DaveMc
So glad to hear that others are hitting the same wall I am beating my head against.
 
Here are my thoughts ... I'm brand new to Sonar, and to using any DAW, for that matter.
 
I am finding it extremely difficult to find ANY basic instructions or tutorials that speak to my level of experience.
 
This software program is extremely complex
 
Frustrating! Makes me want to abandon Sonar, and look for a more friendly platform.

Hello DaveMC ,
 
Lets take a look at some of your quotes to see if we can find something that may be of help to you .
 
OK lets say there is a wall . A quick look at this forum on the surface clearly shows that many of our  users here do encounter sticking points and personal areas of frustration along the way ...To say other wise would be untrue .
 
What I do take into account is many of us here are coming from different areas of ability and familiarity with how to use the program productively in a constructive manner to achieve our personal musical goals in the real world ...
 
So Yes, it may be somewhat true to a degree that many of us do indeed hit the wall .IMHO the really cool thing is we are all not banging our heads on the wall at the same brick ( I will exclude staff view for now )
 
I happen to feel that it is very important to mention that point because most of the help I have gotten ever since I have been a member here was from another forum member ...
Those of us whom have asked for help have quickly found we help each other out a lot around here 
 
Being new to SONAR and using a DAW is actually a wonderful place to be at .
When I was new to it all , a lot of my first steps seemed to be mostly uphill .
Thankfully the scenery has changed a little bit for me over time and I have come to understand that this whole process of learning SONAR or a DAW has been a growth process that has lead me on a pathway to personal empowerment 
Regarding this personal empowerment I do have to mention that I choose not to compare myself or my progress to other folks that use SONAR or other DAW's ...
I'm in my own orbit and I'm trying to learn how to do my own thing .
 
If I was to go there , I know I would only end up giving myself the short end of the stick because going there  would be used as a way to try and figure out where I may be along in my music journey compared to others
Lets face it , I'm no Craig Anderton , Andrew Scheps or any one of those Top Tier Music guys that get to hang out at The Top of The Mountain trading music tips with The Burning Bush .....it's only lil ole me
 
What does it take to get good at learning SONAR ?
I feel that may be different for each and every person here .
 
It is my humble opinion that the process of learning a DAW has taught me things in areas of my life that I had a lot of growing up to do ....
Early on my expectations were unreasonable and I had a real knack for becoming frustrated easily  ... 
In my case I had to learn how to mange my expectations head on and find a way to make lemonade out of the lemons...
 
your quote ,
"This software program is extremely complex " .
Yes I agree w you . This program is extremely complex ..
SONAR has been around for a real long time. There has been a lot of ground breaking features that have been added to SONAR along the way over the course it's development . I think that it is important to mention here that what we have now in SONAR are features and workflows that many of the users have been asking for for years ...
In all fairness I'm keeping the focus on many of the positive features ..not a few things that are longstanding things that need fixing and a little TLC
 
We are on a user based forum so there are a lot of ways to ask for help here where a person doesn't have to feel stupid for having asked 
 
The Techniques sub section of the forum is great for starting threads asking questions about thing such as ....
Audio techs ,  how to edit , how to master , how to gain stage levels, how to do automation read and write, also topics such as how to use compressors , EQ , side chaining ..ect ect ...
 
The Instruments sub forum is great place for asking questions about any of the bundled Cakewalk instruments that are bundled in SONAR  including all the 3 rd party gifts ...
 
The Software sub forum is excellent if you want to find out about how to use other instruments , plugs , and DAW's from non Cakewalk companies and vendors ... 
 
The Computer & Hardware sub forums are great if you are having issues with your computer or any of your peripheral hard ware ...ex...sound card , control surfaces, external HD and hardware ...
 
The Deals sub forum ...hhhmmm stay away from that section of the forum  ....I have tried to warn you
That place is the main reason I'm driving a car that is old enough to be legal to take out on a date 
 
The Main Sonar forum ...of course that is the main forum with the most traffic and there is a lot of help to be gotten there ...
 
As far as finding a friendlier DAW ?
I'm one of these people that would say hey man go for it . Keep in mind you may be surprised at what you may find out 
In a worst case scenario it could be just like switching seats on The Titanic  .
In a best case scenario you may find something that clicks for you and you may enjoy using it ..
In my case I have a number of DAWs for both PC and Mac...the bulk of them are up there right in the same league as SONAR as SONAR's direct competition ...
FWIW , I have never considered it a waste of time learning how to accomplish workflows in these other DAW's 
A number of them do have great tutorials and u tube support ..so good in fact I have learned a thing or two from them and found my way to having achieved the same workflow in SONAR ...
I had learned something last night using another DAW that I have always wanted to be able to do in SONAR ..
For some odd reason it clicked for me ...I did my little happy dance and said wow this is great ...I'm gonna use this DAW instead of SONAR ...
10 mins later I said to myself hey let me see if I can do this in SONAR ...sure enough not only was I able to do this in SONAR FINALLY ...I was able to do it with much more control and SONAR had much better features ....
 
Now what's the real lesson here ?
I learned something I have always wanted to do for years ...
I had the ability to do it for years using SONAR Yet I just didn't know how to approach cresting the learning curve  until last night ...
 
