Getting Started
Tutorials by Steve Kostrey Revision and Quality Control: Cristina Bachmann, Heiko Bischoff, Marion Bröer, Sabine Pfeifer, Heike Schilling 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 45 Tutorial 4: Mixing and effects 6 6 7 7 7 Welcome About the manuals and the help About the program versions Key command conventions How you can reach us 8 System requirements and installation 9 9 11 11 12 12 About this chapter Minimum requirements Hardware installation Installing Cubase AI Defragmenting the hard disk (Windows only) License activation and registration 46 46 46 47 48 49 51 52 Introduction Setting levels Setting panorama Mute and solo Adding EQ Audio effects About a
1 Introduction
Welcome • Under Mac OS X the pdf documents are located in the folder “/Library/Documentation/Steinberg/Cubase AI 5”. Congratulations and thank you for your purchase of Steinberg Cubase AI. 2009 marks the 25th anniversary of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH and our key message “Creativity First” has never had more meaning than today. Over many years and many product generations Cubase has grown from a classic MIDI sequencer to possibly the most powerful music production software money can buy.
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. In other words: Ö If nothing else is said, all descriptions and procedures in the documentation are valid for both Windows and Mac OS X. The screenshots are taken from the Windows version.
2 System requirements and installation
About this chapter General notes on how to set up your system ! This chapter describes the requirements and installation procedures for the Windows version and the Mac version of Cubase AI. On the Steinberg web site, under “Support–DAW Components”, you can find detailed information on what to consider when setting up a computer system dedicated to audio work. • RAM – There is a direct relation between the amount of available RAM and the number of audio channels that you can have running.
Audio hardware Audio card-specific ASIO drivers are provided by the card manufacturers. Make sure to check the manufacturer’s web site for the latest driver versions. Cubase AI will run with audio hardware that meets the following specifications: ! • • • • Stereo. 16 bit. Support of at least the 44.1kHz sampling rate. Windows – The audio hardware must be supplied with a special ASIO driver, or a DirectX compatible driver, see below.
Hardware installation Installing a MIDI interface/synthesizer card Installing the audio hardware and its driver Installation instructions for a MIDI interface should be included with the product. However, here’s an outline of the necessary steps: 1. Install the audio card and related equipment in the computer, as described in the card’s documentation. 1. Install the interface (or MIDI synthesizer card) inside your computer or connect it to a “port” (connector) on the computer. 2.
About the tutorials 4. Follow the instructions on the web site to create a user account. The program DVD also contains several tutorial project files and videos. These are not installed during the installation, but can be added manually from the DVD. You will receive an e-mail asking you to confirm the creation of your account in order to activate it. Just click on the confirmation link in the e-mail. After the confirmation, you will be able to log in to the Steinberg customer area.
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. Make sure that all equipment is turned off before making any connections! 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.
Selecting a driver and making audio settings in Cubase AI • Under Windows, you open the control panel by clicking the Control Panel button. The control panel that appears when you click this button is provided by the audio hardware manufacturer – not Cubase AI (unless you use DirectX, see below). Hence it will be different for each audio card brand and model.
Setting up the input and output ports If you are using audio hardware with a DirectX driver (Windows only) ! Once you have selected the driver and made the settings as described above, you need to specify which inputs and outputs should be used and name these: If your audio hardware does not have a specific ASIO driver and your Windows version does not support the Generic Low Latency ASIO driver, a DirectX driver is the next best option. 1.
Setting up MIDI About monitoring In Cubase AI, monitoring means listening to the input signal while preparing to record or while recording. There are three ways to monitor: ! Make sure that all equipment is turned off before making any connections! This section describes how to connect and set up MIDI equipment. If you have no MIDI equipment, you can skip this section.
Setting MIDI Thru and Local On/Off Setting up MIDI ports in Cubase AI On the MIDI page in the Preferences dialog (located on the File menu under Windows and on the Cubase AI menu under Mac OS X), you will find a setting called “MIDI Thru Active”. This is related to a setting in your instrument called “Local On/Off” or “Local Control On/Off”.
Setting up video ! Two aspects of performance There are two distinct aspects of performance with respect to Cubase AI. Always make all connections with all equipment turned off! Tracks and effects Cubase AI plays back video files in a number of formats, including AVI, QuickTime or MPEG. Under Windows, video can be played back using one of the following playback engines: Video for Windows, DirectShow or QuickTime. This ensures compatibility with as wide a range of video files as possible.
Note also that Cubase AI features full support for multiprocessor systems. So, if you own a computer system with more than one processor, Cubase AI can take advantage of the total capacity and evenly distribute the processing load to all available processors. See “The advanced options” on page 21. 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.
4 Tutorial 1: Recording audio
Creating a new project 2. In the “Project folder” field, enter a name that will be used for the project folder. Let’s use “My first project”. In this section we are going to explain how to create a new project, save a project and open a saved project. We recommend to enter a name here. Otherwise your project will be saved in a folder named “Untitled”.
