Cubase 12: Sampler Track

By John Walden

It’s worth spending some time refining the loop region if you want a natural end result from a vocal sample.

Cubase’s Sampler Track is capable of making surprisingly playable backing vocals.

Not everyone can afford top‑flight vocal sample libraries, and if you all you need are some basic vowel‑style vocals parts then the Sampler Track, included in the Pro, Artist and Elements versions of Cubase 12, offers a way to roll your own. The steps involved are pretty straightforward too, so it’s easy to explore the idea, even if the parts you create will only be used as placeholders to be replaced with a singer later on.

Vowel Play

In order to create a playable vowel‑based vocal instrument, we obviously need a sample as a starting point and, to make the subsequent steps easy, two key things are worth considering when selecting or recording a suitable sample. First, ensure that you know (or can work out) the pitch of the original sample. Second, consider whether the performance you wish to create requires sustained sounds or shorter, staccato sounds (for example ‘ooooh’ and ‘oh’, respectively). If possible, pick or create a source sample that matches this style — while the Sampler Track does let you create a sustained sound from a shorter sample, for vocal samples in particular it’s not always possible to make the necessary looping sound completely seamless.

Drag & Drop

Execute the Project / Add Track / Sampler command to create a new Sampler Track. By default, this opens the (initially empty) Sampler control panel in the Project window’s Lower Zone. Then, simply drag and drop your sample into this panel. Hey presto! You now have an instrument, made of that single sample mapped across the full MIDI note range.

To get the best from it some tweaks are needed, and the first screenshot shows the settings I used for my working example; a sustained ‘dooo’ vocal sample. I’ll focus on the key settings I adjusted, but don’t let that stop you from experimenting with the other controls if you wish! I’ve also created some audio examples so you can hear what’s going on, and you can find these on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase-0123).

Within the waveform display, the first task is to adjust the sample’s start and end points, by dragging the small ‘S’ markers. If there’s a lot of unneeded material, the Toolbar’s ‘[ ]’ button can also be used to trim the sample. For smoother playback, it’s worth applying a short fade‑in/out by dragging the solid white squares associated with both S markers. Next, in the bottom‑most mini‑keyboard display, we need to check that the root note of the original sample (highlighted in blue) is set correctly to ensure the most natural‑sounding playback; you can simply drag and reposition as required.

To Loop Or Not To Loop?

If we wish notes to sustain longer than the original sample we need to configure a loop region. If you select an appropriate option from the Loop Mode drop‑down selection list (I selected Until Release in this case), the green loop (L) markers appear ready for adjustment.

Our hearing is very sensitive to what sounds ‘natural’ in the human voice; patience will usually reward you with a smoother end result.

Achieving a seamless loop using the two L markers, even with the Zero Crossing buttons active and using the crossfade options for the loop start/end points, can be a bit hit and miss. As a guide, it helps to try and get as close a match between the original waveform (shown in blue) and the waveform of the looped section (shown in green). Usefully, if you hover the mouse directly between the two L markers, a green horizontal bar appears, allowing you to reposition the loop section without changing the length of the loop. Of all the steps involved, this is the one most worth spending time on, as our hearing is very sensitive to what sounds ‘natural’ in the human voice; patience will usually reward you with a smoother end result.

A Bit Of A Stretch

In the Playback panel, I’ve enabled AudioWarp. This applies time‑stretching, so playback is the same length at different pitches. However, a quick tinkle up and down the keyboard from the sample’s root note will reveal two things. First, the sound is a little static, and, second, beyond a few semitones from the root note, even with AudioWarp engaged, the vocal quickly strays into unnatural‑sounding territory.

A few minor modulation tweaks within the Pitch, Filter and Amp panels can help add a touch of sonic movement when triggering your vocal sample.

To address the first issue, we can dip into the Pitch, Filter and Amp panels and, in each case, apply some parameter modulation to increase the sense of movement. Clicking on the ‘mod’ label for any of these panels superimposes a modulation envelope upon the waveform display. As an example, the screenshot shows some of the possibilities offered by Pitch modulation. I’ve applied a short upwards scoop into the note and a drop down as the note decays. In anticipation of playing sustained notes, I’ve also extended the pitch curve over about three seconds and added some minor pitch drift. You could make this as detailed as you might like but it makes for a slightly less robotic sound when notes are held. Note that you have to adjust the AMT slider (far left) to a non‑zero value before this pitch modulation curve will have any effect, but it does provide a very easy means of scaling the magnitude (and direction) of the modulation. Another strong modulation candidate is the filter frequency (using the envelope or Keyfollow controls in the Filter panel) as this can add pleasing tonal variation. If you have longer source samples and want to create a more gentle, pad‑like fade‑in, the Amp modulation envelope is where to start.

