Hi, 
 
Here's a link to a screengrab which helps explain the problem.
 
http://i1159.photobucket.com/albums/p637/ling_yai/Sonar%20screengrab_PRV%20and%20Clip%20midi%20view%20mismatch_zpsnalekvt8.jpg
 
I had an existing midi clip of some block chords.  The original note data consisted of everything in the bottom half of the screengrab, i.e. in the PRV, *except* the two notes I've circled in red.
 
I wanted to record key switch data for use with the Kontakt library which the midi is playing through. The keyswitch is C2 (which triggers a strumming pattern.) 
 
So I went to Preferences and set recording to sound on sound, and specified to store takes (I only did one take anyway) in a single track,  armed for recording, pressed play, and played the two sustained C2 notes you see in the red circles.
 
It recorded and plays back fine -- sound on sound recording worked -- the original notes are there, and so is the added keyswitch performance. 
 
But as the screengrab shows, the clip in the Tracks view, between measures 11 an 27, looks as though I used overwrite as the recording mode, i.e. it looks like there are now only the two C2 notes, but no longer any chords.
 
I was expecting the clip to show all of the same midi note data seen in the PRV. It's supposed to, isn't it?
 
Anyone seen this? Any advice?
 
I hope I can fix or understand this, it seems really quirky and counterintuitive.  Even though it plays back ok, I'm not ready to say, all's well that ends well, and just make a new note for my growing collection of "Sonar quirks" post-it notes i.e. "Just remember in the future that sometimes, the view of midi in the clips pane should be completely ignored because it's only partially true." I don't want to have to inspect the PRV for each midi part to find out what's really going on.
 
I'd be grateful for any help.
 
 

It sounds like you've fallen victim to Sonar's way of doing sound-on-sound MIDI recording, which some people love and others hate. Basically the notes that you previously recorded are still there, they're just in a separate clip UNDERNEATH the latest one. Other DAW's like Pro Tools have a MIDI merge function in which the new notes are recorded in the existing clip, but Sonar creates a new clip on top every time you record. 
 
But don't despair - you can get all of your notes into one clip. You need to select both clips and then bounce them to a single clip. Just clicking on the top clip won't select the bottom one as well - you have to lasso the clips by right clicking and dragging over them. This will select all layers of clips, not just the top one. When they're selected, right click on the clips and select "Bounce to clip." You should then see both clips merged with all of your notes. 
 
There have been quite a few requests on the forum for a "MIDI merge" function in which new notes are recorded into the existing clip, so perhaps Cakewalk will implement it in the future. For now, just know that you can keep your takes as separate clips (by default), or merge them with Bounce To Clip. 

Read the manual chapter on Take Lanes, maybe you'll find that things are more logical than it seems, even if they don't work as initially one would expect.

Having said that, I also would like to have the option of not creating a new clip for each take.

sharke
It sounds like you've fallen victim to Sonar's way of doing sound-on-sound MIDI recording, which some people love and others hate. Basically the notes that you previously recorded are still there, they're just in a separate clip UNDERNEATH the latest one. Other DAW's like Pro Tools have a MIDI merge function in which the new notes are recorded in the existing clip, but Sonar creates a new clip on top every time you record. 
 
But don't despair - you can get all of your notes into one clip. You need to select both clips and then bounce them to a single clip. Just clicking on the top clip won't select the bottom one as well - you have to lasso the clips by right clicking and dragging over them. This will select all layers of clips, not just the top one. When they're selected, right click on the clips and select "Bounce to clip." You should then see both clips merged with all of your notes. 
 
There have been quite a few requests on the forum for a "MIDI merge" function in which new notes are recorded into the existing clip, so perhaps Cakewalk will implement it in the future. For now, just know that you can keep your takes as separate clips (by default), or merge them with Bounce To Clip. 

 
Many thanks dude! Both for the solution and for the consolation that, at least in this case, I've got company, I am not hallucinating, and / or my PC's not somehow to blame! ;-) 
 
By the way, this is the first time I've used Photobucket links -- did it work ok? 

Your Photobucket link worked in as much as when I click on the link, I'm taken to the photo. However if you want to embed hosted photos in a post you have to click the "Insert Image" button (the one that's a little landscape image with a small + in the corner) and enter the URL of the image. I use imgur to host photos because it's just so quick, easy and reliable. 

Yeah, Photobucket has gotten a lot worse over the years with their increased adverts, slow uploads & downloads and they keep on changing the GUI.
I've set up an account on imgur but haven't started using it yet.

I had studied about take lanes earlier, but only for audio. I assumed midi would work the same. Oh well, live and learn. Thanks for the posts.

There are some big improvements needed methinks in and around this area.
Another one is looping with takelanes, when recording the midi notes don't show in the lane until you press stop!

It's not that these shortcomings are crippling. For example, just now I followed the kind advice here and boom, ok, now I've bounced the clip, everything is ok.
 
They're just so .... very contrary to what I'd expect, after 18 years of DAW use. There are a lot of counterintuitive quirks to learn, a process which still takes up a lot of my time and tends to douse inspiration. (That's one reason I'm still perching at Hopkinton, so I can at least deal with a static corpus of quirks, rather than having to start the process anew each month) (Ok, to each his own, I don't want to start a pillow fight on that here). I do seem to spend an unusual amount of time puzzling over unexpected Sonar behavior, whether they are bugs or "ununsual features," for someone a few months now into the learning curve.  
 
I'm still cautiously open to the idea of investing further study and making Sonar my home DAW (unless I hit some unremediable show-stopper, which I hope never happens). But I would never recommend it to a DAW newbie, it could well put them off of a potentially great hobby. Just too many WTF moments. I'd send 'em to Studio One, MULab, Mixcraft or even N-Track. Not as fully featured as Sonar, but you sure can dive in and just use them.

I'd love to interject and say that you are wrong here, Sonar is a complex application you should learn it. Yada yada yada... but you are right. The mindset has been for a long time now about building up feature lists... Rather than maybe looking it with a fresh pair of eyes and asking... How can we make workflow simple and as quirk free as possible? How can we make it an absolute pleasure to use?
 
Another issue recently brought up was how selections get reset when adding tracks, sometimes zooms get reset. There's just so many day to day issues us regulars have learned to workaround it without thinking, as this is normal to us, we accept it and get used to it, whilst new users come on board and immediately see it's a PITA. They just want to make music quirk free... I'm not going to blame them for this....
 
Sonar is a great product but these meat and potatoes situations have been overlooked for too long.