got duo capture and sonar with a guitar I bought, went through the tutorial and im more confused. how do you record on this thing?

Are you using SONAR X1 LE? What steps have you taken so far to try and record? Have you set-up your duo capture? Are you using ASIO? Let us know and we can try to help. 

No one said it would be easy! Just kidding! There are a number of videos on youtube or check out the support section here at cakewalks site. There are some helpful vids in the Sonar University section. If you want more focused responses we need to know what exactly is your setup as far as computer and interface. Also, what seems to be the problem at hand. Sonar is a very complex program and takes a while to come up to speed. But, once you get the hang of it I think you will be glad you took the time.
By the way, welcome to the forum and please make yourself at home.

Just remember that SONAR has the equivalent functionality of a recording studio that if it was hardware, would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars not all that long ago. That's a lot of gear! And they had engineers to run it. 
 
The first crucial step is to connect the interface to your computer and make sure SONAR recognizes it. Not much is going to happen until that's sorted out.

There is sonar power which is very useful at describing uses.

Help file.

Practice.

Hmm when I was a tape op years ago I had a similar question. The answer was just make the ruddy coffee, roll up a fat one and find out yourself. Basically RTFM you are on your own. How things have changed...
 
Have you installed it yet and at least played a demo project?

Again, an example of Sonar not costing enough.
 
This guy needs Music Creator.

Doktor Avalanche
 
 roll up a fat one
 

Pay attention here. This is the key step.

Sonar is quite powerful, but you can get up and going by following tutorials, books, and/or videos that will walk you through quite a few of the ways of being productive with Sonar.
 
Check out the included tutorials, look at the Cake TV videos, and consider picking up one of the written books on using Sonar.  There are also countless additional videos on YouTube on most aspects of using Sonar.
 
These forums are also incredibly useful - and folks will bend over backwards to help - as long as they also see you actively looking at putting in the time and effort on watching the videos, using the help documentation, running the tutorials, etc.....
 
Also, please be aware that using the search function of these forums generally doesn't work well at all, at this point in time, and most folks learn to use Google to search for things in the forums, like how to do something, or seeing if there is a bug with some aspect of the version of Sonar you are running.
 
I tend to use a Google search control parameter to tell it to only search for things within the Sonar forums, and that greatly reduces the results returned to only be ones from the forums.
 
To do that, type your search terms after first typing the following into the Google search box or just up in the address bar of a browser window: site:forum.cakewalk.com 
 
So a couple of examples, using that search construct:
 
site:forum.cakewalk.com platinum now time marker
site:forum.cakewalk.com notation editor bugs
site:forum.cakewalk.com insert measures
 
Best of luck to you.  Welcome to the forums, and to Sonar.
 
Bob Bone

Come on gentlemen. I had played out live for years, had done bedroom recording with whatever I could get my hands on, done live recording with bands I was in, made sure the mixer and monitors was working and set up. I mean I was the "go to guy" for my small group.

When i got Win95 and Cw, I was f'n lost!! I had no clue what so ever how to get my sound into the box, let alone manipulate it once it was in there!!

Give the guy a break!!

To OP, do the tutorials that come with the program. Then at least you will be familiar with the terms so that we can ask you questions and you will know what we are talking about.

Good luck. It is worth the effort!