(EDUCATED) Need help with basic clip management

For the life of me I can't get basic clip management to work. The issue is the same for midi and audio. I record a long audio track or midi track and then want to trim down those tracks by removing sections or moving sections. It sounds very easy, and it should be, but it's not. 
 
IF I cut a section of audio and then try and close the gap by dragging the clips they  get overlapped in an area further down the time line. There's no indicator that there's overlapped area, you can hear it but can't see it. Also I've noticed that when I try and move adjacent clips together they often repel each other and auto trim themselves. 
 
With midi it's much the same except if I'm trying to assemble a track from midi clips and they touch each other, well, they generate more clips down the time line that get overlapped and confused.
 
What I want to do is simple. I want to start with a long audio track and trim it down to size by cutting out chunks. I want to build midi tracks by inserting patterns into the time line. I don't want anything to happen automatically. I was doing this without problems 30 years ago with much simpler tools. Now that I've got a Cadillac in the DAW world I can't get it to run as reliably as my 1965 VW bug.
 
How, how, how.

I'm trying to emulate what I would do with recording tape, scissors and scotch tape. I never use take lanes or anything fancy, just rudimentary cut, paste and move and I can't get it to work without the program generating problems. It must be my setting somewhere but I can't find it.

Understand what snap settings you have. You can choose to cut things on a snap, say 1/8 and then slide them together and they will snap. Or you can turn snap off and they will slide together easily but you may have to zoom in to see how to align them. You can control snap from the menu at the top, if you don't see it there right-click and make sure the "snap" module is selected.
 
For audio clips, if they don't match up perfectly, try fading the clips. Select both clips, or multiple clips that are adjacent, select "fade" from the clips menu, and be sure to select "fill gaps, xfade between audio clips."
 
Also for audio, if you have a gap that is very wide, you can also stretch. I usually stretch the clip in front, select the clip and go to process > fit to time. In the option dialog select stretch audio and select one of the radius types in the pull down menu. Note that to define the "end" or "new thru" as it's listed in the dialog, you can click "format" multiple times to make it show in either M:B:T time or in seconds. 
 
All of these techniques are useful depending on what you're trying to do. If you're cutting clips to correct timing or if you're arranging something and want to move things around. 

Yes, good points on the take lanes. If you want to do old school change it to overwrite recording instead of comping. I use take lanes and comp recording sometimes if I'm doing a single track.
 
If I'm doing multitrack drums I don't use it as it gets a bit complicated for that. 

ampfixer
Thanks guys, All the references you make are making sense and I understand them. I'll go back in and reconfigure the preferences and see if it helps. I always forget that more preferences than I'd like, have to be set on a per project basis. 

If some of the stuff you need is indeed Per Project once you get it all working how you like might as well save a project template so you don't have to deal with the new fangled stuff anymore unless you want to.
 
Cheers.

The audio clip issue is now managable but the midi is still out to lunch. I dragged 2 midi clips  4 measures in length into my midi track, separated by 1 measure. I have comping turned off and have not selected to create lanes on overlap. As soon as  the 2 clips touch each other I end up with 9 different take lanes of different lengths, with different start and stop points, extending for about 40 measures. The only analogy that works is 2 balloons full of confetti hitting each other and exploding.
 
WTF!  This has to be a bug, and since I hardly use midi it's unlikely I've discovered something new. Assembling drum tracks using midi patterns is completely broken on my system. IS this a known issue?

I think I've killed the gremlin. I did as you suggested Scook and I had it selected to slide over. I changed it to "Replace old with new" and turned off non-destructive editing. Now the 2 clips seem completely unaware of each other and it seems great. I can drag the clips around, push them into overlap and still cleanly pull them apart. Whew! It's good to be back in the '90's.