Control A, well you have to select one track first, then that.
2. Edit menu - Select By Time - pick whatever time/measure range you want to work on, which can include of course to the end of the song.
3. Cut Special or Delete Special in terms of what you're doing. In addition to Events also check Markers.
4. Paste Special etc. - also include the markers checkbox.

The above allows you to surgically move pieces of the song around (including markers) like Lego blocks.

Another thing I tried today that might work quite well for chord reminders is the lyrics pane thingy. If you rough out the song with simple midi, then open the lyrics view, you write in the chord names. I haven't quite figured it out yet but it seems to highlight where you are based on the length of the clip(?). One of the nice things about this is that when you copy and paste a section of midi, eg a verse, it will also copy the chords you have written to the same place in the song 

I was trying that as well, I found that the clip keeps the name if you go to the clip properties and in the 'groove clip' bit, set it to 'looping'
 
This wasn't what I was trying to do at first but it turns out to be handy as this way when you drag a chord into the track you can stretch its duration as well