Hi,
For years, when I wanted a new project, I'd just new, maybe take 16 Audio or MIDI or whatever, then add what I needed, etc. For some reason, this time I scrolled on down and in SONAR Platinum (at least) there's like a whole new world of possible templates. Mastering templates. Specific Mix templates. Showcase templates. Oh, this looks interesting.
 
So, I chose Showcase Songwriter (that being what I mainly am), and created myself a project.
 
Some of it looks fairly straightforward. Session Drummer track. Check. An audio track for vocal, one for guitar. Check. A bass and piano track. Check So I dumped my MIDI drum track into the Session Drummer track, okay, good. I've never used Session Drummer, but it sounds nice. I dumped my bass and piano MIDI tracks into their appropriate tracks. But now the problem starts. The only sound I can get out of anything is drums. The bass and piano tracks are stone cold silent.
 
Okay, so I figured, "I don't what I'm doing. Maybe I should RTFM* and figure out how to use these Showcase (and Mastering) templates." But all I could find was an article that said these various helpful templates existed, not what to do when they didn't seem to work.
 
Is there a missing piece here? When I've used MIDI tracks before, I just imported my MIDI tracks, added a soft synth, and away you go. With this Showcase marvel, I'm not even sure how to add another synth or how to hook it up. When I did add another soft synth, I was still only presented Session Drummer choices for any new MIDI tracks.
 
So...

1. What to do to get bass & piano working?
2. How to add other MIDI tracks? (probably related to #1)
3. Is there a FM** to read that gives more detail on how to use these fabulous new templates?

Thanks in advance for your help. And of course for all the fish. 
 
*If you are not familiar with "RTFM", it means "Read The F%#King Manual"
** Hence "FM" means... well, you get it it.

Okay, I got the Bass & Piano to play. But only by creating brand new VST tracks and copying the MIDI to them. Which kinda seems to defeat the purpose of the template.
And I got the additonal tracks added okay.
Would still like to see some documentation. 

This won't be helpful for the problems you've encountered, but I've had similar experiences going back to X1.
 
Thankfully, I'm completely over them, but what I've found is that templates are great, but are mostly CW-centric.
Specifically in terms of midi, my routings really get screwed up in templates with what I mostly use (Spectrasonics, NI and IK stuff).
 
When Omnisphere first came out, Spectrasonics had a tutorial on how to set up a multi in Sonar, and they pulled it shortly after 8.5 became X1, then I started having problems with Miroslav stuff. 
 
At first I was very defiant about it, but I learned to create my own templates with any kind of midi data in it, because I could delete the midi faster than I could reset my midi channels in the inspector or console view.
 
I think there were a couple of people here that experienced it, but I freely admit I was in a very tiny minority.
 
I love templates (will love them more when we can fully design our own GUI) but please learn how to make your make your own.
 
I've never had a problem with the audio templates though, and what is that guitar in your icon?  Looks sweet.
 
 
 
 

I have never used any of the provided templates.  I also make my own.  I always use track templates, as it lets me build a song in chunks... For example, I just got Orange Tree's Nylon guitar and Indigenus's Renegade tele... Both run in Kontakt... so, I brought up an instance of kontakt, said to make all audio tracks stereo, add a midi track... and went thru the Kontakt hurdles (many posts on this), added another midi track and another for bass... got the sounds I wanted for a new "package", jammed awhile and when I got done, after saving the song idea I...
Deleted all the midi and audio
highlighted all the tracks 
Saved it as a "track template" and called it First Renegade Nylon Rick bass
 
Next time, I click the template and in a few seconds, it all pops up
I have templates for vocals, with verbs/delays going to busses... I can add that in a few seconds...
I have orchestral templates.... I can add those just as fast...
 
Before ya know it, I have a fifty track song with routings and everything... waiting for me to start recording... I rarely save this as a template, preferring to build each song from chunks... however, you could do that... or you can highlight the parts of the final song you want to save as a track template and do that!   Sonar's templates are hugely powerful... A kontakt set up might take me 10 minutes, heck... a year ago it would take me an hour to set up... but all that work is done in seconds once saved as a track template...
 
