User manual

582
Working with chords
• To open the Edit Chord Symbol dialog for an existing
chord, double-click on the symbol.
You can also right-click on the symbol and select “Properties” on the
context menu to open the dialog.
Using presets
As with many other functions in Cubase, you can create
chord symbol presets for instant use. Each preset con-
tains all settings in the dialog – i.e. the preset list is a
“library” of chords. You will find the presets in the Chord
Symbols tab in the Inspector and in the corresponding
context menu. The preset handling is the usual:
• Click Store to store the current settings as a preset.
A dialog will appear, allowing you to enter a name for the preset.
• To load a stored preset, select it from the Presets pop-
up menu or select it from the Presets submenu of the con-
text menu.
Note that this only loads the settings into the dialog – you need to click
Apply to apply the settings to a selected chord symbol.
• To remove a preset, select it on the pop-up menu and
click Remove.
Using Make Chord Symbol
If you already have recorded the chords for a project,
Cubase can analyze them and create chord symbols:
1. Open the recording in the Score Editor.
If you want the chords to be inserted on another track, you can create an
empty part on that track and open it along with the recording.
2. If you like, make settings for how the chords should be
displayed on the Score Settings–Project page, on the
Chord Symbols and the Notation Fonts subpages.
You can change all these settings after you inserted the chords as well.
3. Select the notes for which you want chord symbols to
be created.
If chord symbols should be created for all chords on the track, use the
Select All function on the Edit menu.
4. Use the arrow keys to make the desired staff active.
This should be the staff on which you want the chord symbols to end up.
5. Select “Make Chord Symbol” from the Scores menu.
The chords appear. They can be moved, duplicated and deleted as any
other symbol. You can also double-click on a chord symbol to edit it in
the Edit Chord Symbol dialog (in the same way as when creating chords
manually – see above).
A staff after using Make Chord Symbol.
• Instead of using the “Make Chord Symbol” menu item,
you can click on the Make Chord Symbol button on the
extended toolbar.
• If the option “Use for ‘Make Chord Symbol’” is activated
in the Guitar Library subpage of the Score Settings–Project
page (see “Adding guitar chord symbols” on page 566),
guitar chord symbols will be added as well (if the guitar li-
brary contains any guitar symbols that match the chords).
About the analysis
• The MIDI chords are expected to be played in their most basic
inversion. If not, an extra bass note is added. For example, the
notes CEG are interpreted as C major, but GCE is interpreted
as C major with a G bass note. If you don’t want any interpre-
tation of the inversion (i.e. no added bass notes) hold down
[Ctrl]/[Command] while selecting Make Chord Symbol.
• All selected notes on all staves are taken into consideration.
Whenever there is any change on any staff, the notes are rein-
terpreted and a new chord symbol is added. This means you
should probably avoid having the melody track in the Score
Editor when you use Make Chord Symbol, or you will get a lot
more chords than you expect, possibly with strange tensions.
• In addition to the above, the quantize value is used. At the
most, there will be a new chord at each quantize position.
• There must be at least three notes at a certain position for the
program to interpret it as a chord. Also some combinations of
notes simply don’t make any sense to the program and won’t
produce any chords.
• The analysis method isn’t perfect since the same set of notes
can be interpreted differently depending on context. Some
editing may be required. If you record the track solely to create
chords automatically, play the chord as simple as possible, in
the correct inversion, without added octaves, etc.