If I have a midi track with a few layers on it (or even just a single layer midi track with 2 separate clips next to each other) and go to manually add a new note in the piano roll, how does Sonar decide which clip the new note will be placed in? I've tried highlighting the clip before I add a note but it never gets placed in the clip I want it to. 

I don't know how Sonar decides what goes where, but why do you want your notes in separate clips?
 
You can easily bounce them all to one long contiguous clip & then split them afterwards
 

It's just the way I work. For example, sometimes I have a layer of clips for a left hand piano part and another layer for the right, just to make it easier to edit and tweak. If I want to add a note to the left hand layer it often ends up in the right hand part. I don't even seem to be able to specify which layer a note will go in, let alone which clip on that layer.

James P, I'm interested in this answer too. For example, if you are in Piano Roll View and you are showing 3 different midi clips concurrently indifferent colors, it would be nice to add to the different clips while seeing the others.
 
To tell the truth, I usually open one clip at a time in PRV lock the PRV (right click the tab in the dock and choose lock). Then I open another PRV that has all of them in it. I flip between them as I make modifications. That seems to give me complete control as to which midi clips are being modified.
 
I'm not sure it's the best way though.

Thanks gswitz, I just tried your idea of different PRVs for different clips, but it looks like that only works if you're editing midi clips from different tracks. If you have several midi clips that are all located in one track (or on layers within one track) you can't have a separate PRV for each clip - the PRV always shows all the midi data on that one track regardless of clips. You could always mute or hide muted clips I suppose, but that gets very long winded and doesn't actually resolve the issue of being able to select which clip a new note will be placed in.

Maybe it's just not possible but I would have thought it would be a basic thing to implement. Imagine in Photoshop if you couldn't select which layer you were working on and you ended up drawing on a random layer that you had no control over.

James P
It's just the way I work. For example, sometimes I have a layer of clips for a left hand piano part and another layer for the right, just to make it easier to edit and tweak. If I want to add a note to the left hand layer it often ends up in the right hand part. I don't even seem to be able to specify which layer a note will go in, let alone which clip on that layer.

That makes sense.
 
A possible workaround would be to go into track view, select the layer for your left hand part and slip edit it out to the end of the song.
Do the same for the right hand part.
 
Finally, set your PRV up the way suggested above by gswitz, i.e. open and LOCK each instance of the prv before opening up another in the Multidock.
This should force notes to go into the correct clip after every edit you make
 
But I haven't tried it

Thanks for the suggestion but as I tried before, I don't think you can have clips that are located on the same track in separate PRVs. It always shows all midi data from that track in the PRV, even if the clips are on separate layers.
 
Never mind - unless someone else knows a way to select what clip a note will be placed into I'll just have to get used to another 'quirk' ;)

I get you, James. I'm a guitar player at heart and I don't usually end up with layers of midi on the same track. It makes sense that you could.
 
This may not do it for you, but in tracks view, did you know that you can select NOTES in the drop down menu on the track header where you can assign the current envelope or pick clips? When you do this the lane turns into a little PRV of its own.
 
Now, when you open the various clips in PRV from different lanes, they all open in an identical PRV that shows all.
 
So it looks like PRV really works at the track level, not the lane level.
 
One work around would be to do your comping in a track folder where you create many takes of the same musical part in the same folder, but each gets its own track. Then you could use PRV to edit them distinctly.
 
I haven't used the new speed comping feature across multiple tracks yet. I think that this feature is more designed when multi-tracking drums for example where you want drums tracked into lanes for each take but be able to use speed comp to build a great drum take.
 
Consequently, breaking the takes into separate tracks might be a hindrance.
 
You could also use shift drag to drag the clips you want to work with into separate tracks and then drag them back into their respective take lanes, thereby achieving both unique PRVs at one stage of mixing and using speed comping at another.

Thanks again for the suggestions. I'm actually still on Sonar X1 (only upgraded to it last year) so I don't think I have those options you mentioned (lanes). What I usually do as a workaround is what you suggested at the end - create new separate midi tracks for each part, then I can open these in their own PRV and work that way. It just means I have to be careful adjusting volume/pan etc for all the cloned midi tracks because obviously I can't have conflicting pan/volume levels etc. for different tracks that are all feeding the same audio output.
 
The layers feature was something that was new to me in X1 and I liked the way it simplified having all my takes together in one track. Shame it looks like I'll probably have to go back to not using it if I want to work in this way. Or maybe it's time for ANOTHER upgrade to X3 (still haven't tried half the new features in X1 yet!)

I haven't read all the replies here but I've just tested it now and discovered that the new note gets into the desired clip IF you lock data of all other clips in that section. There must be a better solution, though.