Big Edit for simplicity: Here's what I am proposing, as briefly as possible:
1) Allow notes to be placed manually (or played in) without any clips being automatically generated.
2) Once that is done, let the user decide which notes/events to group together in clips.
****
Now follows my motivation and details how this can work:
Whenever I work on MIDI, Sonar automatically puts notes in existing clips. If a note is not near a clip, it makes a new single-note clip.
According to forum member
brundlefly,
>> If a note is added within one measure of the nearest clip boundary it will go into that clip, otherwise a new clip is created.
Sonar cannot possibly know how the user wants to group notes. It cannot know the difference between verse and chorus. So the user inevitably has to undo what Sonar has done.
And not every note/event needs a clip. Notes in an intro will probably NEVER move and don't need a clip. A patch change at bar 21 needs no clip. Allowing clipless notes/events will make the clip view less cluttered and clearer to use.
Let the user decide which notes/events to put in clips.
One way might be to let the user lasso a selection of notes and to provide a new Rightclick menu function "Group notes in a Clip" (with a corollary "Release notes from Clip").
***
Specific real-world example: If a verse is followed by a chorus and the chorus has lead-in notes that start inside and overlap the ends of the verse notes (like the song "Blueberry Hill"), unpicking the single automatic clip into a verse clip and chorus clip is quite some work. Just let the user lasso/select the notes manually. Its quicker in the end.
And not only that, after intensive editing where I add some notes, move notes around, etc, the clips get bigger. They overlap each other, they reveal notes I'd previously thought I'd cropped away... big mess.
Clips should make the user's life easier. They should be made more convenient. Clip membership should be optional.