It would seem to me you are overdoing the marker thing.  I don't understand (and I don't understand a vast multitude of things, like women in general for one) why you would use markers when laying out an "arrangement".  Typically I arrange a song, then put markers in a few places in preparation for actually PERFORMING the song, wherein I overwrite everything.  The initial recorded clips are just draft ideas I move about to lay out the structure.  If there is a better way toward songwriting, I'd appreciate the advice.

Cheers for the Studio One comments, guys. I've spent years being the 'maybe I'll leave Sonar soon' guy and have cried wolf on that enough times to have earned my own show on the Discovery Channel, but time is the major limitation on my music these days and if I need a new tool to cut the time I spend arranging songs, so be it.
 
Just the single feature from 1:04 to 1:35 in this video is enough to make me install S1 as soon as I have the cash. I've been using Sonar since before it was even called Sonar and I can't tell you how much time I've wasted simply trying to tell it "select everything in these 8 bars, now copy everything there to a different 8 bars". If I left-drag and select everything, Ctrl-C, click a blank area in the timeline, then Ctrl-V, it puts the clips on the wrong tracks!
 

GregGraves
It would seem to me you are overdoing the marker thing.  I don't understand why you would use markers when laying out an "arrangement".

 
So I know which part is which, without having to preview all of them and then mentally remember "The bit at measure 3 is the big Cm sequence, the bit at measure 19 is the double guitar riff, the bit at measure 35 is the guitar harmonies with the tom pattern, the bit at measure 51 is the double guitar riff repeated from measure 19" etc etc etc. This is nearly impossible to start with, and almost entirely impossible once I've started actually moving things.
 
I might have anything from 10 to 50 different named sections in a songwriting project. The final song will probably only use 10 to 15 of those, but until then, I need to keep track of them. Like you, these are 'just draft ideas I move about to lay out the structure', but I don't know which section is which just by looking at it.
 
In an ideal world - by which, I might cynically say is the world I had in the 90s with trackers and FL Studio - I can try these different sections in a different order without moving them about at all! Crazy! But if that's not practical, it would be great to be able to very quickly and easily move entire sections - which other DAWs handle elegantly (eg. the video at the top of this link - skip to 5:38 and just watch the next 30 seconds.)

1. Create two Markers designating the area you want to move.
2. Select a track and press Ctrl+A. His will highlight all project data on all tracks.
3. Go back to the time line and when you move the cursor between the two markers it changes.
4. When it changes left click and ALL data on all tracks in that vertical selection will be highlighted. Then it can be copied and pasted or dragged and dropped as you choose. The only constraints maybe what your default copy and paste selections are

mudgel
1. Create two Markers designating the area you want to move.
2. Select a track and press Ctrl+A. His will highlight all project data on all tracks.
3. Go back to the time line and when you move the cursor between the two markers it changes.
4. When it changes left click and ALL data on all tracks in that vertical selection will be highlighted. Then it can be copied and pasted or dragged and dropped as you choose. The only constraints maybe what your default copy and paste selections are

...leaving 2 orphaned markers behind, and no markers with the moved or copied material. Hence this thread.

I just grab the orphaned markers and move them to the new location of the moved material.

Can't have it all. Yet ;-)

As for Studio One 3's Arranger track and sketch pads, I like them very much but I always get down to having that and losing Mix Recall from Sonar. The trade has not been worthwhile yet.

As Mudjel said, easy enough to do same thing in Sonar, except you don't need to do his "Step 1".  The solution is "don't use markers when working out song structure".  You move things and copy things about until you have a structure laid out.  If you can't keep track of what clips are what, do one of 3 things:
 
1.  Create a bunch of tracks, with each track a part of the song, like Intro, Cm, this is where I scream into the microphone.  This makes frankensteining the structure easy.
 
2.  Use Clip/Properties/Name and give the clip a name.  Read the name and copy/paste/move.
 
3.  Turn off your computer, and take your guitar or pi-anny, and play the song through, just like Mozart or Benny Goodman.  Then record a guide track, just like you would if you had a major label deal, and were sent into a corporate studio.
 
This whole concern about Markers being sufficient to abandon Sonar seems quite the non-issue.  I wonder if you are a troll from a competitor. 

GregGraves
 If you can't keep track of what clips are what, do one of 3 things:
 
1.  Create a bunch of tracks, with each track a part of the song, like Intro, Cm, this is where I scream into the microphone.  This makes frankensteining the structure easy.

Are you suggesting one track, per instrument, per section? We'd be talking about several hundred tracks. Not an option.
 

2.  Use Clip/Properties/Name and give the clip a name.  Read the name and copy/paste/move.

Please read paragraph 2 of my original post. (Unless you are talking about naming every single clip that I record - which is a boring undertaking (and also doesn't work well with the common situation of re-using clips in different sections)).
 

3.  Turn off your computer, and take your guitar or pi-anny, and play the song through, just like Mozart or Benny Goodman.

You missed out the bit where I get a time machine, so that I can somehow record myself playing the song through before I compose it.
 

This whole concern about Markers being sufficient to abandon Sonar seems quite the non-issue.  I wonder if you are a troll from a competitor.

Yep, with my 700+ posts and a joining date of 9 years ago, I was just playing the long game!
 
It seems obvious to me you don't understand why anyone would use this feature, but others do, so it's your loss.

Hi Kylotan,
 
I do what you are doing all the time in SONAR.
 
First, about copying and pasting and the clips go to the wrong tracks: Make your selection of what you want to copy, both vertically and horizontally. Then Ctrl+C. Move your "NOW TIME" to where you want to paste. Then, look to see the top most track in your selection that you are copying. With your mouse, click on the track number. For example, if the top most track is a kick drum and it is the very first track in your project, click one time on the number 1. You will notice that track gets a different color of highlight. Now you can Ctrl+V and the clips will go where they are supposed to. If a different track is the highlighted one, SONAR will paste your selected clips starting at whatever track is the highlighted one.
 
When I compose as you are describing, when I come up with a section idea, I select all the clips involved with that section. For example, I may have started composing the Chorus. In that chorus I have drums, guitars, and bass. I select all those clips. Then "RIGHT-CLICK" somewhere on those selected clips and choose to "Create Selection Group" from the menu. I might even (with all the clips selected still) go to the inspector and change the background color on all the clips. So that the Chorus is always blue, the verse always yellow, etc...
 
Now, I can simply use my mouse to select the "HEADER" of any clip in that group which will select everything in that group. I can now drag that around with my snap on anywhere I want. I can copy, paste, etc...
 
That fact that they are now color coded means that at a glance I know where my chorus is, my verse, my bridge, etc... This solves the problem of the "MARKERS".
 
However, I too would love it if we could lock MARKERS in with clips too. But for now, this solution is actually pretty fast, intuitive, and easy.
 
Give it a shot,
-Charles

Yeah, I already found the workaround for why Sonar pastes things in the wrong place, but it's just another bump in the road.
 
Same with selection groups - they're fine for some situations, but it's a hassle to remember that I need to hold down Shift if I want to edit any specific clip within that group. Colour coding also won't work for me but a clip with a clear name would - except the clip won't be on screen all the time. And it doesn't solve the transport problem either (i.e. being able to use Ctrl-Shift-PgUp/Down to navigate). So I just gain some things, lose others, not a useful trade-off for me. I just limp on with 'Cut/Copy Special'.

Sylvan
I do what you are doing all the time in SONAR.

 
Thanks Charles for such a wealth of information in a single post.