mudgel
When Sonar is open, pressing F1 opens up the help file on the Tutorial page. I recommend that you do all the tutorials as it is filled with basic knowledge that will help you build your Sonar skills.

Welcome to the forum. Don't be frightened to ask specific questions. All the best.

 
We can not stress this enough. Do the tutorials that come with Sonar. Then watch some of the basic stuff on Cakewalk TV on Youtube. Here is a good place to start:
 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOa1Gml6u9j6OlfYYond1jQ
 
 OH! Welcome to the forum. John is right, we have the best place on the net. And your part of that now!!

Even tho I am usually a manual reader, I find I have to watch videos to have a clue what the manual is telling me! I have this nasty habit of making things more difficult than they really are, and end up in a D'oh! moment, when I find out the easy way.

charlyg
Even tho I am usually a manual reader, I find I have to watch videos to have a clue what the manual is telling me! I have this nasty habit of making things more difficult than they really are, and end up in a D'oh! moment, when I find out the easy way.

That's alright Charly. Look at it this way, back in the day the only way to learn this stuff was to look over someone's shoulder. Now you have video to look over!!
 
And of course to reinforce what you read in the manual!!

Welcome RF.  In addition to what others have told you, I will add another good resource is Groove3.com.  Excellent videos on Sonar, plus more generic topics like using compression, mixing, music theory, other software and plugins.  A yearly subscription plays for itself pretty quickly in my opinion.
 
Best of luck and see you around!
Cheers from SF

I remember asking very similar questions when I first started... And I'm still asking questions!
 
Great place to be when learning!