Cubase's MIDI Plug-ins Revisited

By John Walden

With this combination of Cubase’s stock MIDI plug‑ins, you can easily add variety and randomisation to your melodies.

They’ve been with us for years — but you really shouldn’t overlook what Cubase’s MIDI plug‑ins have to offer!

Both the Pro and Artist versions of Cubase ship with a collection of 18 MIDI plug‑ins, spanning creative, corrective and utility functions. They can be placed onto any MIDI or instrument track within the four slots provided by the Inspector’s MIDI insert panel for the respective track. There are lots of utility‑style functions available, but for this workshop I’m going to focus on a more creative task: adding variation to a melodic MIDI part, such as a lead or bass line. A number of individual plug‑ins can serve a useful purpose here, but you can also combine them in some interesting ways. Particularly good candidates are the Step Designer, MIDI Modifiers and Density plug‑ins. I’ll explain how you can use these plug‑ins below, and you can find some audio examples on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase-0623).

Start Me Up

Your melodic starting point might come from a part you’ve already recorded into a MIDI clip, but if you’re stuck then Step Designer can be a great source of inspiration, especially if the piano/keyboard isn’t your first instrument. In essence, Step Designer is a sort of streamlined MIDI grid editor, but it’s designed specifically to make it easy to create short musical patterns. Once you’ve created a pattern, that pattern will loop on playback in sync with your project.

As well as creating note patterns, Step Designer lets you add controller data on a per‑step basis.

Step Designer’s preset patterns provide a useful introduction to what’s possible, but the key features include user control over the step size and count (up to 32 steps), the option to add swing to your pattern, the ability to add controller information for each step for velocity, gate (note length within a step), bank select and a single MIDI CC of your choice (CC10 for pan can be good fun). There are also useful tools for reversing patterns and moving them forwards/backwards by a step.

Each instance of Step Designer can hold up to 200 patterns, and you can easily copy/paste patterns.

Wonderfully, each instance of Step Designer can hold up to 200 patterns, and you can easily copy/paste patterns. So if you create a good pattern as a starting point, you can duplicate it and then edit the duplicate to create a variation. Also, you can automate switching between the first 92 patterns by recording MIDI notes onto the Step Designer MIDI track. These notes themselves are not played by your sound source (only Step Designer’s patterns will trigger sounds); they just serve to switch between Step Designer’s patterns.

Creating a pattern is a simple matter of adding notes with your mouse, by clicking or dragging in the pattern grid. You can remove a note completely by simply clicking on it. Step Designer only allows you to place one note on each step, though, not chords.

Particularly effective (and speedy) is dragging your mouse across the grid editor to create a ‘flow’ of notes (perhaps a melodic line that sweeps up or down as it progresses). As we’ll see in a moment, while Step Designer is not key/scale sensitive (so some additional tweaking of your ‘note flows’ might be required), our next MIDI plug‑in can provide an automatic solution...

Fix It In The Mix

The ‘correction’ of any duff notes in your quickly created ‘mouse drag’ note patterns can be automated using the MIDI Modifiers plug‑in. Placed in the MIDI insert slot below Step Designer, it can also do some other useful things to add both variety and a touch of ‘human’ to your Step Designer patterns.

The MIDI Modifiers plug‑in has a number of different parameter sections that allow you to (surprise!) modify the MIDI data as it passes through, and two sections are of particular interest to us. The Random section allows you to apply random changes to any two of the pitch, position, velocity or length parameters for MIDI notes. For this example, I’ve used it to randomise the pitch of the incoming note upwards by up to 5 semitones (it also allows negative shifts, but I’ve not done that here). I’ve then also randomised the MIDI velocity of the incoming notes by ±10 steps.

With both these options, the settings you choose will influence the degree of variation that gets applied to your Step Designer pattern, with smaller min/max values producing more subtle changes (and vice versa). In terms of pitch, depending upon the major/minor emphasis of the overall piece, favouring positive changes only can often produce a more ‘up’ feel, while negative changes might create a somewhat darker mood.

