I am working on a long piece which will end up about 15-20 minutes. It's pretty fluid with lots of time signature changes (which I am not bothering to enter in Sonar, btw). I would like to be able to work on the piece in sections, so that I can decide to add or subtract bars or individual beats. With a long piece like this, doing this in a seamless efficient way in the midst of composing is hard, because adding a single beat in bar 12 means everything up to bar 486 has to slide over. It works, but it's a PITA since I want to do it a lot. The Insert Time/Measures thing is just asking for disaster if I happen to check the wrong boxes or if the wrong stuff happens to be selected at the time I think of inserting. I wish it were easy to simply say "I want to add/subtract a bar of music here", and have Sonar understand that inserting a bar in some tracks but not others is VERY RARELY something I will ever want.
 
Anyway, what I'd really like to do is work on the piece in sections that are all part of the same project, and then string the sections together for playback. So I can add and subtract bars from one section and know that no other section is affected. I could do it on separate tracks, but then playback is confused and I get into Mute/Solo hell. I could simply add a ton of space between each section, but then I can't skip that space during playback.
 
Is there any way to make working on a long piece easier?

My only question at this point is why are you not entering your time signature changes in Sonar?
 
I have many projects which have multiple TS changes and in my experience, trying to arrange/compose without them is an absolute nightmare!

I would ask the same.  Time signatures are fundamental to making Sonar work the way you're wanting it to.  They're really not difficult to add.

I ALWAYS add a marker whenever I change either time signature or the tempo, so that I don't have to hunt around looking at a tempo map and all that noise.  Just easier for me to be able to glance at Now Time marker and see them when they are coming up.
 
Just thought I would add the above, so that if you were to decide to add meter/tempo changes, you would have an easy way to see them later.
 
Hope the above helps, by the way I LIVE in odd-meters, and routinely work in songs where there are anywhere between 10-50 time signature changes, and I truly hope you begin to take the extra 10 seconds it takes to add both a time signature change and an accompanying marker
 
Bob Bone
 

I'll add my voice for inserting both the time signature changes and markers. I can't imagine how you're working in different time signatures in different sections without those TBH. No wonder you're finding it hard. Add those and the whole thing will suddenly become much, much easier.

Really? I'm not even THINKING in time signatures. The piece has a meter, but I could have a time sig change on every bar sometimes. And a lot of times the "downbeat" in one part is not the downbeat in another part. The whole concept of downbeat is fuzzy, really. I just ignore Sonar's understanding of the downbeat and work in individual beats.  I've turned off smart snap and have the snap set to 1/8 notes and am happy. I have thought of setting the time signature to 1/4, but I don't see the advantage. It just seems like too much effort to add all that work. What would be the advantage?
 
I do use markers extensively, but they are limited because I'd like to have multiple sets of markers overlaying the piece. Maybe I'll have markers for lyrics, markers for keys, markers for when riffs start, etc. Anyway, since I think I can only have one set of markers, I only use them at a crude level, such as "Fast Part" and "Recap".

In that case I think you're always going to find working in sections hard work, it's the way the program is designed to work.
 
It's a bit like writing a document in a word processor but not using lines. Doable but hard work.....

@jkoseattle, there is functionality for track notes, that may help you with putting more info into a project than what you can do with markers.  Just a thought - hope it helps, 
 
I rely on measures in any music I record, and all of the recording software out there also employs the concept of measures, for identifying/defining/editing sections within a project.  Even cheat sheets in fake books show time signature changes in tunes.
 
Whatever works for you is up to you, of course - I suspect that at some point if you interact with other musicians and collaborate on projects, there may be some hurdles to work through.
 
Best of luck to you with your endeavors, 
 
Bob Bone
 

OK, I looked into this again, and I just don't see enough value in adding time sig changes. Partly because Sonar's UI is poor for editing them. How about a dialog that has big buttons for the obvious time signatures, and a check box for "Change time signature for next measure only"? Putting time and key signature changes in the same dialog and employing bafflingly microscopic buttons and bare bones options shows me they aren't putting a lot of effort into making time/key signature changes easy to do. It's just way more clicks than it needs to be.

Again - whatever works for you is what works for you.
 
If not having the time signature changes does not cause you trouble, then they would appear not to be important to your projects. :)
 
Bob Bone