Here's another scenario:
 
I play an entire song in using a piano plug. Then I decide the left hand should be played by a bass guitar plug.
 
I set the PRV length to see the entire song,  lasso all the left-hand notes (Ctrl+mouseclick those that escape),
and now: Right mouse button menu > Choose "Group notes in a Clip"
Finally, in the Track view (Clips), I Shift+move the entire clip to a Bass Guitar instrument track.
The right hand piano part stays put. No clip needed for them.
 
Finally, I decide to ungroup the Bass Guitar notes.
With the Bass clip selected, I go: Right mouse button menu > Choose "Ungroup notes from Clip"
 
Yes, I know, there's other ways of doing it. Just another example.

jpetersen
No. No enforced clip membership requirement at all.
A clip is just a convenience. It allows grouping notes and moving them together. That's all it is.
 
@KPerry: In your model, one would need to free a note from it's clip, then join it to another note's clip. An unnecessary extra step.  But sure, allow the user to select a single note and create a clip around it. But let the user decide. Don't enforce it.
 
Release notes from the tyrrany of clips! Freedom for all notes!

I meant as an option on create, so you wouldn't need to "do" anything to make them into clips or distinct.

I can go for this.
Clips are so unwieldy, I gave up on them long ago.
I want to use them, but not the way it works now.

KPerry
I meant as an option on create, so you wouldn't need to "do" anything to make them into clips or distinct.

Even as an option, what's the use? You then need to "undo" everything to make them into what you need.

I want that time to move my project forward.

In which case, I have no idea what you want - I propose an option to *not* group notes into clips but to leave one note per clip, which is apparently what you want, and you say you then need to add an extra step.  Makes no sense at all.

KPerry
In which case, I have no idea what you want - I propose an option to *not* group notes into clips but to leave one note per clip, which is apparently what you want, and you say you then need to add an extra step.  Makes no sense at all.

I guess he wants:
1) (invisible) full track length MIDI clip on every track
2) to which all notes goes by default
3) other MIDI clips are created by "Group notes in clip" menu option and then "locked" all the time
4) in the Track view, overlapped MIDI clips are shown as with Take Lanes opened and the clips in different lanes (transparent)
5) overlapped clips in the PRV are shown the same way as clips from different tracks (colored)
 
What I do not understand:
a) for what all that is good
b) the examples, especially #31 which make no sense for me. I often split one track into many:
b.1) copy the clip and then remove notes, in case I want original clip stay as it is. Or...
b.2) focus target track, set Now time to the first note I want in it (or to some other position I want), select/cut required notes and paste. Or...
b.3) copy/cut/paste in PRV with several tracks opened, using visibility and locks to keep the source and the target under control.
 
And so I do not understand the whole topic. The only bug which annoys me a bit is that "Undo" history shows wrong description for notes copy/paste (the text is from different previous operation). It still works correct, so no real problem there.
 

It's pretty clear this concept is not being appreciated very well --- whenever there are some highly negative votes, as here, there is usually misunderstanding. 
 
The beginning of Aslow's summary seemed clearest for what's wanted:  allow a user to put notes, controllers, patch changes, aftertouch events, etc, into a track.   Call that an "invisible clip" if you must, but let it be not only invisible but never needing to be touched, extended, bounced, or modified.    Because of undo problems, paste problems, and mysterious crashes I spend a fair amount of every single workday grouping clps together and 'bouncing to clip' -- not because I want a big clip, just to avoid crashes and bugs.   I also create thousands of clips, as probably does the OP, because of how all the midi data gets created.    Right now, current medium small project has 8000+ midi events and nearly all of them started life as a single event "clip" ... not a good implementation, and not what most people think of when they imagine clips as maybe 20 or 30 well-defined looping units put together for a song.
 
For those who like to work on a clip basis, let it be an option, even a default, to keep things as they are now.  Surely Fruity Loops would be a good model for how to manage clips better than Sonar, for this group of people. 

Select the MIDI track strip itself > right-click on any clip > choose Bounce to Clips and the result is a single MIDI clip.    Maybe that's one reason I also have been missing the critical nature of this request, because getting a single clip (when desired) is so simple.   Creating separate clips from one track length clip is less so. 
 
But it's also the visual aspect that still doesn't make sense to me....   William states "Call that an "invisible clip" if you must, but let it be not only invisible but never needing to be touched, extended, bounced, or modified."    So what exactly would one see in the Track View that represent the existence of MIDI data?   
 
I don't really think it's an "appreciation" thing as much as just not mentally visualizing on the same page. 
 
 

SteveC, bouncing to clips one time is fast and easy, but believe it or not in the course of a project I have to do it hundreds, maybe thousands of times.    So that means select, access a function, and do it, and then attempt to get back the focus on the music that was lost by having to undertake a work-around.   
 
As to what to see?   My "track view" is usually set to "clips" as an option, so I see gray boxes with little lines in them representing midi events --- what's so unusual about wanting to see only the little lines and no gray box? 
 
If I change the view to "notes" as an option, the tonal difference is so washed out I can't see anything without a zoom factor way beyond what is comfortable for music work, but when zoomed then I see essentially a washedout version of the same thing, when selected, or medium gray when not selected -- either way, the box representing the clip is a visual impairment, it offers no good information.
 
If I change to the "in-line" view, which I don't like visually and never remember how to do and which is in some odd different menu selector, then again clips do not add anything of value.

I think I slowly starting to understand the point...
 
Sonar is "classic" style recording oriented, also in MIDI. I mean even in case you record something like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdH1hSWGFGU you still get just one clip. And as with normal instruments recording, it is good to have "Take 4" information, clear see what you have recorded as last, A/B different performances and so on.
 
But as soon as you start "one finger" recording in a loop or composing by adding separate notes at arbitrary locations, the number of "clip-notes" explodes. Sonar can not record looping into one clip, it can not life record into Step Sequencer and it can not record into Matrix. And so it is simply not the right tool for doing such things. For composing with mouse I think pre-creating track-long clips should be not much disturbing workaround, while that still does not solve the problem with MIDI input.
 
So, (2) should be rewritten as "enable recording MIDI into existing clips, by default into the (invisible) track-long clip".