Hints and tips for composition workflow?

That sounds a lot like the way I operate, and I agree it's really time-consuming and potentially dangerous when moving parts around (especially when you have tempo & meter changes... fuggedaboudit).

One method that's a little safer is instead of moving parts around (cut & paste), I like to use "Insert > Time/Measures" or the opposite "Edit > Delete > Delete Hole". That way you don't have to worry about things getting mis-aligned. For example suppose I start by recording a verse & a chorus. Then I decide I need a bridge between them. Instead of moving the chorus back, I'll position my cursor between the verse & chorus, then insert 16 measures or whatever. Minor difference, but like I said it's slightly safer when you're dealing with lots of tempo or meter changes, etc.

I've never tried your method of mixing it all down & using that as a guide. That sound really interesting, but I'm guessing it only works if you really nail down your song structure first. I'm much too flaky for that; I'm always adding new parts and changing things right up to the last minute. So what I do is instead of starting a new project, I keep the same one but archive the guide tracks and move them to the bottom of the track pile. That way I can always exhume them if I need to do some major alterations. What can I say... I don't throw anything away But sometimes it comes in handy.

I'll be the first to admit that my workflow is inefficient, messy, confusing and hazardous. What I would love is if Sonar would make it easy to import tracks between projects. That way we could record the verse in one project, the chorus in another, the solo section in another. Then pull them all together and voila. I know Sonar lets you drag clips from one project to another, but I don't think there's a way of pulling in all the plugins, tempo changes, envelopes, etc.

Spaceduck - you know, it never occurred to me to archive tracks. It's just a feature I've never really thought about using, but I'll start now. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm after really - the optional stuff in Sonar that helps you along.

Bayoubill - I admire your ability to do that. I personally can't hold a song in my mind that long, and absolutely no musical ideas pop into my head at all - all the tunes I create come from very deliberate experimentation, typically recording for a few minutes and then extracting the usable bits. Before I had recording software I would just notate a section on paper before moving on.

ORIGINAL: Mamabear

...then I'll just record it in Sonar, give it a name (or at least the date) and then come back to it later.)

That's another issue I contend with, project naming. I often end up with projects just containing one chord progression or one tune, that sort of thing. At a later date I often merge these in with other projects of a similar nature to build a whole composition, but it does mean that I have a lot of similarly-named projects that I have to dig through to find parts of interest. I try to name projects of this nature with the time signature, tempo, and key, which helps a bit. It would be handy if there was some sort of tool that listed all the Cakewalk projects in a directory and gave you these details at a glance.

Yeah, some keys can easily be transposed to others, a 60bpm part can work in a 120bpm song, etc. There's no 'one size fits all' approach so just trying to be descriptive in the name is about the best I can do, I think.