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Tutorial 4: Mixing and effects
About 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.
1. We created a fade-in on the “Elec Guitar” track earlier.
Let’s remove the fade on this audio event and create some
automation instead. Zoom in so that you can see the first
audio event more clearly.
2. Select the event and choose “Remove Fades” from
the Audio menu.
3. Click the “Show/Hide Automation” button at the far
left of the track.
You may need to hover your mouse over the far left bottom area until you
see the button appear as this is only shown when you need it.
4. Select the Pencil tool.
5. In the subtrack that appears below the audio event use
the Pencil tool to draw in automation so that it resembles a
fade in.
6. You can also use the “Line” tool to draw in automation
in a straight line. Perfect for fade in automation.
7. Listen to the fade in automation we created.
• 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 au-
tomation 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.
There are so many examples to show when it comes to au-
tomation. For example we could have automated our effects
or our send levels. We could have even automated objects
while Cubase AI was playing back. The automation can be
placed into write mode and moving almost any thing will
create automation that we can edit for fine tuning later!
Make sure you read the chapter “Automation” in the Opera-
tion Manual to fully realize how exciting automation can be.
!!!
Load the project called “Mixing 7” found in the “Tuto-
rial 4” folder.