Make It A Multi

In terms of the second issue, we really need a feature that the Sampler Track doesn’t currently support: multisample instruments. While that would be great to see (pretty please Steinberg!), the very streamlined nature of the Sampler Track workflow does make it easy to construct a simple workaround. Imagine we want to be able to play our vocal sample instrument over a single octave note range but our current Sampler Track only really sounds natural over a range of four or five semitones around the root. What we need is multiple Sampler Tracks.

Constrain the active note ranges in each of your Sampler Track instances, and you can achieve a more natural sound over a wider note range.

For example, if we used three Sampler Tracks based on different ‘oooh’ samples originally recorded at C3, F3 and A3, and configured using the steps described so far, we could, in principle, achieve natural playback over a full octave. Then, for each track, we can constrain the active note range using the mini‑keyboard display at the base of each Sampler Track panel, ensuring that they don’t overlap.

For playback, if we then select all three tracks within the main Project window track list (so all three become highlights and record enabled), any MIDI notes you play will be sent to all three tracks, but each track will only trigger sample playback within its own limited note range. The end result is, essentially, a multisample instrument created from three Sampler Tracks and a much more natural playback of our vocal sample over a full octave range.

And on a practical front, it’s worth noting the Toolbar’s ‘lock’ button. Having carefully created your first Sampler Track with all the appropriate settings, if you then duplicate it, and active the lock button on the duplicate, you can drag and drop a new sample onto this track without it zapping your carefully crafted settings. You can then go in and manually change the settings for each sample as required.

And There’s More

With all three tracks selected, any MIDI note input will reach all three Sampler Tracks but, with the active note range of each track limited (as shown in the previous screen), each track will only respond to a limited range of MIDI pitches.Of course, having got into the swing of it, you don’t have to stop at three Sampler Tracks. How about a second set of three Sampler Tracks based on three different sampled ‘oooh’ performances — with each set of three panned to opposite sides of the stereo field? Select all six tracks and play for a nice, wide vocal pad.

Equally, you could create a second set of Sampler Tracks for a different vowel‑based vocal (I’ve done this in the audio examples with a ‘baaah’ sound). With careful use of the mini‑keyboard to create suitable mapping, you can trigger this second sound in a different part of your MIDI keyboard, allowing you to mix and match a performance with the two different vocal sounds using left and right hands.

And, if you route the output of all these Sampler Tracks to a suitable audio bus you can add some global reverb and delay, while Pro users could also try an instance of Cubase’s Cloner plug‑in to add some further depth to the vocal ensemble.

Finally, if you think you might like to reuse these new DIY vocal instruments in a future project, simply select all of the Sampler Tracks you have created, right‑click on any one of them, and choose Save Track Preset. Provided the original samples used don’t get moved or deleted, you can then load this Track Preset within a new project and your various Sampler Tracks will be fully restored and ready to play.   

Published January 2023

Patch of the Week 40: ARP 2600 – First Patch

Cubase 12: FX Modulator Risers And Drops

 By John Walden

FX Modulator’s Volume module makes it easy to transform almost any source sound into a riser or decaying hit/drop.

Cubase’s FX Modulator makes it easy to design ear‑catching riser and drop effects.

Sound‑design elements such as risers, hits and drops are used in all sorts of musical contexts to highlight a specific point in an arrangement, such as a musical transition. Risers (with or without a tail) constitute volume swells into an impact/transition, while drops can be thought of as a kind of impact sound but with an added pitch drop element. There are, of course, lots of excellent commercial sample packs or virtual instruments that can supply these sorts of sounds, but rolling your own can both be quicker (you don’t haver to trawl through a million samples) and deliver a better, unique result. Users of Cubase 12 (Artist or Pro) can use the new FX Modulator plug‑in to do this, so let’s see how it rises to the occasion!

Because FX Modulator provides plenty of options for controlling the volume, timbre change and pitch (amongst other things) of a sound, we don’t necessarily need to start with a source sound that contains any of these features. For the example below, and the audio files that accompany the workshop on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase0223), I started with a couple of sustained presets from Cubase’s Padshop synth. I deliberately picked sounds with a broad frequency spectrum and then shortened the attack and release times of the amplifier envelope. I also bypassed any delay or reverb effects — because I wanted it to be FX Modulator which controlled the start and end/decay portions of my riser and drop effects.

