Getting Started
Tutorials by Steve Kostrey Revision for Cubase AI and Quality Control: Cristina Bachmann, Heiko Bischoff, Birgit Grossmann, Sabine Pfeifer, Claudia Schomburg The information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. The software described by this document is subject to a License Agreement and may not be copied to other media except as specifically allowed in the License Agreement.
Table of Contents
5 Introduction 48 Tutorial 4: Mixing and Effects 6 6 7 7 Welcome About the manuals and the help About the program versions Key command conventions 8 System requirements and installation 9 9 10 11 11 11 11 About this chapter Minimum requirements Hardware Installation Installing Cubase AI Registering your software Defragment the hard disk (Windows only) Installing the Additional Content 49 49 50 50 51 53 53 54 Introduction Setting levels Setting Pan Mute and solo Adding EQ Audio effects About Autom
1 Introduction
Welcome About the manuals and the help Congratulations and welcome to the world of Cubase. You have now become a member of the world's largest community of music production software users. Looking back at more than 20 years of innovation in computer-based music production, Steinberg has always been the driving force behind software technology and Cubase is the benchmark for this development.
Menu Reference This pdf document provides a list of all menus and their options with a brief description, for quick reference. The dialog help To get information about the active dialog, click its Help button. About the program versions The documentation covers two different operating systems or “platforms”; Windows and Mac OS X. Some features and settings are specific to one of the platforms, Windows or Mac OS X. This is clearly stated in the applicable cases.
2 System requirements and installation
About this chapter • Hard disk speed – The speed of the hard drive also determines the number of audio tracks you can run. This chapter describes the requirements and installation procedures for the Windows version and the Mac version of Cubase AI. That is the quantity of information that the disk can read, usually expressed as “sustained transfer rate”. Again, “the more the better” applies.
Depending on your preferences and requirements, using the built-in audio hardware may be sufficient for use with Cubase AI. It is always available for selection in Cubase AI – you don’t need to install any additional drivers. ! • The ASIO DirectX Full Duplex driver, allowing Cubase AI to communicate with DirectX. This driver is included with Cubase AI, and does not require any special installation. Hardware Installation Some Macintosh models have audio outputs but no inputs.
Installing a MIDI interface/synthesizer card 3. Launch Cubase AI and select the Registration option from the Help menu. Installation instructions for a MIDI interface should be included with the product. However, here’s an outline of the necessary steps: The “My Steinberg” section on the Steinberg web site is opened. 4. Follow the instructions on the web site to create a user account. 1.
3 Setting up your system
Setting up audio ! • External mixing means having a hardware mixing device with a group or bus system that can be used for feeding inputs on your audio hardware. Always make all connections with all equipment turned off! In the example below, four busses are used for feeding signals to the audio hardware’s inputs. The four outputs are connected back to the mixer for monitoring and playback. Remaining mixer inputs can be used for connecting audio sources like microphones, instruments, etc.
Recording from a CD player Making settings for the audio hardware Most computers come with a CD-ROM drive that can also be used as a regular CD player. In some cases the CD player is internally connected to the audio hardware so that you can record the output of the CD player directly into Cubase AI (consult the audio hardware documentation if you are uncertain). Most audio cards come with one or more small applications that allow you to configure the inputs of the hardware to your liking.
1. Launch Cubase AI, select Device Setup from the Devices menu and click on VST Audio System in the Devices list to the left. • Under Mac OS X, you will find the control panel for your audio hardware in the System Preferences (“Other” section), opened from the Apple menu or from the Dock. If you are using the built-in audio hardware of the Macintosh, you use the “Sound” control panel in the System Preferences to set levels, balance, etc.
When the ASIO DirectX Full Duplex driver is selected in the Device Setup dialog, you can open the ASIO Control Panel and adjust the following settings (for more details, click the Help button in the control panel): 2. To hide a port, click in the “Visible” column for the port (deselecting the checkbox).
by sending the input signal back out again. However, monitoring is controlled from Cubase AI. This means that the audio hardware’s direct monitoring feature can be turned on or off automatically by Cubase AI. ule is used for playback only. Using Cubase AI’s MIDI Thru feature (described later) you will be able to hear the correct sound from the sound module while playing the keyboard or recording. Monitoring is described in detail in the chapter “Recording” in the Operation Manual.
Ö Note: When you change MIDI port settings in the Device Setup dialog, these are automatically applied in the program. The MIDI signal from the keyboard will be recorded in Cubase AI and at the same time be re-routed back to the instrument so that you hear what you are playing, without the keyboard “triggering” its own sounds. Showing or hiding MIDI Ports When “MIDI Thru” is active in Cubase AI, MIDI data received is immediately “echoed” back out.