If you pop open the Scales option in the MIDI Modifiers plug‑in, you get access to a huge collection of scale presets as well as the option to create your own custom scales.

To fix duff notes visit the bottom of the MIDI Modifiers panel. Here, you can specify a scale type and a root note (in this case, I’m using the Melodic Minor scale in E). Any MIDI note that arrives at this point in the processing chain that doesn’t already fit the selected key/scale is automatically shifted to the nearest ‘correct’ note. Therefore, whatever notes you’ve defined within your Step Designer pattern, by the time they leave the MIDI Modifiers plug‑in, they will at least be in key.

Incidentally, if you’re starting a new project with this ‘melodic variation’ experiment and don’t yet have a set of chords or key/scale combination in mind, it can be quite interesting to explore different scale/key settings to see quite what they do to your Step Designer pattern; some may sound terrible, but occasionally you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what pops out. The Scale setting offers a huge range of scale types to choose from, each with its own musical flavour, and you can also choose to define your own scale should you wish; it’s powerful stuff.

The Immensity Of Density

Having added some pitch and velocity variation to our Step Designer melody, the final option I’ll suggest is the Density plug‑in. This is super‑simple to use and, popped into the MIDI insert chain after MIDI Modifiers, it provides a single ‘note density’ setting that allows you to either reduce or increase the number of notes played.

In this example, I’ve used a Density setting of 80 percent. This simply indicates that, for each note reaching the plug‑in, there is an 80 percent chance that it will be passed onwards (so a 20 percent chance that the note will be discarded and won’t play). This is done in a random fashion for each incoming note and can therefore be used to thin out your melody in a random fashion to a greater or lesser extent. If you automate Density’s bypass button, you can use the effect to flip between your full melodic phrase (all notes present) and a sparser version of the same thing (a percentage of the notes randomly removed).

This overall MIDI plug‑in chain can create some really cool results, especially with a plucky synth lead or piano sound that’s providing a topline over a suitable chord sequence. Among the audio examples available on the SOS website you can hear the full MIDI plug‑in chain in action.

One More Thing

Well, two things actually! First, in the text above, I’ve described the process as applied to a lead melodic line. In that context, you can perhaps get away with some more extreme randomisation settings. However, apply more subtle settings (maybe just ±2 semitones of pitch randomisation and an 80‑90 percent Density) and it can add some suitably modest variety to a Step Designer‑driven bass line.

The second thing is perhaps the one frustration with the workflow described here: it’s not straightforward to record the MIDI output resulting from the MIDI insert processing chain. Yes, the manipulated MIDI data will reach your virtual instrument for playback, but there’s no simple way to capture the wonders of the randomisation as actual MIDI data so that you can edit it further or lock in some of the best results so that they play back in an identical fashion every time. There are ways and means, though, so this is definitely a topic I’ll come back to explore another time!   

Published June 2023

Korg PA Tutorial: "Style to Keyboard Set” and how to use it

Cubase: Using Chorder For Lo-Fi Chord Voicings

 By John Walden

Chorder lets you play full chords with a single trigger note and, via the Record button on the MIDI insert slot, you can choose to record either just the trigger notes or the full chords.

Want lo‑fi style chord progressions? You need look no further than Cubase’s Chorder MIDI plug‑in.

There are various ways in which the lo‑fi genre embraces simplicity, but it also tends to favour more sophisticated, jazz‑influenced chord voicings. A quick web search will cough up a multitude of lo‑fi style chord sequences that you could use as an inspiration for your own musical experiments, but if the piano keyboard isn’t your main instrument, all these seventh, ninth, 11th... and beyond chords might be a bit of a stretch (sometimes literally!). Fortunately, though, Cubase can help you create progressions using these harmonically rich chords, even if your piano‑playing skills are extremely limited.

Trigger Finger

In fact, Cubase offers a number of options for triggering complete chords from single MIDI notes. The Chord Pad system, the Trigger Pads in HALion Sonic 7 and the Chorder plug‑in are all prime candidates. Each has its pros and cons, but in this workshop we’ll be exploring Chorder. The MIDI plug‑in is conceptually simple and it’s very easy to use too. You simply place it into one of the MIDI insert slots of the desired MIDI or instrument track, configure the required chords (a one‑time task for a particular chord set, which can then be saved as a preset) and get playing. Do note, though, that once Chorder is in place its MIDI insert slot acquires a ‘record’ button; more on that below.