Rise & Shine

For our purposes, there are two key features of FX Modulator. First, amongst its various effects modules are Volume, Filter and Pitch, the three main tools we can use for our DIY sound design (the ‘FX’ bit). Second, each of the effects modules lets you modulate a parameter (or two) over a user‑selected time base (for example, one beat, one bar; the ‘Modulator’ bit).

Let’s start simply, using just the Volume module to create two‑bar riser effect. As shown in the first screen, the basic configuration is very straightforward, but some details are worth noting. First, I’ve defined my own volume modulation curve and saved it into one of the user banks. The curve starts from zero volume, rises to a peak after two bars, and then there’s a rapid drop in back to zero (giving a short ‘tail’ to the sound, the length of which can easily be adjusted by changing the curve). For me to have the option for this tail setting, I needed to set the Time control to four bars (4/1), even though I want my riser itself to only last two bars.

MIDI triggering from an additional MIDI track provides precise control over the timing of your modulation curve.

Second, in the bottom‑most Trigger panel I’ve enabled MIDI triggering and selected the 1 Cycle mode. This means that the volume modulation envelope will only start running when FX Modulator receives a MIDI trigger note (any note; the pitch doesn’t matter). Once triggered, it will complete a single pass through its timeline (four bars long in this case) before stopping. This style of triggering requires an extra step, which is described below, but it’s more precise than using the internal side‑chain option, which relies on the input signal passing a defined threshold level before triggering occurs.

Given that this is a two‑bar riser, we need to trigger both Padshop and FX Modulator exactly two bars ahead of when that peak is required..

That extra step? We need a second MIDI track containing our MIDI ‘trigger’ notes, and with its MIDI Output Routing set to the MIDI in of our FX Modulator plug‑in — this routing can be set up in the MIDI track’s Inspector panel. Given that this is a two‑bar riser, we need to trigger both Padshop and FX Modulator (from the MIDI trigger track) exactly two bars ahead of when that peak is required. For example, if I wanted the peak to hit at the end of bar 4, I’d place a single note on my Padshop track at the exact start of bar 3 and extended the note beyond the start of bar 5 (to allow for that aforementioned short tail to be heard). Having created the Padshop MIDI clip, I can copy it to the MIDI trigger track; it will then trigger the Volume module’s modulation envelope at exactly the same time as Padshop starts to play. The result? The Padshop sound gradually rises in level over two bars, hits its peak at the end of bar 4, and then quickly tails off at the start of bar 5. And, by using different MIDI pitches with Padshop, you can produce slightly different riser sounds each time you want to use it.

You can create a similar riser‑style effect using the Filter module. The configuration can be identical to that for the Volume module, but with the gradually rising modulation curve controlling the cutoff frequency of (for example) a low‑pass 12dB/octave filter. The sound will still start at a low volume because the initial low cutoff setting does not let much of the sound get past the filter. However, over the two‑bar build, the filter gradually opens, making the sound grow both louder and brighter. Adjust the frequency value at the peak of the modulation curve to change the intensity of the effect; for example, make the filter peak at 15 rather than 20 kHz.

Hit The Drop

You can create all sorts of drop‑style effects using a combination of the Pitch and Volume modules.

I know what you’re thinking... Wouldn’t it be nice to build a riser that combines both the Volume and Filter modules? You can do that but, as I’ll demonstrate by building a drop sound (which does require two modules to be combined; Pitch and Volume), an extra step is involved if you wish to trigger two modulation curves and keep them in sync. This is due to a limitation within the plug‑in’s MIDI trigger system; within any instance of FX Modulator, the MIDI trigger option can only be active for one module at a time.

While it would be great to see Steinberg address this at some stage, we needn’t wait for that since there’s an uncomplicated workaround. For our drop effect, insert two instances of FX Modulator on the Padshop track. The first instance uses the Pitch module, while the second uses the Volume module. Imagine we want our pitch drop to last one bar. We set the Time for both instances to 2/1 (two bars; again, longer than the drop itself, so as to avoid the module curves cycling back to their starting values right at the end of the one‑bar effect, which could result in audible oddities!). We can then create pitch and volume modulation curves to taste over the first bar, with the volume modulation reaching zero at the end of bar 1, and remaining at zero until the end of bar 2.