I hope you have found something useful in all this ,
 
Kenny
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

For me, capturing feel is the most difficult.  I have a basic, evolving project template that I start with.  This has the house-keeping stuff done - monitoring bus/FX/routing, a drum VSTi, a bass VSTi and audio track for guitar.  All starting tracks and buses have my preferred console emulation set along with QC EQ.  And a reverb bus with my favorite 'verb ready to go.
 
I start out forgetting about everything except capturing enough of the idea, especially the feel so I can get it back again in later sessions.
 
From there it is a la cart all the way.  Like Bob mentioned above, there are parts of SONAR I don't even bother with; Screensets, Lenses, Drum Replacer, live synth recording, mix recall, etc., etc.  When these things are first released I fiddle in a BS project to determine whether or not they are worth a greater time investment (to me).
 
When my muse is absent (more times than not) or I'm doing a mix for somebody else, I create a project to be used strictly for experimentation with features/techniques that seem more interesting than my experience level with them.  These little projects sometimes result in changes to my basic starting template, or end up being a track template or VST preset.
 
The whole idea is to have the capturing of ideas and the LC separated, folding the learnings back into to the capturing process as appropriate.  Doing this makes the most important learnings (to me) for capture available by simply starting a new project from my basic template.  The less global things are there in templates or presets.
 
In my mind it's a lot like winemaking.  You can make perfectly good wine using gravity.  It is a whole lot easier on the back with a vacuum system though
 
 

DaveMc
Frustrating! Makes me want to abandon Sonar, and look for a more friendly platform.

 
Unfortunately, I don't think you'll find it. I read a bunch of reviews on Amazon about Studio One Artist, the simplest version of Studio One, and it got one- and two-star reviews because people said it was so user-hostile and difficult to figure out. But you'll see the same kind of comments for all computer-based recording programs. It is simply not that easy to learn what is essentially a complete recording studio that would have cost half a million dollars not that long ago. In hardware days, just figuring out the patch bay would make your head explode...it's no easier to get up and running with computers. SONAR did the "Add Track" thing to try to simplify getting started, but that's just one piece of the puzzle. 
 
Don't get me wrong; all recording programs could do a better job of onboarding. But it's like learning an instrument. There's no easy "onboarding" for guitar...in fact your fingers will hurt 
 
I consulted to Sony at one point and they wanted an app note on how to transfer songs from Acid Pro to an MP3 player. They said I could get it done in a hour, it only needed to be three steps. When I sent in the document, Sony was NOT happy because there were 23 steps. "We asked for something simple, why did you do so many steps?" I said tell me which steps I can take out, and I will. They couldn't. As soon as a computer gets involved, matters get complicated.
 
The friendliest platform is something like a TASCAM or Zoom all-in-one "Portastudio"-type recorder, but even though you can get up and running on those fast, you still need to learn recording, mixing, etc. 

 I don't think there is really a simple DAW out there other than maybe Acid Music Studio. Mixcraft is quite simple but when you want to use something like Kontakt it's not.   Everytime there's an update for Reaper I can't even comprehend the list.
 
 I rely a lot on 3rd party tutorials.  They are often better than youtube. 

Anderton

DaveMc
Frustrating! Makes me want to abandon Sonar, and look for a more friendly platform.

 
Unfortunately, I don't think you'll find it. I read a bunch of reviews on Amazon about Studio One Artist, the simplest version of Studio One, and it got one- and two-star reviews because people said it was so user-hostile and difficult to figure out. But you'll see the same kind of comments for all computer-based recording programs. It is simply not that easy to learn what is essentially a complete recording studio that would have cost half a million dollars not that long ago. In hardware days, just figuring out the patch bay would make your head explode...it's no easier to get up and running with computers. SONAR did the "Add Track" thing to try to simplify getting started, but that's just one piece of the puzzle.

Craig makes a good point here, because most musicians are not engineers.
 
I don't think anybody who is just starting out with recording software is going to find it easy today.
 
I ran across some comments by Pro Tools Expert, Russ Hughes.  He has done some good reviews and videos on various products.  He got to preview AIR Ignite at NAMM before it was released.  http://www.airmusictech.com/product/ignite
 
Russ said: "I remember standing in the Hilton Hotel at NAMM 2012 when I first had the vision of Ignite shared with me. ‘Musicians are not engineers and we need to enable them to make music in a way that makes sense’ was how Ignite was pitched. It wasn’t even called Ignite then, it went through several cringe worthy iterations of a name before its final moniker, but discretion forbids me from outing them.
Of course the vision for Ignite makes sense, trying to make music with the average DAW is becoming more and more challenging, as layer upon layer of technology barriers are added with feature creep."
 
I picked up Ignite for cheap last year, hoping to find a decent scratchpad for musical ideas.  I like the concept!  Some may call it limiting, but I think they removed a lot of the "too many choices" from the product deliberately.   So you can freely focus on arranging and grouping musical ideas as clips, without regard to a project timeline, or having to deal with tracks, busses, etc.  No VST support, but it includes 275 instruments, many taken from Strike, Structure, and Velvet.  You can export audio or MIDI, to take things into a DAW.
 
I wish there had been something like this when I was just starting out ...
 
Demo from Russ:
 

Something that was not shown in the demo video for Ignite was audio recording.  Russ only used the included MIDI instruments, but Ignite does support up to two audio inputs.  So you can connect a guitar, mic, or other external instrument in a mono or stereo mode.  It supports importing of WAV files as well.
 
So you can arrange WAV clips in the same manner as MIDI, or mix and match.  Supports ASIO and WASAPI audio.