Setting up video ! Optimizing audio performance This section gives you some hints and tips on how to get the most out of your Cubase AI system, performance-wise. Some of this text refers to hardware properties and can be used as a guide when upgrading your system. This text is very brief. Look for details and current information on the Cubase AI web site. Always make all connections with all equipment turned off! Cubase AI plays back video films in AVI or Quicktime formats.
System factors that affect performance • Under Mac OS X, audio hardware with properly written Mac OS X (Core Audio) drivers can be very efficient and produce very low latency times. CPU and processor cache However, there are additional features currently only available with ASIO drivers, such as the ASIO Positioning Protocol. It goes without saying that the faster the computer processor, the better.
Optimizing processor scheduling (Windows only) To get the lowest possible latencies when using ASIO under Windows XP (on a single CPU system), the “system performance” has to be optimized for background tasks: 1. Open the Windows Control Panel from the Start menu and select System. 2. Select the Advanced tab and click the Settings button in the Performance section. The Performance Options dialog appears. 3. Select the Advanced tab. 4.
4 Tutorial 1: Recording Audio
Creating a new project 8. Give your new folder a name. If your are going to name your project “My First Project” then you could call this folder “My First Project” or “First Project”. What’s important here is that you are creating a folder on the hard drive to store your project into it. This folder should have a unique name that is different than any other Cubase AI project you have created before.
Setting up the VST Connections To save a project 1. Select “Save As…” from the File menu. The VST Connections window allows you to set up the input and output signals of Cubase AI to your audio card. Cubase AI calls these “busses”. This section will show you how to set the busses up so that you can get playback and recording working. The difference between Save and Save As are discussed in the chapter “File Handling” in the Operation Manual. 2.
5. Depending on your audio hardware, your outputs should be setup now. You can however select the outputs of your choice from the “Device Port” pop-up menu. 2. Next click in the “Device Port” column to select the audio inputs of your audio card for the stereo and mono inputs. Normally you’ll want to choose “Out 1” and “Out 2” or “Left 1” and “Right 2” as these are the main stereo outputs of your audio card. More sophisticated setups may require you to choose different outputs and even add more busses.
3. Click on the new track you’ve created and make sure the Inspector is shown. 1. Activate the “Metronome/Click” button on the Transport panel. The Inspector allows us to see and manipulate a lot of information for the selected track. Click to open the Inspector 2. If you would like a two bar count in before you record, also activate the “Precount/Click” button. 3. We now need to set the speed or the tempo of our project. This will directly affect how fast the click plays.
2. Now click the “Record Enable” button on the track. Do not allow the audio level to go past this line! Setting the track to Record Enable lets Cubase AI know that you want to record on this track and no other one. You can have many tracks Record Enabled at a time. This is the safe area for recording 3. In the Inspector, open the “Channel” tab. This will display the channel fader for the selected track. Click here to display the channel fader.
Playback • Select the audio event called “Audio 01_01” and choose “Loop Selection” from the Transport menu. We are going to learn how to play back audio in Cubase AI. You might think this is very simple – just hit “Play”. It is actually this simple but there are a few tricks to learn so that you’ll be playing back what you want with precision. ! ! Load the project called “Playback” found in the “Tutorial 1” folder. The default key command for this is [Shift]+[G].
Recording modes with cycle off Recording electric guitar 1. Let’s add another “Mono” audio track. There are three different modes for recording when the cycle is turned off. This is called linear recording. The three modes are: • Normal • Merge • Replace When recording audio, “Normal” and “Merge” are the same. Selecting either of these will allow you to record over the top of another audio event and it will appear as an overlap.
5. Make sure “Cycle” is activated, set the left locator to 2 and the right locator to 18. Selecting different takes 1. Right-click on the new guitar audio event that we just recorded and choose a take from the “To Front” submenu. This will loop or cycle between bars 2 and 18. Cubase AI has recorded all of the passes we made when we were recording in loop mode (Cycle Recording). These passes are called “Takes”. In our example we have three different guitar takes.
5 Tutorial 2: Editing Audio
Event operations 5. Notice that our audio event now says “Bass”. In this section we’ll learn how to edit events or parts. This includes rename, resize, split, glue, move, copy, repeat, mute, erase and adding a fade. ! Load the project called “Event Operations” found in the “Tutorial 2” folder. The name has changed from “Audio 01_01” to “Bass”. Renaming Resizing If we look at the audio events that we recorded earlier, we notice that the bass track has an audio event on it called “Audio 01_01”.