Finally, instead of just one MIDI trigger track (using the same approach as for our riser), you create two, each pointing at a different FX Modulator instance. It might look a little clunky (and if that bothers you there’s a slightly more elegant/complex solution using MIDI Sends from a single MIDI ‘trigger’ track) but it’s simple and it’s effective.

Time For Change

As mentioned above, playing different notes with our Padshop source can provide a welcome sense of variation when we want to use the DIY riser or drop at multiple points in a single project. But another useful variation is simply to change the length of the effect. For example, instead of the one‑bar drop described above, you could go for a shorter half‑bar version. While you could obviously replicate the above setups with additional Padshop and MIDI trigger tracks, a more efficient option is simply to automate changes to the Time setting of your FX Modulator instances.

By automating the Time parameter within FX Modulator, you can change the length of your DIY riser or drop effect at different points within your project.

The most straightforward way to do this is to select the Padshop track containing your FX Modulator instances, open an instance of FX Modulator (you can do each in turn) and enable the Write Automation button. Start playback, then use your mouse to change the Time value, which will automatically create an automation lane for that parameter. You can then edit the automation curve manually to place the desired changes in the Time parameter at the appropriate points. In this example, if we wanted to create a half‑bar riser/drop, we’d set the Time parameter to one bar (four beats). The only other thing we need to do is change the length of the MIDI notes used to get Padshop to play and to trigger the modulation curves to 1.5 bars (six beats; as with the earlier example, slightly longer than the sound effect we are trying to create). Provided you enable the Read Automation button for these automation lanes, you can now trigger as many different lengths of your riser or drop as your project requires.

Published February 2023

RK-100S 2 - Introduction Movie

Cubase: Verve Felt Piano

By John Walden

Verve has something of a niche sound set but offers easy sound editing (including hands‑on control via the Focus Quick Controls) and some inspiring chord presets.

Looking for musical inspiration? You might just find it in Cubase 12’s Verve felt piano.

For many Cubase Artist and Pro users, a highlight amongst the new toys in Cubase 12 was Verve, a sample‑based virtual instrument library for HALion Sonic SE (and, of course, the separately available full versions of HALion Sonic or HALion). Verve is built from a deeply sampled (nearly 9GB of samples) soft‑sounding felt piano, alongside a range of textural sounds, and it allows the user to blend these two elements. The sound set provides some inspiring options for ballad or melancholic song styles, but it can work equally well in music‑to‑picture contexts. Interestingly, Steinberg have also made use of HALion Sonic’s integrated chord pad feature, and each of Verve’s 70 presets is populated with a set of chords. So if you’re looking for some instant musical inspiration, Verve’s sounds and the HS chord sets could be a great resource.

You can quickly go from singer‑songwriter ballad territory into something more suitable for some gentle film‑score suspense.

Sound Start

The piano sounds great on its own, with a beautifully soft tonality. You also get options of both close and distant mics, adjusting the overall tone, compression, elements of mechanical noise (for added realism) and adding reverb and delay. This is joined by a collection of nearly 70 texture types, spanning various sustained string, synth, metal and electronic sound types, the idea being to make it easy to blend a pad‑like element in alongside the piano. And that choice can instantly transform the musical mood! For example (as demonstrated in the accompanying audio examples on the SOS website: https://sosm.ag/cubase-0323), take the same simple chord‑based performance and swap out an analogue string texture for one of the mysterious‑sounding electronic textures (eg. Transmission), and you can quickly go from singer‑songwriter ballad territory into something more suitable for some gentle film‑score suspense.

The included texture options span the organic to the other‑worldly.

It’s worth exploiting the Focus Quick Controls (see the SOS November 2022 column for a discussion on these as part of the new MIDI Remote feature set) for hands‑on control of Verve’s main sound‑shaping options. This includes the Balance control, to adjust the blend between the piano and texture elements (on FQC 1). Usefully, Verve’s FQCs are also preconfigured with the Texture’s Variation (in general, higher values seem to result in greater complexity in the sound), Contour (a filter effect), Attack and Release assigned to FQC 3, 4, 5 and 6 respectively. A combination of these lets you coax plenty of additional movement from the texture component of your sound.

The FQC system aside, adjusting Verve’s controls to create your own piano/texture blends is fast, effective and completely undaunting, with a minimalist control set spread across the three – Piano, Texture and Effects — pages of the UI. And, yes, while it’s certainly a somewhat niche sound set, within that ‘melancholic meets mysterious’ niche, it does sound fabulous.

