Hi there,
sorry I'm new to this so I haven't got all my terminology up to speed yet. (also I hope this is in the right place)
I have been trying Cubase elements for a while and although it seems ok I have always got on better with Cakewalk daws so I thought I'd have a go at Sonar x3 as well. One feature I did like from elements was that I could create a chord track. I can achieve a similar audio effect in Sonar but the only thing I miss is the visual cues you get from the chord track itself (as in, as the track scrolls through you can see the names of the chords as you get to them, which is handy for me as I don't have the best memory). I was wondering if there happens to be a way to achieve a similar effect in sonar?
 
Thanks for your time

This seems to be one feature Cubase has Sonar beat on. But maybe x4? 
I got Elements for Christmas and will be giving it a spin just for fun. I'm more needing the Wave editing feature but this chord thing has my interest too. 

SONAR has a big enough toolkit that many times, you can do something that comes pretty close to features (like "varispeed") that other programs have. For example, I created a "Chord Library" folder in the media browser with a variety of chords made up of MIDI data that last a measure. I just drag them into a project into the top track, and because the clips are named, they indicate the chord progression. But you can also have a real-time readout of the chord progression using a feature of Strum Acoustic - this is really handy when I'm writing a song and trying it in different keys. Strum Acoustic's readout follows the chord progression so I can just follow along without having to learn the song in different keys while I experiment.
 
There's more information that relates to this in an article I wrote for Sound on Sound magazine, although I've refined the technique considerably since it was written.

Oh cool, thanks very much. I was thinking something as simple as having silent audio clips with the chords written on would do the job but your way is better :)  Am I right in thinking that the strum acoustic is part of the producer version of x3?

I'd love to see a chord track that could be in a floating window and move in time showing at least 12 measures (always two measures behind where you are, highlight where you are and nine ahead).
 
Or something like that.

fell
Am I right in thinking that the strum acoustic is part of the producer version of x3?

Yes.

I use staff view for this.  I first match the temp (if it's an imported mp3 or whatever) then add chords, and also markers for the sections (intro, bridge, chorus, etc).
 
Works pretty well, although it would be nice if staff view got a few tweaks to make it easier.

I do like the ideas of creating a media bank of chords that I can just drag and drop in combined with the staff view. Some good ways to make yourself a nice little toolkit of shortcuts for drafting something out. Thanks very much!

I have an approach I use for most songs that may be a suggestion to think about.

1. I create markers that make sense in the song. No surprises there.
2. For every song I work on, I reserve the first track to be my visual of the parts. I create a one measure midi block of nothing (no sound) at the start of the song and repeat paste it exactly starting at the start of each measure out for 120 or so measures. So I have 120 or so 1 measure blocks on one track.
3. I use the Clip background color selections to color ranges of blocks differently. If you look at the Inspector pane and click on the tab for Clip you can easily get to the background clip color setting for any range of clips you've selected. This makes it easy to see where the verse and chorus and bridge parts are by having different colors for different sections - displaying across one track at the top of the Track View.
4. For chord changes I do sometimes use the markers to help remember those.

But potentially, you could use the method in 2-3 above to use clip names, Rename clips as needed, to show chords. Just an idea until Sonar is more elegant in this regard.

I have a question about something that pertains to this. 
I often use markers to denote chord changes and verse- chorus- solo, But if I add or subtract measures the markers stay where they were. I have never found a way to stop this. Is there a toggle to have markers move with editing measures?