To close a project Adding outputs 1. Make sure the Project window is selected. 1. Open the Devices menu and select “VST Connections”. The Project window is the main window that you work in. See the chapter “The Project window” in the Operation Manual. The default key command for this is [F4]. • You’ll see several tabs at the top of the window. We’re only going to cover Input and Output right now. See the chapter “VST Connections” in the Operation Manual for more details. 2.
Level settings and recording Adding Inputs Now let’s open the “Input” tab and set up the inputs we are going to use for recording into Cubase AI. For this section, we are going to record a bass guitar in mono from the input “Mono In”. Make sure you have your audio card set up and you have read through the section “Setting up the VST connections” on page 24. 1. Do the same as mentioned above for the outputs. Right-click and select “Remove Bus”. 2. Click the “Add Bus” button.
4. Make sure that “Mono In” is selected for the audio track’s input and that “Stereo Out” is selected for the audio tracks output. 3. We now need to set the speed or the tempo of our project. This will directly affect how fast the click plays. You can set the tempo just below the click. You may have different inputs and outputs depending on your audio hardware. See the chapter “VST Connections” in the Operation Manual for more detailed information.
Recording bass guitar 3. In the Inspector, open the “Channel” tab. This will display the channel fader for the selected track. 1. Position the cursor at the beginning of the project. This will make sure we start recording on bar 1. 2. Click the Record button to record the bass guitar. Since the “Precount/Click” button is activated, we’ll hear two bars of click before recording begins. 3. Click “Stop” when you are finished. 4.
• Double-click in the lower half of the ruler. 3. Click the Play button on the Transport panel and Cubase AI will play looping over and over until you click “Stop”. ! Don’t forget – you can set the locators to encompass the selected event, turn on “Cycle” and begin playback all by the key command [Shift]-[G]. Recording modes with cycle off There are three different modes for recording when the cycle is turned off. This is called linear recording.
Cycle recording You can record audio while “cycle” is on. ! Load the project called “Cycle Recording” found in the “Tutorial 1” folder. So far we’ve shown you how to add tracks, record and playback. Now we are going to add an electric guitar to our bass guitar using cycle recording. Recording with cycle on allows us to make multiple passes of our recording and then pick the best take. 5. Make sure “Cycle” is activated, set the left locator to 2 and the right locator to 18.
Selecting different takes 1. Holding [Alt]/[Option], right-click on the new guitar audio event that we just recorded and choose a take from the “To Front” submenu. If you right-click without holding a modifier key, you will see the toolbox instead of the context menu. This behavior is determined by the “Popup Toolbox on Right Click” option in the Preferences dialog (Editing–Tools page). Cubase AI has recorded all of the passes we made when we were recording in loop mode (Cycle Recording).
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. ! The name has changed from “Audio 01_01” to “Bass”. Load the project called “Event Operations” found in the “Tutorial 2” folder. Renaming 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 3. If you are having trouble seeing anything beyond the “Tool Buttons”, right-click in the toolbar (the top bar that the “Tool Buttons” are on). Splitting is used to cut events. You can split or cut an event wherever you want or split them evenly to bars and beats. This allows you to change what you see at the top of the Project window. Customization is in the heart of Cubase AI. Splitting with “Snap” off Right-click in the toolbar.
Moving events 7. You can now split the “Elec Guitar_01” event precisely to the bar. Cut on bars 6, 10 and 14. Let’s now move all the events in the Project window from bar 2 to bar 1. 1. Choose the Object Selection tool. 2. Click and hold the mouse on an empty area of the Project window. Drag to create a selection of all the events. When you release the mouse button, all the events will be selected. Splitting with [Alt]/[Option] 1. Choose the Split tool. 2.
Copying events Copying can be used to copy an event to another area in the Project window. If you want to make several copies in one go, see “Repeating” on page 35. Using Copy and Paste 1. To copy an audio event, click on the desired event and choose “Copy” from the Edit menu. Repeating In our case let’s choose the “Elec Guitar_01” event. Repeats are great for repeating something over and over directly after the event you want to repeat. 2.
Muting 3. Click on one of the blue triangles and move it so that a fade appears. Muting an event stops you from hearing just that event. You may want to mute events on a track so that the track continues to play except for the events you mute. Note that this is different from muting a track. 1. Choose the Mute tool. 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. 2.
Normalize 4. Click the Process button and your audio is now normalized. Normalize raises the volume of the audio to the desired amount. Usually you adjust the slider to “0” dB or “-1” dB so that you get the maximum volume without clipping your audio. A common use for Normalizing is to raise the level of audio that was recorded at too low an input level. For a description of the “More” and “Preview” buttons, see the chapter “Audio Processing and Functions” in the Operation Manual.
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 3. Next, on the Input Routing pop-up menu, choose the MIDI input you wish to use. We are now going to load sounds into our virtual instrument “HALionOne”. Most people leave this on “All MIDI Inputs” since you don’t have to worry about which input is which. “All MIDI Inputs” takes the MIDI signal from all your inputs and routes it to this track. There are some cases where you wouldn’t want this but for 99 % of the time you’ll be safe with this option selected.