Keys To Your New Pad

The control sets for each of Verve’s three main pages (stacked into a single screenshot here for convenience) make it easy to customise your sound.Verve provides for speedy customisation of your sound, then. But it also offers an equally speedy (and easily overlooked) route to musical creation, courtesy of those presets including a set of chords for HALion Sonic’s integrated chord pad system. As each chord, regardless of complexity, can be triggered from a single MIDI key, it becomes very easy to experiment with some harmonically tasty sequences. You can, if you like, mouse click on the pads to audition the chords, but in order to trigger them properly you’ll need to assign each pad to a MIDI key. To do this, simply right‑click on each pad in turn and, on the pop‑up menu choose the Assign Trigger Note option and select the desired MIDI note. Notes assigned to a chord pad in this fashion turn blue on the mini‑keyboard display at the bottom of the GUI. Incidentally, once you’ve assigned all eight pads, it’s worth popping that menu open again and using the Save Trigger Notes As Default option to save your settings for easy recall.

Once you’ve made assignments in HSSE you can (just as with the main Cubase Chord Pad system) then play and record a MIDI sequence of these trigger notes, building a full chord sequence from the preset chord voicings — even if your piano keyboard skills are somewhat limited!

Good Pad, Bad Pad

So, inspired by Verve, and driven by the HSSE chord pad presets, your next song or cue idea is ready to be created. There are plenty of musical opportunities to explore, but before we do I want to run through just a few additional details — some good, some not so good, but all worth noting if you want to build this Verve/HSSE combination into your musical workflow. On the positive side, all of the Verve HSSE Chord Pad presets are available independently of the main Verve preset system. Simply clicking on the small downward arrowhead icon to the left of the actual chord pads will open a chord pad preset browser. So it’s easy to experiment with the different chord set combinations without having to change the overall Verve preset.

Usefully, the chord set presets provided in Verve can be loaded independently of the sound presets.Rather oddly, while HSSE’s chord pads and Cubase’s own Chord Pad system share plenty of functional similarities, they don’t seem able to share chord set presets! That’s a missed opportunity, really, as it would be great to be able to exchange the underlying sets of chords between the two systems, and I hope Steinberg will address this at some point because it would make for a much easier workflow when you want to trigger the same chord sets on different virtual instruments. This wouldn’t be an issue if HSSE offered MIDI out, of course, as you could pass the full chord parts (and not just the trigger notes) to a suitable destination (MIDI or Instrument) track outside of HSSE. But as far as I’m aware, that’s currently not possible either (please feel free to enlighten me if I have missed something here!).

Of course, workarounds do exist. Recreating, within the main Cubase Chord Pad system, a set of chords contained in a Verve chord pad preset is easy enough (check the May 2015 column for a quick Chord Pad refresher). And if you want to match the exact voicing of each chord, the mini‑keyboard display in HSSE can serve as a guide, allowing you to use the manual chord assignment process on the main Chord Pad system to replicate the exact combination of notes.

Alternatively, you could give Cubase 12’s Audio To MIDI Chords function (covered in SOS July 2022) a spin; while this requires a few steps it can be achieved fairly swiftly. First, create a simple MIDI clip on your Verve track, containing trigger notes for each of the eight chords, with a short silence between each chord. Second, toggle off the Texture and Effects layers so that, on playback, you can only hear the Piano layer. Third, select the MIDI clip and then execute the Edit/Render In Place command. This will generate an audio clip from the same piano chord performance. Fourth, drag and drop this audio clip onto the Chord Track. This triggers the Audio To MIDI detection process and, hopefully, should populate the Chord Track with the same chords (or something very similar in terms of harmonic content) as in the original Verve chord pad preset.

Some tweaking of Audio To MIDI’s ‘best guess’ chords might be required, but if my own experience (based upon a solo piano audio source) is anything to go on, Audio To MIDI will generally do a pretty good job. Finally, once your Chord Track entries are suitable matches for your Verve chords, the Functions menu of the Chord Pad’s tab (in the Project window’s Lower Zone) includes the option to Assign Pads From Chord Track; any chord events on the Chord Track will then be assigned to an empty chord pad (duplicate chords are ignored) and can then be used with any virtual instrument.