Splitting with “Snap” off 1. Choose the Split tool. Splitting with “Snap” off allows you to cut anywhere without locking to any kind of reference like bars and beats. 2. Make sure “Snap” is on. Snap allows you to edit to various time frames. The most common one is bars and beats. Meaning you can cut exactly to the bar with “Snap” turned on. With it turned off you can cut anywhere. See more about “Snap” in the chapter “The Project window” in the Operation Manual. 1. Choose the Split tool. 2.
7. Next choose “Bar” as the “Grid Type”. 1. Choose the Glue tool. 2. Glue together the split events in the “Elec Guitar” track by clicking just before each split. Let’s make sure we glue all of them. This means you will split to bars. 8. You can now split the “Elec Guitar_01” event precisely to the bar. Cut on bars 6, 10 and 14. Moving events 1. Choose the Object Selection tool. 2. Move all the events in the Project window from bar 2 to bar 1.
3. With all the events selected, click and drag them to bar 1. Using the [Alt]/[Option] key 1. Choose the Object Selection tool and hold down [Alt]/ [Option]. 2. We are going to copy the “Guitar 2” events. Remember that there are three events. Select all of the “Guitar 2” events by clicking and dragging as described above. 3. Click and hold the selected events and drag to the position you wish the copy to be made. Then release the mouse button. Don’t worry about the “Scissor” icon that appears.
3. In the dialog that opens, choose how many copies you wish to make by increasing the “Count” field. 3. To un-mute an event, click on the muted event with the Mute tool again and it returns to normal. • If you drag with the Mute tool you can mute a number of events at a time. Equally this will un-mute events that are muted. Erasing 1. Choose the Erase tool. • You can choose to select “Shared Copies” if you want. Shared copies allow you to make aliases to the original event.
3. Click on one of the blue triangles and move it so that a fade appears. This is what an audio event looks like. Notice the blue triangles a the top. This is what an audio event inside a part looks like. Parts contain either audio or MIDI events. 4. For more advanced fades you can double click on the fade area to open up the fade dialog. See the chapter “Fades and Crossfades” in the Operation Manual for more information. Notice there are no blue triangles at the top.
Processing audio 2. On the Audio menu–Process submenu, select “Normalize”. Cubase AI has the ability to make changes to the audio in more ways than splitting and resizing. You can Normalize, Reverse and Silence to name a few. For a full explanation on processing audio, see the chapter “Audio processing and Functions” in the Operation Manual. ! Load the project called “Processing Audio” found in the “Tutorial 2” folder.
3. If you have copied events in the Project window, this dialog box will open. It asks if you want all the copied events changed (Continue) or if a new version is to be created so that only your selection is affected (New Version). 4. Clicking either “Continue” or “New Version” will reverse your audio.
6 Tutorial 3: Recording and Editing MIDI
Introduction 3. Make sure the “Inspector” is shown. In this chapter, we are going to add some more instruments to our song. In the previous tutorials, we have recorded audio. Now we are going to record using MIDI. There are two ways in which we can have MIDI sounds appear in Cubase AI: via virtual instruments, that is a synthesizer inside your computer or through the use of a traditional hardware keyboard. 4. Click in the name field of the instrument track.
Browsing sounds MIDI recording We are now going to load sounds into our virtual instrument “HALionOne”. Now that we have our sound, let’s record something. Recording MIDI is very similar to recording audio, see the chapter “Tutorial 1: Recording Audio” on page 22. ! Load the project called “Recording MIDI 2” found in the “Tutorial 3” folder. Setting MIDI input 1. Click the “Preset” button in “HALionOne” and choose “Load Preset” from the pop-up menu. 1.
To start playback 5. Activate the Record Enable and Monitor buttons on the track and play some notes on your MIDI keyboard. • Click the Start button on the Transport panel. You should see and hear the MIDI signals coming in to the right of the track. Monitor Record Enable Setting the track to Record Enable lets Cubase AI know that you want to record on this track and no other one. You can have many tracks Record Enabled at a time. • Press the space bar on your computer keyboard.
2. Click in the program field in the Inspector and load up a drum sound of your choice found under under the category “Drums&Perc”, sub-category “Drumset GM”. 2. Make sure that the Cycle button is activated. 3. Click the Start button on the Transport panel and Cubase AI will play looping over and over until you click Stop. 3. Rename this new track to “Drums”. Recording modes with cycle off 4. Make sure the Cycle button is activated and set the left locator to “9” and the right locator to “13”.
Erasing MIDI notes 9. Click the “L” button on the Transport panel once. This will make sure we start recording at the left locator. 1. Double-click on the “Drums” part so that the Key Editor opens. 10. Activate the Record button on the Transport panel and let’s record hi-hat on the first pass, kick on the second pass and then finally snare on the third. Here we can see our drum notes lined up with a keyboard on the left.
