Saved by Forum Gurus! (Tons of random X3 tips for a frustrated 8.5 guy)

Apologies in advance, I felt inspired to write this post based on a few months of terrible frustration with the X3 workflow. I know it's a big spew of complaints, but I needed to do it. Also, please understand that in addition to my musical experience, I'm also in the software industry, so I know what's involved in building software. I'm not expecting any of this to change anything, but perhaps there are a few tidbits of help I can get out of it. 
 
I've been an exclusive Cakewalk/Sonar user since 1989, when I bought Cakewalk 3.0 for DOS. I've written operas, video game music, films, solo albums, and a thousand other projects on it, having upgraded along the way probably a dozen times. My last version of Sonar was 8.5 until I decided to upgrade recently to X3. And after 25 years I'm >thisclose< to jumping ship in frustration. Before I do that though I thought I'd post some of my biggest issues here and maybe will get enough good answers that I can hang on. 
 
(Apologies for not using the correct names of some tools and views below - I am typing this away from my Sonar installation and so can't see the real names, hopefully I can make myself understood!)
 
1. TOOL SWITCHING HELL
I use a dual monitor setup, and typically will have track view on one screen and piano roll on another. This is a nice feature in X3 that I couldn't do as easily in 8.5. However, in order to do anything I first have to hit F5, F6, F7, F8, F9 or F10 to switch tools. F5, the "Smart" tool, isn't as smart as it used to be. With the Smart Tool selected, I see a group of notes I want to move. I can't drag select with the Smart tool, so I need to hit F6 to invoke the select tool. I draw a box around my notes, but a few notes I don't want to move are also in the box, so I need to de-select them. But oh, I can't individually de-select notes with the F6 tool (why not???). To do that I now need to switch back to the Smart tool and move my hand to the Ctrl button to de-select those notes. Now to move them, I need to switch again to the Move Tool (F7), but that tool does not keep notes aligned vertically by default, so my hand has to go back down to the Shift key to Shift-drag the notes to their new location.
 
And the Delete Tool (F10) is much less useful than it used to be. I used to be able to hold down the mouse and drag over notes to delete them. I can still do that sort of, but the tool wants to create a box, in which every note in the box is deleted. Deleting a melodic line in the middle of a thick mix is nearly impossible without going click click click click on individual notes. So frustrating.
 
Lastly, I can't find where to change the keystrokes for these tools. I've had keyboard shortcuts for them for many years, but now I have to use the F-keys apparently.
 
2. ALL THOSE TAKES
I usually construct my pieces tiny bits at a time, which generates gobs of tiny clips. I used to simply select separate clips that belong together and Apply to Clip, simple. I don't know who designed the multiple takes functionality, but man, I sure hate it. I used to be able to look at stacked clips within a single track, select them individually, and do stuff with them as a group. Now I have to open this Takes View, which invariably consists of mostly blank space. If I've been working for a while, I may have 50 takes, each with their own row on the screen. I know there is a way to consolidate the takes, but without cracking open the help file, darned if I can find it. There used to be a right-click menu option to rebuild the clips and get rid of blank space. Why was that moved somewhere else??? And even so, it doesn't solve my problem. While I like the concept of being able to do multiple takes and then pick the best one, the execution of that feature is way harder than just leaving it the old way. Is it possible to flip a switch that makes my midi tracks behave like they used to? What's so confusing is that the main track just shows all the clips piled over each other, and to see them individually I need to open this Takes View, but now there are essentially two visual representations of the same clip on the screen. 
 
3. While this isn't strictly an X3 problem, the other usability issues with X3 make this long-running frustration much worse:
 
Let's say I have a piece with a dozen midi tracks that I have been working on bit by bit. I now have a lot of small clips across all the different tracks. Also, I'm not quantizing anything because I like how it feels the way it is. Then I decide I need to repeat a 6-bar section in the middle. Anymore, merely thinking "This section needs to repeat" now fills me with Sonar dread. The mere act of inserting 6 bars into the piece and getting everything else to move is daunting. I can't just click somewhere on the timeline and say "Insert Time/Measures" because I'm not quantized and stuff will move or not move that I don't want. not only that, but I have to make sure everything or nothing is selected, or else only the selected stuff is going to move. and when I do that by mistake, I'd better be sure to Undo, because something may have moved that is off the screen. (And by the way, why is "Insert Time/Measures" NOT IN THE FRIGGIN' INSERT MENU???  but I digress...) 
 
In order to simply repeat a section, an astounding number of careful steps must be followed or my piece will get completely messed up. I could just select clips, but like I said above, there will be a lot of tiny clips, and I can't see them in the track, I have to open the dreaded Takes View thing. So I might try to do it within Piano Roll View instead, but selecting notes in PRV that don't all appear on the screen at the same time is very difficult, and there is tool switching hell involved to add or remove notes from an existing selection. And I can't drag select anything but a rectangle. And oh yes, if I drag notes, the pedal markings don't come along, I have to drag those separately. And I hope I remember to do that.
 
