Tips On Setting Up Sonar 8.5 To Resemble Ableton Live?

Sonar looks like sonar and appleton looks like appleton. There's no way for any of them to look like each other.
The tips i can give you, just like i give any one new to sonar is to read the manual, do the tutorials, and ask specific questions when your stumped or have problems. 
There is no other way to learn sonar, other than to roll up your sleeves and dive into the manual and tutorials. Its a very deep program, so learn the basics first, like recording, playback and adding effects. Then go onto other things, like inserting soft synths and editing and envelopes.

Also get a Sonar Power book by Scott Garrigus (did i spell his last name right???)
Cj

Sonar's Groove matrix doesn't send midi to external midi gear :( But Sonar is much better featured for linear recording, arranging, mixing etc.
Think of Sonar as Ableton's session view with knobs on.

Hi Bongo...welcome to the forum. If you're familiar with Live then the Groove Matrix will be your new friend.

A couple of tips to get you going...

Create a new track folder and point each of its tracks to a row in the groove matrix. I created one that has 16 tracks. The trick here is that for a row to 'exist' in the Groove Matrix it has to have some kind of data in at least one cell in the row. I recorded a short 'blank' wave file (couple seconds) and copied that blank data to the first cell of each row.

I then saved the track folder into my default template (Normal.cwt). Now when I start a new project and I want to use Groove Matrix, I just load it up and start dropping loops into the 16 rows. You can also add MIDI tracks that point to SONAR's soft synths to the Groove Matrix.

Once you have all of your loops in Groove Matrix you use the 'columns' to create the sections for your songs. Once you have all of the sections of your songs created you can then 'record' the  performance in real-time back to the tracks that were created in the track folder. It basically works like Ableton Live except the function of the rows and columns are switched in SONAR.

Hope it helps...

-eB

You can go here:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=956469


I believe there is an Ableton color scheme that will at least put you close to familiarity visually.