With the advent of modern daw technology, rather than tuning my guitar down a half step, to learn the chops of, say, an OLD Van Halen Song... I stick the song in Ableton Live, Hit WARP, change the WARP setting to COMPLEX PRO, then change the pitch 1 step up, or down. This will warp the entire song to the change.  I can also change the BPM by 2 or 3 bpm up or down to keep the song within my desired speed.
 
MY QUESTION IS:
 
Is there a way of doing this thing in Sonar X3?  If so, what are the steps?  What I have tried has sounded like a mangled cat.
 

LOL - Mangled cat is pretty good to practice to, isn't it?
 
I don't know actually, but using Ableton Live isn't a bad idea. After all, it's made for doing those kinds of tasks really well. I do it the same way, then I bounce it out like that and import to Sonar if that's where I want it.

Don't know the answer for Sonar, but what I use is:
 
http://www.bossus.com/gear/productdetails.php?ProductId=1167
 
great for changing pitch and/or tempo to practice/learn licks, great with my travel guitar for sim amps, recording and general guitar fun while being mobile!
 

There are a few different approaches you could try.
 
I'll assume that the Van Halen track has been imported as an audio clip.
 
o Use Process->Transpose, and select the 'transpose audio' option.  This gives you a choice of pitch-shift algorithms and other parameters to control the process.
 
o Use the loop construction view to change the clip's pitch.  You have to convert the clip to a groove clip first IIRC.
 
o Use Cakewalk's pitch shifter plugin.
 
[edit]
 
If you want to change the speed as well after transposing, CTRL slip-edit the clip by the desired amount then bounce it to a clip.  Or, if you've used the loop construction view to change the pitch, I think you'd use the stretch on/off and original BPM settings to get the clip to play slower or faster.
 
 
[edit 2]
 
You could even (possibly) drop the entire Van Halen track into DropZone and play the 'sample' back using a lower pitch key!

Thanks guys,  I tried the pitch shifter plugin, it sounded like a disaster.  I'll try the Process transpose tonight, and I've not really had that much luck with loop construction view.  the tutorial videos make it look so easy, but I've just not had the best results.  I'm not against using Ableton, I'm just trying to remove unnecessary software.  If that is the ONLY thing I'm using Ableton for, I would like to perfect a way to do it in Sonar and be done with Ableton.  It's a nice toy but not much for my flow of music editing.
 

Warping is a key feature of Ableton, there is nothing comparable in sonar other than the offline methods described. If sonar had warping I too would be happy to ditch all the other daws I have so hopefully it may come in the future.....please ;-)