In short, no matter how I slice it, doing something as important and frequent and seemingly simple as inserting some space in the middle of a piece is actually extremely difficult. Most importantly, this difficulty gets me completely out of the creative flow. With X3, I spend way more time fiddling with the software than making music.
 
4. TIME SIGNATURES / TEMPO CHANGES
I've started creating pieces with a 1/4 time signature, just so that I don't have to jump through the hoops required to make a single bare 3/4 in the middle of a 4/4 piece. Because if I don't take that into account when I later need to move things around, woe is me. Same story for ritards, fermatas, etc. Telling Sonar you want to insert measures in a piece doesn't mean it knows you probably also want these things to move also.
 
Bottom line is that Sonar doesn't think like a musician. BY DEFAULT Sonar should assume that what you have is a piece of music. If you want to move things around, Sonar should assume by default that what you're moving is MUSICAL ELEMENTS, and not merely "digital events". So tempo changes, pedal markings, time sig changes, markers, should move along by default. Sonar should understand what humanized playing is like. If I want to move bar 6 to bar 83, Sonar should understand that a note played a millisecond prior to bar 6 is probably part of bar 6. And that a note played a millisecond before the end of bar 6 is probably not in bar 6. It's the musical equivalent of Google understanding what you probably meant to type.
 
(I have actually fully quantized pieces before just to make it easier to use in Sonar, deciding that musical expression was less important than ease of editing in the software. So sad.)
 
And things I need to do a lot, musically important things, have teeny tiny buttons to accomplish them. The Time Signature dialog has always been terribly designed, but it's seemed like such an obvious shortcoming (and since I work in software I know how easily that could be improved), I'm amazed and su****ious it's never gotten better. How about big buttons that say 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, etc, and how about the ability to go back to the original time signature easy to do within the same dialog instead of creating two time signature changes with those microscopic plus and minus buttons? Obvious stuff that should have been improved years ago. The fog is lifting: Sonar doesn't think like a musician.
 
Anyway, it seems to me like my quarter century of Cakewalk habits are now working against me in a huge way. Before you start to reply that I'm doing everything wrong and the problem lies in my work methods, remember that those work methods come from all these years of Cakewalk use! Cakewalk seems to have abandoned me in favor of new ways of doing things. Which is fine I guess. But I'm in the business of making music here. I don't want to unlearn what I've learned over all these loyal years.
 
I've been frustrated at times with Cakewalk/Sonar over the years of course, but I've always stuck with it, assuming that switching to a whole new platform is far worse than figuring out how to do it efficiently in Sonar, and I think I've been right about that. But with X3 I'm finally not so sure.

"T" is your friend, it will bring up the tool selection pallette (they call it a HUD for "Heads Up Display").
 
Like said above, right-click drag select in PRV
 
I hear ya on the measure boundary selection. Digital Performer is insanely intuitive in it's clip creation. I would just use the mouse and Bounce to Clip to create a proper clip that has your data. Double check your Move To and Move By settings and you should be fine.
 
You can use grouping to help with your section creation, but sometimes yes that's a pain when you want to move a large group of clips or insert a small amount of space somewhere in the middle of a complex arrangement. Especially with the odd late or early notes. Sometimes I'll move a whole part of the song wayyyyy out into the ether just to get it out of the way while I muck with structure.

#1 You can also bring up the tool module by pressing your mouse wheel button.

Wow, thanks so much everyone for the helpful responses! There's a lot to play with here, and to those of you who suggested it, you're right, I should spend more time with training videos and such. (It's just that... if I have time to sequester to the studio instead of attending to my real life, well, I ought to be doing real music, but that's my problem.)
 
SO relieved to hear other people have had trouble making the switch to X series from previous versions. Having troubles with things isn't nearly so bad if you know you're not alone in that.
 
One thing I think I'm going to do is frequently Bounce to Clip, and keep everything in a single clip until such time as I need to do things with it, then just split clips where I need to. Which begs the question: Can I have Sonar automatically combine everything in a track into one big clip? If not, is there a way to do away with the lanes entirely and just have layers in a single track like in the gool ol' days?
 
Can't wait to get home and try this stuff out...
 
To Sanderxpander: an example of my frustration might be that I have a section with a ritard in it, painstakingly created by drawing lines in the tempo view until it sounds natural (aside: Why can't we play it the way we want it to sound and then tell Sonar where to put the bar lines??). Cut to several days later. I've decided to insert a couple bars somewhere, so I select everything and slide it over to make room. But the tempo changes stay where they were (and the pedal markings, incidentally). If the tempo change is subtle enough, I might not notice until much later, when suddenly there's this strange tempo thing going on, and I go into the Tempo View and see my painstakingly created ritard. "Oh yeah! Where was that again? I moved things around..."
 
"I would just use the mouse and Bounce to Clip to create a proper clip that has your data. Double check your Move To and Move By settings and you should be fine."
Can I select a group of notes in PRV and then ssay "turn this selection into a clip" or do I have to do my clippage activity within Track View?

jkoseattle
Which begs the question: Can I have Sonar automatically combine everything in a track into one big clip?

