I'm looking into getting this program. However I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a couple of things. Is there some kind of "Studio Instruments for Dummies" available. I watched a tutorial on youtube, and I can't quite get the concept of how you actually put , say strings for instance, into a song. In other words if I have a slow type song and have the chords F, C, D, how do you get slow strings type strings playing thos chords underneath. Do you write in Studio Instruments and drag to a track? BTW, I'm using Sonar Home Studio 7. Any advice would help.

you need to edit the velocitys in piano rool or need a keyboard that has touch sensored keys on it.remember even though technology can do just about anything now a day.doesnt mean it reads minds..please dont take that the wrong way i was just trying to give an example..for instance the string section needs to be told to play softer and by doing this you need to go into an edit function to do it...as for your other question.if your using a keyboard(if you dont have one your lilmitedamazon,sweetwater guitar center,have a small one called the lpk25 its 45 bucks and does the job great for small jobs and medium.the key board has no sounds in it.it just sends a code (midi)to sonars synth telling it what noted to play...your other option with out a keyboard is the stepsequencer or piano roll.

it sounds like your starting it as stand alone also.. if thats the case.. you need to insert it as a VST with whatever the host prog is.

you can either drag / drop the midi side .. or play the stuff. for the price, you can't expect it to have as man articulations as say GPO etc though. but it's good enough for sketching

also having different octaves of the same notes at far lower velocities helps pad out the sound as well.

I've used Studio Instruments to play tracks my own MIDI songs. For example, I open the browser view, click insert synths, choose Studio Instruments, then choose SI-Electric Piano, select Simple Instrument Track, and the SI Electric Piano gets assigned to my 1st MIDI channel, which is usually keyboard accompaniment of some sort. Any of the 4 Studio Instruments can be assigned to your MIDI tracks. 
You can also click on the name of a pattern inside the pattern browser on the left side of any SI window, drag it into your sequencer and drop it into place.
So, I guess there's 2 ways of using SI - assigning them to existing MIDI tracks or dropping patterns into a sequencer.

hello

i am considering buying Studio Instruments with Music Creator 6. I see i can buy both as a download from cakewalk for a cheaper price than seperately.

My question is does the Studio instruments download come with considerably less  sounds or samples than the physical boxed version, or am i not losing much by going with the download?

many thanks

Jason King