Chorder offers three options for arranging chords across potential MIDI trigger notes. Lo‑fi progressions are generally built from just a few chords, with additional interest added via different voicings or different inversions of the underlying core chords, so the One Octave mode, in which you can configure a single‑octave range as chord triggers, makes a sensible starting point. I’ve also set the Playstyle control to ‘simultaneous’, meaning that all the notes in the chord are triggered simultaneously, but this control also allows you to randomise the playback timing in different ways.

Chord Creator

To keep our example simple, let’s focus on creating a chord set based around a single key, C major. The standard triad chords would be C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am and (everyone’s favourite!) Bdim. Using the One Octave setting, we can activate the Learn button for each trigger note in turn (the note gets highlighted in dark red), and then click in the upper part of the display to select which notes we want to trigger. The result of this is shown for the D trigger note in the first screenshot: the D, F and A notes have been selected to form a Dm triad.

Note that, in this first example, the Number Of Layers slider is fully left, so that only a single layer of chords (one chord for each trigger note) can be created. However, if we now move the Number Of Layers slider right, Chorder automatically adds chord layers above our first layer; these can be populated with additional chords. I’ll describe how we can trigger these various layers in a moment, but for our lo‑fi ambitions, layers for seventh (Cmaj7, Dm7, Em7, Fmaj7, G7, Am7 and Bdim7) and the equivalent ninth chords are good candidates. An example is shown in the second screenshot where, for the C note, the three layers contain C (three notes), Cmaj7 (four notes) and Cmaj9 (five notes).

You can go much further than this harmonically, though. If your knowledge of the notes required for more exotic chords is limited, there are some really helpful web resources. For example, the websites pianochord.org and songtive.com provide comprehensive guides on chord voicings, all laid out with piano keyboard‑style graphics.

Chorder lets you add up to eight layers of chords to each trigger note, with layer selection using either Interval or Velocity modes.

One Digit Or Two?

Chorder’s Layers setting offers three different options for triggering your newly configured chords: Single, Velocity and Interval. Whichever mode you use to trigger your chords, it’s worth noting that when recording your performance you can choose to record either the trigger notes or the full chords; the latter is achieved by engaging the record button on Chorder’s MIDI insert slot that I mentioned earlier. Once you have the full chords recorded in a performance you are happy with (bar any minor editing), you can simply disable Chorder during subsequent playback.

The Single mode applies only if you’re happy to limit yourself to defining a single layer of chords. If you’ve defined more than one chord layer, Velocity mode allows you use the MIDI velocity of your trigger note to control which layer is played. The Velocity Spread slider provides some adjustment of the velocity range associated with each chord layer. This all works in a very straightforward fashion but, as triggering the higher layers means using greater MIDI velocities, it’s perhaps not ideal if the specific virtual instrument sound you are using also delivers notable velocity‑sensitive timbral changes. That said, as noted above, once you’ve recorded a MIDI clip with the full chords, you can easily adjust the note velocity data as required.

Interval mode is an interesting alternative to Velocity mode, although, for triggering, it does require two fingers rather than just one. The lower note determines the base note of the chord, while the higher note determines which chord layer is used, based on the interval between the two trigger notes. In our example, if we played the C note trigger and the D# key above it as the second note (three semitones above the lower note), we would trigger Cmaj9 (that is, the chord associated with layer 3 on the C note trigger). This method does require a little practice (the process is somewhat quirky) but, again, you can always record the full chord performance and tidy up any issues with a little editing.

Inversion Therapy

As suggested by the earlier screenshots, at this stage I’ve simply created each of my chords by starting with the root note and then including the additional notes in sequence above this. Harmonically, these are correct, but in practice, when they’re played within a sequence, chords voiced in this very ‘linear’ fashion might not always provide the most musical of results (in the same way that simply playing the same chord shape up and down a guitar neck isn’t always the most musically interesting way to execute a chord sequence).