Added Verve

So, where can this take you? Well, hopefully, the audio examples that accompany this workshop hint at the sorts of musical applications Verve might suit. To my mind, it’s so good that I hope Steinberg continue to develop the feature set! With my greedy hat on (and aside from addressing the chord pad technicalities mentioned above), I can think of a couple of additional features that I’d love to see. First, full amplifier ADSR options for both the Piano and Texture layers could be really useful. Second, with my music‑for‑video hat on and inspired by having used UAD’s Ravel Grand Piano, it would be very cool to see a ‘reverse the piano samples’ feature, which could really increase the ‘spooky and creepy’ potential for media composers.

But even as it stands, Verve is a wonderful addition to the Cubase Pro/Artist virtual instrument collection. It combines great sounds, ease of use, and a very creative collection of chord sets to get the compositional muse moving. So why not see if you can add some Verve to your own music making? 

Published March 2023

Patch of the Week 41: ARP 2600 – Destructive Feedback Loop

Cubase: How To Create An Envelope Follower

 By John Walden

Cubase doesn’t include an envelope follower — but with a little creative routing you can achieve much the same thing.

If you like to get creative with your effects, an ‘envelope follower’ opens up some interesting possibilities. This allows you to use the volume of an incoming audio signal to modulate one or more parameters of an effect. One fairly straightforward (but potentially very useful) application might be to add more overdrive/distortion to louder sections of a bass guitar part than to quieter ones, an effect which can add that extra bit of excitement to a bass without overcooking the levels. The same approach could be used to add an aggressive edge to a lead vocal at certain times.

I’d love to see Steinberg add just such an envelope follower function to the FX Modulator plug‑in. But while we don’t have that yet, a little creative audio routing can help you achieve a similar result — and that’s what I’ll be exploring in this month’s workshop. On the SOS website (sosm.ag/cubase-0423) you can find a few audio examples of the effects described below.

Route Planner

Screen 1: Although the approach described here uses four channels in the MixConsole, the routing involved really isn’t complicated.Let’s start with the electric bass ‘more overdrive when the bass is louder’ example. There are actually a number of ways this might be implemented, including simply configuring the required overdrive/distortion effect as an FX Channel, routing a send from your bass source track, and then manually automating the blend between the clean and overdriven signals to add more overdrive at the required spots along the timeline. But if a more automatic solution in the style of an envelope follower is wanted, the audio routing setup you can see in the first screenshot provides another option (Screen 1).

I’ve used four channels to do this, but hopefully the routing involved is still pretty easy to follow. On the left, the Bass Org audio track contains the original clean bass guitar recording. Next to this is an FX Channel named Bass Overdrive FX, with an instance of DaTube inserted. We then have two Group Channels: Bass Bus Clean and Bass Bus Blend. The output of Bass Org is routed to Bass Bus Clean, but also has a Send routed to Bass Overdrive FX. The outputs of both Bass Bus Clean and Bass Overdrive FX are then routed to Bass Bus Blend, where the clean and overdriven parts of the sound are recombined before being passed on to the project’s stereo master bus.

Expand On That

So how does this routing configuration then let us perform our overdrive trick? Well, if we insert a dynamics plug‑in prior to DaTube on the Bass Overdrive FX channel, we can modify the level of the input signal that reaches DaTube based on the level/dynamics of that input signal. For example, if we set up a standard Compressor instance here to bring down the louder sections (and don’t apply makeup gain!), less of the bass signal will reach DaTube at those times, so there’ll be less overdrive in our final blend. This would be the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve, though! So instead we’ll use the Expander plug‑in (shown in the screenshot).

Placing Expander before our parallel overdrive allows us to exaggerate the dynamics within the bass performance.

With a downward expander such as this, when the signal is below the threshold it’s turned down by an amount determined by the ratio, while signals above the threshold are left untouched. The result is that the dynamic range of the signal is increased, or ‘expanded’ — hence the name of this processor. Placing Expander before our parallel overdrive, then, allows us to exaggerate the dynamics within the bass performance, so that when the bass is played more softly less of the signal reaches DaTube. This results is less distortion during the quieter parts and, relatively, more distortion in the louder passages.

It’s worth noting that this is not exactly what you might achieve with a volume‑based envelope shaper, because in that case, the resulting envelope could be used to modulate a specific parameter (for example, the Drive control) of the target plug‑in, rather than just modulating the send level. But in the absence of an actual envelope shaper tool, it’s a very useful alternative — and, in this case at least, can produce a very similar sort of result. Screen 2 shows the Expander settings I used for this example, but you can experiment with different threshold and ratio settings to finesse the dynamics of the overdriven signal.

