CUBASE SX tutorial BEGINNERS 1

Cj Daft

Informations

• Publié par: Aprea
• Nombre de lectures: 98
• Langue: English

Extrait

CUBASE SX tutorial Series One – Volume One danDont.com What is Cubase SX? Setting up and getting around in the program. Introduction Cubase SX is the Steinberg’s top-of-the-range music production and sequencing application aimed for the studio and home musician market. There are two other Cubase versions available today, current versions named SL and SE which are obviously more budget conscious versions of the program with some limitations – Cubase SX being the biggest of them. If you would be into post production (mainly working with sound-to-picture) there’s also post-production-aimed application called Nuendo which adds video and advanced time code functionality. In this tutorial we show how to get around the programs main features and setting up your system after installing. Setting up Setting up Cubase SX program on your computer is simple and fast forward - just follow up the installation instructions to get it completed. Usually you set the program to C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase SX\. It is important that you have a decent amount of RAM and HD space in your computer to get the most out of the program. For your convenience and maintainance it’s recommended to have a completely separate hard drive for Cubase sessions. Audio tracks always spin off from the hard drive and as you get more tracks in, your hard drive will get a bigger work load and after a while the drive gets more fragmentated and slows down. To reduce this it’s easier to go and buy a separate audio drive than to keep the data on the program drive. Running samplers and effects in Cubase also eat up your RAM so it’s good to have at least 1GB to start with. It’s also good to have a decent sound card in the computer to make the most of the application. Current sound cards usually offer multimedia drivers as well as ASIO drivers,latter being more suitable for audio work giving you better latency times when using the program. Productionwise, you should look after a sound card that is aimed to the music making instead of an all-around card as you get better playability, recordability and more features with the card, usually including MIDI connectors and better connectivity (digital and outboard). First time you open up the Cubase SX program you need to set up your sound drivers to get started. You will find the device settings in Devices menu-> Device setup. (Picture 1).

(Picture 1) Device settings can be easily found in the Devices menu. In the device setup utility you will find MIDI connectivity, sound drivers and options for setting up the system. Selecting the proper sound driver is done from the VST Multitrack panel, if you have ASIO driver for your sound card, selecting it will give you faster (better) latency times meaning faster input and output inside the program and also better playability with MIDI keyboard and VST instruments. If you experience problems with your sound in the Cubase application (clicks and drop-outs during recording and playback) you can select bigger latency times and different drivers from here. (Picture 2). It’s good to setup default MIDI ports if you have a controller keyboard at hand by selecting your sound cards MIDI input active. This way, whenever you create a new MIDI track, you’ll get your keyboard always selected as MIDI input device by default. (Picture 3).

(Picture 2) The VST Multitrack panel. This is where the sound card madness happens…

(Picture 3) If you have a MIDI keyboardyou use all the time, connect it here by default!

First views, setting up the project

project. You can make a new project gives you multiple options to select lly you want to start fresh with just a  youneed to select a project folder ate a new folder for your project and

u

 t be the transport panel. At the transport you can select reco recording quantize which is a nice feature to get your MIDI recording), select locators positions, use jog wheel, see the s play, stop, rev, ff, rec, loop play functions, select click, tempo, main volume. This panel will become very very handy… The main project window might look a bit scary on the first look but you’ll get used to it after a while. On the top of the window you’ll see lots of small buttons, which are mainly editing tools for the projects’ sequencer. Looking from the top left you can find delay compensation button (turning it off will cause audible delay in your project), view utility for project main window (including inspector, infoline, overview, pool and mixer buttons), fader automation modes, mini transport buttons, object manipulation tools (all the usual plus some more exotic), grid settings, quantize and colour selector. (Picture 6).

(Picture 6 ) Transport panel and project main window. The main tools shown focused. Views and menus, hidden and dangerous Depending on what view you have selected on the top left, you’ll see some info and track functions appear below the view selector (three buttons from the left). All the data that you’ll see down there is depending on what type of track you choose to create. You might find that (for example) creating an audio track and selecting the inspector view active gives you a whole lot of audio track parameters to choose from - like track volume, panning, input and output routing, channel automation etc…then again if you create a MIDI track – you’ll find there’s a similar view but there are MIDI track parameters instead. In this column you will always find more and more tools and options to choose from if you see and click on a small “+” marker in front of a setting. You can get lost here pretty soon so it’s better not to mess around with those quite yet…you just need to know it’s there and accessible. Notice that you can bring up a nice menu there also by just right-clicking on the track view and a different menu is accessible through right-clicking on the track lane (Pictures 7 and 8). There are also zoom tools and settings available for the sequencer window at the low right corner, you can zoom and size the view by clicking and dragging the sliders there (Picture 9).

(Picture 7 & 8) Access the Project ma

(Picture 9 ) The main zooming tools. You can also zoom inside a window holding the left mouse button down and rolling horizontal or vertical.

If you browse through the Cubase top menus, you’ll find extensive loads of different kind of tools and settings, categorized under the menus that they represent. Most of the menus are aimed at different editing and setting while some of them are for project and general setting up. Some of the things available in the categorized menus can also be available by right-clicking on a certain object…if you (for example) create a MIDI object, you can manipulate the object by selecting it on a sequencer lane, right-clicking on it and finding the proper MIDI editing tool from the menu. In Cubase there are loads of key shortcuts to help you. Four of the most important are transport (F2), mixer (F3), VST instruments (F11) and play-stop (separator key). The usual editing commands like cut-copy-paste, open-save, delete – are also there – but it will take some time to find most of them so it’s better not to get too deep learning key shortcuts instead of the program itself… The danDon’t Team http://www.dandont.com/invision