11. Turn off the Monitor and Record Enable buttons on the track so that we don’t hear the input or record on the track any more. • Press [Space] on your computer keyboard. This toggles between stop and start. • Press the “0” key of the numerical computer keypad. Cycle playback Cubase AI has the ability to loop or cycle a section of your project. To set the cycle location you need to use the left and right locator. Congratulations! You have just created your first MIDI recording in Cubase AI.
Cycle recording 7. Next we have to set the value of our quantize. This is so Cubase AI knows what to lock our MIDI notes to. Choose “1/8” notes from the “Quantize Type” pop-up menu. You can record MIDI while the Cycle is activated. ! Load the project called “Cycle Recording MIDI” found in the “Tutorial 3” folder. Recording MIDI drums 1. Let’s add another “Instrument” track and choose “HALionOne” as our instrument. 8. Activate the Record Enable and Monitor buttons on the “Drums” track.
The Key Editor 5. Now erase all the other hi-hat notes from bar 2 through 8 using any method you like. In the Key Editor we can make changes to our MIDI data. ! Load the project called “Key Editor” found in the “Tutorial 3” folder. Erasing MIDI notes 1. Double-click on the “Drums” to open the Key Editor. Here we can see our drum notes lined up with a keyboard on the left. At the bottom we have the velocity of each of the MIDI notes and at the top we can see the time ruler.
2. Select the Pencil tool of the Key Editor and draw in the crash cymbal note at bar 25 by clicking and dragging for a full bar. 4. You can also select “Setup…” to view more controllers. Click and drag with the Pencil tool. Pick one from the list or choose “Setup…” for more controllers. 5. Click and drag in the Controller lane to draw in new velocities for the notes. You can even draw in curves and ramps using the Line tool in its various modes.
7 Tutorial 4: Mixing and effects
Introduction 5. You can also change the fader setting by double-clicking in the “Channel Level” area and entering the level manually. In this section we’ll draw from the last tutorials and finally get a mix ready with proper levels, EQs and effects. Automation will be added and then we’ll export the audio. ! 6. Be careful when it comes to how loud you raise the faders. Make sure you keep levels at a good volume so that they are as loud as possible without clipping.
2. Let’s pan our two guitars slightly left and slightly right. This will spread them out a bit. • You can have several tracks muted or soloed at a time. • When you solo a track, the other tracks become muted. • If you want to clear or deactivate all the mutes or solos, click on the “Deactivate all Mute” or “Deactivate all Solo” buttons in the common panel to the left of the Mixer.
1. Solo the Drums track and click the “Edit Instrument Channel Settings” button. 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. If you hold down [Ctrl]/[Command], you can restrict the movement of the EQ to just up and down. Move the EQ up or down to raise or lower the gain. 2.
Insert effects 6. Holding down [Shift] while moving the EQ point up or down changes the quality (Q) 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. 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. The tutorial project has its locators and cycle already set for this.
FX channels 6. Click the “Activate Send 1” button to turn on the send. This will allow you to send the guitar to the “PingPongDelay”. Now let’s show you how to create and use FX channels. 1. Close the Mixer and choose “FX Channel” from the Add Track submenu of the Project menu. 7. Move the slider to the right to raise the level of the send to the “PingPongDelay” effect. You will begin to hear the guitar being delayed. Clicking the “S” (solo) button on the track will allow you to hear this more clearly.
About automation 6. You can also use the “Line” tool to draw in automation in a straight line. Perfect for fade in automation. Automation allows us to make objects such as faders and knobs move by themselves. This is very handy in that we can tell Cubase AI to make changes over a period of time and those changes will be remembered and will occur again without our attention. ! Load the project called “Mixing 7” found in the “Tutorial 4” folder. 7. Listen to the fade in automation we created. 1.
Exporting one of the best places to keep it so it won’t accidentally become erased or lost. Make sure “Use Project Audio Folder” is activated for this export. Now that we have our project mixed we will want to export it so that we can import it into another program such as a CD burning application. ! 6. Normally you’ll want to save your exported file as a “Wave File” under “File Format”. This of course chiefly depends on what file format the other application such as a CD burning program requires.
Index
A E H Adding EQ 48 Fades 36 Mono Track 25 Advanced settings 21 All MIDI Inputs 19 ASIO 2.
MIDI interface Connecting 18 Installing 11 MIDI notes Creating 44 Drawing 44 MIDI ports Setting up 19 MIDI Thru Active 19 Mixing About 45 Modifier keys 7 Monitoring About 18 Moving 34 Mute (Button) 47 Muting 36 N New Project Create 23 Save 23 Normalize 37 O Open Project 24 Recent Projects 24 Open Config App 16 Optimizing the Hard Disk Windows 12 Output Adding 24 Output ports 17 P Pan Setting 46 Playback About 27 Cycle 28 MIDI 41 Play 27 Plug and Play ASIO devices 15 Popup Toolbox on Right Click 30 Proce