5. Now erase all the other hi-hat notes from bar 2 through 8 using any method you like. 1. Scroll over to bar 25 and click on the piano roll on the left hand side of the Key Editor. Click on the notes until you hear a crash cymbal that you like. There is a good one at C#2. Copying MIDI notes Let’s copy the MIDI notes in bar 1 to bars 2 through 8. 1. Lasso the hi-hat notes in bar 1. Hold down [Alt]/[Option] and drag the notes in bar 1 to bar 2. This copies them. 2.
1. Make sure you can see the Controller Lane by clicking on the “Controller Lane Presets” button at the bottom left of the Key Editor. 2. Choose “Velocity Only” to view the velocity. 3. You can choose the MIDI information you wish view or change from the pop-up menu. 4. You can also select “Setup” to view more controllers. Pick one from the list or choose setup for more controllers. 5. Use the Pencil tool of the Key Editor to draw in new velocities for the notes. You can even draw in curves and ramps.
7 Tutorial 4: Mixing and Effects
Introduction 4. If for any reason you need to get the fader back to 0dB (the default setting), you can [Alt]/[Option]-click directly in the fader area. In this section we’ll draw from the last 5 tutorials and finally get a mix ready with proper levels, EQs and effects. Automation will be added and then we’ll export the audio. ! Channel fader Load the project called “Mixing 1” found in the “Tutorial 6” folder.
Setting Pan ! 3. Keep the “Drums” track in the middle but let’s move “Loop 1” a bit to the left and “Loop 2” a bit to the right. This will give our rhythm section a larger more spacious sound. Load the project called “Mixing 2” found in the “Tutorial 6” folder. 1. Setting the pan for each track moves its position in the stereo mix. It will either keep the signal balanced in the middle of the left and right speaker, lean to the left or lean to the right or be completely in the left or right speaker.
• There may be times when you want certain tracks to always play even if another track has solo active. If you [Alt]/ [Option]-click on the “S” button, this will place the track in “Solo Defeat” mode. This allows the track to always play even if you solo another track. 2. This will open the Channel settings window, where you can e.g. make EQ settings. Make sure you have a section of music looping so that you can hear the EQ changes you are making. • There are four bands of EQ on each track. 3.
4. Click and move the EQ point up, down, right or left. Moving the EQ point up or down raises or lowers the gain of the EQ. The gain makes that particular EQ louder or softer. The “EQ Band Gain” at the bottom of the EQ window gives you the value of gain. 6. Holding down [Shift] while moving the EQ point up or down changes the quality of the EQ. Many people refer to this as the width of the EQ. The “EQ Band Q” setting at the bottom of the EQ window gives you the value of the quality.
Audio effects ! 5. Make changes to the settings in the Compressor section. At the end of this section, you can load the next tutorial that will contain all of the changes we have made. Load the project called “Mixing 6” found in the “Tutorial 6” folder. Now let’s start using some effects: 1. Make sure the Mixer is open. You can open the Mixer from the Devices menu or by pressing [F3]. 2. Begin playback and loop or cycle a section of music so that you can hear everything.
3. Click the “Show/Hide Automation” button at the far left of the track. • You may have noticed that when we used the Pencil tool to place in automation, the “R” button (Read Enable) for the track became highlighted. This means that the automation on this track is being read or played back. You can turn this off and the automation will not be read. In our case we drew in volume automation, and so in turning it off the volume will not fade in but stay at one level.
3. The “Export Audio Mixdown” dialog opens. 10. When you are done making all the settings, click the Export button. This dialog is described in detail in the chapter “Export Audio Mixdown” in the “Operation Manual”. Please refer to this for more complete information. 11. You will now see the exported stereo mix on a new stereo track. 4. “File Name” is for naming the file for export. Let’s name our’s “Mixing Mixdown”. 5. The “Path” is where you wish to save the exported file on your computer.
Index
A D I Adding EQ 51 Mono Track 25 Adding a fade 36 Advanced settings 20 All MIDI Inputs 18 Alt/Option key 7 ASIO 2.
MIDI Thru Active 17 Mixing About 48 Modifier keys 7 Monitoring About 16 Moving 34 Mute 50 Muting 36 N New Project 23 Create 23 Save 24 Normalize 38 O Open Project 24 Recent Projects 24 Optimizing the Hard Disk Windows 11 Option/Alt key 7 Output Adding 24 Output ports 16 P Pan Setting 50 Playback About 28 MIDI 43 Start 28 Processing Audio 38 Normalize 38 Reverse 38 Project Close 24 Open 24 R Recent Projects 24 Recording Audio 22 Cycle 29 Level Settings 25 MIDI 40, 42 Modes 29 Recording levels 14 Release