Screen 2: Expander determines how much signal reaches DaTube, while adding Gate and StudioEQ into the side‑chain gives you further ways to shape the effect.

More Options

If you would like to ensure that no overdrive at all is applied to the lowest‑level parts of your bass guitar signal, you can simply place a Gate plug‑in before Expander. In the screenshot example, I’ve set fast attack, hold and release settings, but you should feel free to experiment. The most important parameter is Gate’s threshold. When the signal exceeds the threshold level, signal passes to Expander to give us the same effect as described above. But when the signal falls below the threshold, no signal will be passed to the Expander (or onwards to DaTube), so there will be no overdrive effect.

You can add further flexibility by placing an EQ plug‑in after your overdrive/distortion effect. In this case, I’ve used an instance of Cubase’s stock StudioEQ. Three bands are active, with low‑end and high‑end cuts applied and a peaking filter (band 2), centred around 2000Hz, used to add gain. This means that the output from this track (the overdriven version of our bass) is focused on the mid/upper‑mid frequencies. The idea here is to add a little high‑end definition to the overall bass sound, but leave the bass’ low end sounding clean, clear and free from distortion. This is, of course, a matter of taste and musical context, and you could try different settings, but it can certainly be a useful option to further tailor/control the final effect.

Level Headed

In all the examples I’ve outlined so far, both the clean (Bass Org) and overdriven (Bass Overdrive FX) components are combined at the Bass Bus Blend channel to create our ‘composite’ bass sound. Electric bass is usually compressed (in most genres, anyway), and a final dash of compression can be added here to even things out a little. In Screen 3, you can see an instance of Compressor inserted on this Bass Bus Blend channel, and this might be all that’s required. But do keep in mind that more of the overdrive element is added as the clean bass signal itself gets louder. When active, our ‘dynamic’ overdrive might, therefore, deliver a noticeable jump in overall level for our Bass Bus Blend compressor to deal with.

Screen 3: With the routing described in the main text, you can also choose to ‘duck’ a clean bass signal when the overdriven component is at its loudest.

Our Bass Bus Clean track, in which the clean bass signal is passed through on its way to the Bass Bus Blend channel, offers a way to tame those potential jumps in overall level. In this case, I’ve achieved that by placing a compressor on the Bass Bus Clean channel. It is responding to an external side‑chain signal, taken from the Bass Overdrive FX channel. This way, when the overdriven signal increases in level, this compressor reduces the level of the clean signal but only after the clean signal has itself triggered the overdrive. The result is a more even level when the clean‑plus‑overdriven blend arrives at the Bass Bus Blend channel — the compression settings allow you to finesse this to achieve the desired result.

One extra detail is worth consideration. Having used StudioEQ to frequency‑limit the overdrive (in this case, within the 500‑5000 Hz range), the additional level this overdrive component adds is only within the frequency range. However, the side‑chain‑driven compressor on the Bass Bus Clean channel applies compression across the full frequency range of the clean bass signal. As a consequence, louder sections of overdrive centred at 2000Hz may well trigger gain reductions above and below this, and this risks robbing the composite sound of its low‑end solidity. You can replace the Compressor instance on the Bass bus Clean channel with Cubase Pro’s Frequency 2 (users of other versions can use another dynamic EQ plug‑in) and trigger a dynamic band to ‘compress’ just the required frequencies in the clean signal, to match those frequencies that are added in the overdriven channel. Hey presto! Your low end will remain intact.

And There’s More...

Of course, you don’t have to restrict this kind of experimentation to just bass. For example, the same trick can also be quite effective on a lead vocal, adding some grit and a good dollop of attitude to the louder sections of a performance; I included an example of this in the online audio clips. Equally, the same approach can be used with different effects types. For example, you could have more flanger on your guitar as it gets louder. If you swap out the Expander for an instance of Compressor, you can also reverse the process and get more of an effect in the quieter parts of a performance (more reverb on the quieter sections of a piano part, perhaps?). And, finally, don’t be scared to try these effects on the input signal as you play — you can have great fun adjusting your playing dynamics to hit the effect ‘sweet spot’. While I’d love Steinberg to add an envelope follower into the Cubase feature list, there’s already plenty of fun to be had with this kind of creative audio routing. Enjoy!  

Published April 2023