Chorder lets you explore alternative voicings or inversions of chords but, however complex the chord, it can be easily played via one (or two) trigger notes.

It’s at this point that you can start to get creative with the voicings used for each chord by rearranging how the notes are laid out across the piano keyboard. The final screenshot shows a Chorder example for a three‑layer version of a Cmaj9 chord. The first layer contains the five notes (C, E, G, B and D) arranged in ascending order, as before. In contrast, the two other layers take exactly the same combination of notes, but rearrange them to voice the chord differently. In layer 2, that’s simply been achieved by moving the lowest two notes (C and E) an octave higher, creating a second inversion of the chord with G now as the lowest note. In layer 3, the same notes have been spread out across a wider range of the keyboard to create a more ‘open’ voicing (and one that would clearly require two hands to play), an approach that’s often used when voicing chords across an orchestral string section, for example. All three versions contain the same notes, but when played, and particularly when played within a sequence, the musical effect can be very different.

Any chord with four or five notes provides plenty of scope for these sorts of voicing variations...

Lo‑fi Lowdown

Any chord with four or five notes provides plenty of scope for these sorts of voicing variations, and for lo‑fi style chord progressions this can often be where the magic happens. The simple audio examples available on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase-0723) that accompany this workshop include an illustration of the kinds of things that are possible. However, with Chorder’s ability to ‘build’ these chords for easy triggering, and the option to use layers for alternative chord voicings, you have a means to experiment with these sorts of chord sequences regardless of your piano skills, and the option to record your performance in a simple (and easily editable) format.

With your cool chord sequence in the bag, you can move on to some of the other elements that characterise the lo‑fi vibe. For example, Steinberg’s free Lo‑Fi Piano instrument for HALion Sonic 7, which I’ve used for the audio examples, is an excellent sound source. However, Cubase can also help when it comes to the styles of audio processing required to make your sounds suitably retro. That would make a good subject for a future column, but until then, why not compile a few chords into Chorder and let your jazz muse out, lo‑fi style?

Published July 2023

Tutorial: Migrating Korg Legacy Collection Licenses to the new Korg Collection

Cubase: Beat Designer

By John Walden

Beat Designer: drum machine‑style pattern creation with a simple workflow.

Create drum machine‑style grooves in a flash with Cubase’s Beat Designer.

Classic drum machines such as the LinnDrum or those in Roland’s TR range helped to shape a whole smörgåsbord of electronic and dance music styles, but their influence didn’t only live in the distinctive sounds they offered: the grooves of their drum patterns were also a hugely significant factor. The feel of these grooves came from the grid‑based pattern creation process that lay at the heart of these machines — and with Cubase’s Beat Designer MIDI plug‑in you can emulate that workflow. What’s more, with a few key tricks under your belt, patterns can be created really quickly. So, without further ado, let’s explore Beat Designer’s, um... beat designing options!

Basics: Sounds & Beats

You can configure Beat Designer’s lane layout to suit your needs.Beat Designer is placed as a MIDI insert plug‑in on whatever instrument track you wish to use. You’ll need to load a suitable drum instrument, of course, and the bundled Groove Agent SE or a sliced drum loop within a Cubase Sampler Track both make good candidates. Beat Designer does include some good beat presets and, as I’ll discuss below, a single instance can host up to 48 different patterns (four sub‑banks of 12 patterns each). It’s easy to switch between patterns too, and if you set a cycle region and let Cubase loop playback, you can audition your pattern creations as you work. Initially, though, Beat Designer opens ready for you to start creating from scratch, without any pattern pre‑loaded.

The central part of Beat Designer’s GUI is occupied by the pattern grid. Arranged vertically on the left side is the list of eight individual drum lanes and you can add/subtract lanes as required via the small ‘+’ and ‘‑’ buttons on the far right of each lane. If the default drum selections don’t suit, you can use the drop‑down menu in each lane to pick the drum sound target from your drum instrument. You can also use the small speaker icon to audition each selected sound; it’s simple and easy to configure.