Yes, in track view, can hold CTRL, select multiple clips, right click and "Bounce to clips." It seems from your work flow you are piecing on additional content, and this works great for keeping track of things.
 

jkoseattle
Can I select a group of notes in PRV and then say "turn this selection into a clip" or do I have to do my clippage activity within Track View?

 
I do not know how to do this in PRV, but someone may chime in here and give the definitive answer.
 
A few tips:
1) When watching tutorial videos, work "along with them" so you do as you watch; and in the interest of time, you may want to start with things specific to your work flow as it is "now."
2) Save projects at major stages (and with descriptive names), especially as you learn. That way if you make a mistake, you can simple close (without a save) and re-open your project. Ctrl-S (save current project) is a good practice before any major change in a project.
3) Do not be shy to ask in the forum. Many times as I was learning, I didn't even know what the feature I was looking for was; but with enough description, folks are more than happy to help point you in a good direction.
 
 

Select a group of notes in PRV, move focus to TV (e.g. click a track header in TV), then hit Num2 or Num8. This creates a new clip, although in another track.

Yeah... and I was typing that I was actually thinking "God, I hope Jlien X chimes in, he would know this offhand, I bet." Thank you! (I learned something too!)

jkoseattle
I have a section with a ritard in it, painstakingly created by drawing lines in the tempo view until it sounds natural (aside: Why can't we play it the way we want it to sound and then tell Sonar where to put the bar lines??).

Set Measure/Beat At Now (Shift+M in X3) does exactly this. I frequently record MIDI performances without a click and go back later to align the timeline to the performance using SMBAN. It's one of my favorite features.

I have a confession to make - I still use Step Sequencer for drums.  I keep meaning to get to PRV, just never quite have enough coffee in me to invest the needed learning time.
 
I WILL get around to it, it's the 'when' that eludes me...
 
Bob Bone
 

mudgel
To the OP.
I've been an annual upgrader since about Cakewalk 7 so my learning curve has been gradual with only a small annual jump to keep up.

THEN X1 arrived; so many technical issues I couldn't even use it until the C patch and then right up to X2 I fought the new work flow and insisted that Sonar bend to my will. Man was I ticked off with Cakewalk. While my gripes were genuine with the X1 series my attitude really got in the way of making headway.

It wasn't until I let go of Sonar 8.5 and committed to learning how the Sonar X series does things that I started to progress. By the time X3 had come along, not only have I been able to make the best of it but I've done it at a time when the Cakewalk team seems to have become revitalised and everything seems pretty good with the Gibson acquisition, unlike the previous Roland days.

If you had the chops to do all those great things with previous versions of Sonar, then I'm sure in time you'll be able to do even more as you come to grips with the changes and improvements that X3 brings to the table. As all the previous posters have suggested there are ways to move forward as long as you take the time to learn Sonars way and not try to impose your old workflow and techniques.

Admittedly there's still a way to go with Sonars development but the Cakewalk team have really got their act together and X3 is by far the best Cakewalk offering in my nearly 20 years of association.

All the best with you endeavours.

Mudgel!  I remember your posts!!!  Back then I was such a casual user (actually, till now) but I'd check in the forums whenever I was trying to do something way back when Sonar WAS NOT INTUITIVE AT ALL...and your frustrations... I always read them, saying to myself... here's a smart guy and he's frustrated so no wonder I'm lost, as I'M A DUMMY!
 
I guess I am lucky, in a sense, to just be getting to the time in my life where I'm able to spend lots of time using Sonar to write songs which have been piling up for years... I never learned my way around 6,7,8,8.5, although 8.5 started to make sense to me... then, X came and I was overwhelmed again but still had little time... and now, with X3... I find myself just doing stuff organically and that methods are much more intuitive, thus, easier to incorporate into my sessions...
 
Muscle memory can really get in the way of moving on...we are creatures of habits... Glad I didn't have any as X3 is worth habituating....
 
Gotta get those hot keys into my brain... printed them out... gotta start studying them... been thinkin of makin an mp3, just speaking them out, one by one, so I can drill it into my brain while gardening...  oh, and I just LOVE Sonar now... 
 
 BTW, why don't people change the thread's title as an issue evolves to better reflect the thread's contents?  This thread has lots of good stuff in it for new/novice or even old fogies like me but it just sounds like another whiner thread... something like... "Sonar X3 is very challenging to us with old habits and I'm both confused and frustrated (lots of tips)...
 
I mean, the title just reflects an emotional but inaccurate rant and lots of good stuff flowed... 

JKO, thanks for your example - I don't use manual tempo changes very often so I had never noticed they don't move when you insert or delete time. This would qualify to me as a bug. Have you submitted it?

About the midi automatically becoming one clip, I believe this happens if you record in overdub mode. That means as you record on the same track, everything will be put into a single clip, completely doing away with take lanes. There are no layers anymore however.

Sanderxpander

About the midi automatically becoming one clip, I believe this happens if you record in overdub mode. That means as you record on the same track, everything will be put into a single clip, completely doing away with take lanes. There are no layers anymore however.

Unfortunately, this doesn't happen in Sonar.