Track Templates are not ment to house/include the midi or audio data... they're ment to make it quick and easy to add new data/create a new song.
 
Same goes for Song templates.  Consider this maybe the standard way you want to start.  You can add track templates on top of that song template.
 
Just google Sonar track templates or song templates... there are vids and links to documentation...all the X2 and X3 stuff applies...   you can also google Sonar  templates cakewalk forum... again, vids and docs...
 
Have fun.  Also, there are several great vids on the Cakewalk store.  well worth the money.  
 
 

OK, as to your specific questions...
So...

1. What to do to get bass & piano working? Well, you need a midi track, set the input to your keyboard (ie, you want it to get the midi info from your keyboard... omni works fine unless it's multitambril), and then set the output to you synth/bass/piano or whatever you want from the list that pops up(click the "o" for output, below the "i" for input... you probably don't need to set channel unless you're using multi timbral instruments like Omnisphere...  Once you've selected where the midi is to go (say your piano vst) go to that track (the instrument track) and select it's input in this case, the "Piano" and send it's output to the master...(or sub or aux track or patch point... you got lots to learn... vids...)
2. How to add other MIDI tracks? (probably related to #1)  This is easy... when you pull an instrument from the browser into a new track it brings up the box that lets you click, "add midi track" or something like that.  If you forget you can just go to "insert" in the top menu and click midi track...and set it to send to the new instrument... 

Thanks for the replies. As I said, I got the Songwriter template to work, but I had to create new Bass & Piano VST tracks, then added the other tracks. As I said, I've added lots of MIDI tracks over the years; the difference here was not seeing the SoftSynth I added as an option. In a project made from Songwriter template, for some reason only the Session Drummer was available for any new arbitrary MIDI track. Ended up adding a soft synth type track for each instrument, which was different than my usual approach of using one synth and assigning indivdual tracks to a different voice.
Will likely use the good idea of saving As Template. Like most people, I tend to reuse the same basic configuration. And I'll dig a little deeper for help on these Showboat templates .
The guitar, btw, is an Ibanez. I mainly bought it for the cutaway, very useful in gigs for the kind of music we play, when I need to play up on the neck. I've since changed to a black Martin cutaway, with much better tone and plays better. Actually one of the best guitars I've ever had. Here's a video of one of my songs we played at a recent gig, featuring the Martin, if your interested:
 
https://youtu.be/DvTIIXiSsDM
 

chuckpuckett
...
The guitar, btw, is an Ibanez. I mainly bought it for the cutaway, very useful in gigs for the kind of music we play, when I need to play up on the neck. I've since changed to a black Martin cutaway, with much better tone and plays better. Actually one of the best guitars I've ever had. Here's a video of one of my songs we played at a recent gig, featuring the Martin, if your interested:
 
https://youtu.be/DvTIIXiSsDM

Good song, Chuck. Love the Martin.
 
I like your female vocalist's voice. Your daughter?
 
And I was going to make a joke, asking you if you know the bass player's name, but I found it in the video's notes. He's got a name alright. Kinda hard to pronounce. I'll stick with "Bob". 

Yes, my daughter Ruthie. She's been singing with us since high school. You can find other vids that feature her om YouTube, look for Bimini Road Puckett (that should filter out all the Atlantis stuff  ). She has a super blues belter voice. Look for Stormy Monday or Summertime or White Rabbit.
We just call him "Sujay" 

I recently discovered the project templates as well. I didn't realize they were added back in Hopkinton. One thing I noticed in the mix templates is that they have a bunch of hidden busses. Check the routing on all your tracks to see where they're going.

chuckpuckett
 Here's a video of one of my songs we played at a recent gig, featuring the Martin, if your interested:
 
https://youtu.be/DvTIIXiSsDM
 

Stumbled onto the post, saw the link, checked out the song.  NICE!
No input on the templates as I haven't gotten around to trying them out. 
I typically make my own.
Also, what Dana "Vastman" said about track templates is spot on.  You can set up pretty elaborate configurations (buss, aux tracks, folders, etc.) and add as needed.  So if one set up doesn't work all the time?  Adjust, then make a new track template.  I have a bunch of variations that I use...