You can add hits by either clicking on a single lane/step, or clicking and dragging to add multiple hits (for example, on the hi‑hat lane). Where you click vertically within a step provides initial control over that step’s velocity (high velocities at the top, low at the bottom). Hits are colour‑coded based on velocity. Clicking and dragging up/down on a step lets you adjust velocity or, if you hold Shift while clicking/dragging, change the relative velocity up/down (until a step reaches min/max velocity values) for all active steps in a lane. You can also change the velocity on selected multiple steps by clicking/dragging vertically on one step, and then dragging sideways across other active steps before then moving up/down to set the velocity. Equally, you can add volume ramps up/down by repeating this same mouse movement while holding the Alt/Opt key. And, of course, clicking on an already active step deactivates it.

If you don’t want to roll you own, Beat Designer includes a good selection of pattern presets to explore and adapt.This whole process is really simple and obviously makes for very speedy rhythm creation, but there are further useful shortcuts on offer too. For example, holding Shift, clicking on a step within a lane and then dragging left/right allows you to move all the steps within a lane. You can also copy one lane to another by holding Alt/Opt and clicking within the lane label area, then dragging to the lane where you wish to place the copy. And, for some further interesting rhythmic experiments, hold Alt/Opt and drag left/right over a lane: this inverts all the steps (so active steps become inactive and vice versa).

Step, Swing, Flam & Offset

The number of steps and the step resolution can be set on a per‑pattern basis. Both settings are located top left of the GUI, and there’s some fun to be had here, particularly if you create a pattern using a tried and trusted 16 steps/16th‑note step‑length format and then change the number of steps or pick a triplet step‑length format. Equally, if you use two separate drum instruments, each with its own instance of Beat Designer but set to different step counts or step lengths, you can be rewarded with some very cool — and sometimes wonderfully odd! — rhythmic interaction.

Beat Designer can also apply swing on a per‑lane level to every second beat in a pattern, or every third beat if using triplet steps (so bear in mind that the number of steps you use influences how swing impacts). For each pattern, you can configure two levels of swing, using the sliders with the diagonal icons that are found at the bottom right. For each lane, swing can be set to off or to one of the two swing amounts, using the appropriate diagonal icon at the right end of each lane. This can be a great way to add a nice groove to your hi‑hats, for example, but more extreme swing settings on your hats, kick and snare also let you experiment with the more ‘uncomfortable’ rhythms used in some types of hip‑hop or lo‑fi music.

You can add one‑, two‑ or three‑note flams to any active hit — their timing and level are configured using the group of sliders located bottom left and set at the pattern level. If you hover the mouse over the bottom of any active step, a three‑dot icon will appear and you can click this to add one, two or three flams to that step.

The horizontal sliders found to the right of each lane (next to the on/off buttons for swing) apply a timing offset for that lane, allowing you to push/pull the timing of the active hits relative to the main grid. This serves two main functions. First, you can use it in a corrective fashion; for example if the lane is triggering a sample that contains a short rise to its peak level you might want each hit earlier in time for that sound. Second, you can use it more creatively to create a rushed (ahead of the beat) or laid‑back (behind the beat) feel to elements of your groove. Or if Dilla‑style hip‑hop beats are your thing, you can use it to explore just how ‘off but not off’ you can take your rhythms. As with the swing settings, offset settings are configured at the pattern level.

Pattern Performer

As mentioned above, a single instance of Beat Designer can hold up to 48 different patterns. These are managed using the four sub‑bank and 12 pattern buttons, found at the bottom centre of the GUI. Slots that contain a pattern are indicated with a small circle icon, and clicking on a specific sub‑bank/pattern button combination makes that pattern active for editing/playback. Dropping down the Pattern Functions menu (found at the top right) provides menu options for copying, pasting and clearing patterns. This makes it easy to create variations: just duplicate a pattern and then customise the copy.

There are a number of ways to copy the contents of a pattern, or all the patterns within one of the four sub‑banks, onto a Cubase MIDI or instrument track.

The Pattern Functions menu allows you to perform various operations in Beat Designer or export the MIDI patterns to your DAW tracks.This menu offers a couple of other useful functions. First, the top three entries let you shift an entire pattern left/right one step at a time or to reverse the whole pattern. Second, courtesy of the options at the base of the menu, there are a number of ways to copy the contents of a pattern, or all the patterns within one of the four sub‑banks, onto a Cubase MIDI or instrument track, and once there you can further edit the MIDI using the Cubase’s standard MIDI or drum editors. A particularly useful option is the Fill Loop With Pattern command: this inserts the current pattern as many times as required to fill the region between your left and right locators, and it’s a super‑quick way to get your initial Beat Designer drum groove up and running so that you can work on other elements of the track. (Once you’ve copied your pattern data to a MIDI track, remember to bypass Beat Designer, so as to avoid any double triggering of notes!)

If you prefer to create a performance by triggering pattern changes on the fly, enabling the Jump button (top right of the GUI) lets you use the four‑octave key range from C1 to switch between any of the 48 pattern slots. Once Jump is enabled, the GUI adds a Now button that allows you to toggle between instant pattern switching or switching at the start of the next bar, and you can record the trigger notes to capture your performance (and, if you wish, edit them after recording).

Get Creative

You can create all sorts of beats using the various tools I’ve outlined above (inverting lanes, different step lengths, shifting lanes left/right, etc) but the real beauty of Beat Designer is its speedy workflow — if classic drum machine beats are what your project needs, then it is well worth taking the time to explore it. Meanwhile, just to give you an idea of the sort of pattern variations you can generate really quickly, I’ve included some audio examples on the SOS website: https://sosm.ag/cubase-0823 

Published August 2023

Korg PA Tutorial: Calibrating Damper Pedal on PA1000

Cubase: MIDI Logical Editor

 By John Walden

The Extract Kick Drum (C1) to New Track preset.

When it comes to MIDI editing, Cubase’s MIDI Logical Editor can do magic!

If I had to identify options for a ‘most underutilised features in Cubase’ list, prime candidates would be the Project Logical Editor (found only in the Pro version) and the MIDI Logical Editor (found in the Pro and Artist versions). Both are incredibly powerful editing tools but, because they use Boolean logic (commands can be chained together to make ‘true or false’ decisions, which determine the eventual editing outcome), they can also seem somewhat intimidating. It’d be a great shame if you let that put you off, though, because both are incredibly useful and have the potential to streamline lots of repetitive editing tasks. Fortunately, Steinberg include some excellent presets for them in Cubase, and unpicking an example or two provides a fairly gentle entry into these powerful tools. In this column, I’ll do just that for the MIDI Logical Editor, which is, as its name suggests, a tool for doing things to your MIDI data.

Double Your Kick

Let’s start with a preset that’s easy to understand, yet turns a very common MIDI editing task into something close to a single click: Extract Kick Drum (C1) to New Track. Layering multiple sounds is common practice with MIDI‑based drums so, for this example, let’s assume we have created a MIDI clip that triggers our main drum virtual instrument (VI), and we want to double the kick performance with a second VI.

The first screen shows the content of the preset (the preset system is accessed at the very top of the UI). The upper panel (Event Target Filters) lets you specify criteria to define what MIDI events are selected for editing. In this case, there are two criteria used. The first simply states that the Filter Target ‘type’ is ‘equal’ to a MIDI ‘note’, meaning that all MIDI notes (and nothing else) are potential targets for selection. However, the second line refines that selection by specifying that the note’s pitch must be equal to C1 (that’s the default MIDI note used for the kick drum, though you can change this if desired). The entry in the Bool column (on the right of the UI) is worth paying attention to. In this case, it is set to ‘And’ (as opposed to ‘Or’). This means that the MIDI Logical Editor will only select items that meet both the first and second criteria. For this preset, that means it will only select MIDI notes whose pitch is equal to C1.

In this preset, the GUI’s lower panel (Event Transform Actions) is empty. I’ll cover this section below but for now note that, with no entries here, the selected MIDI data (notes with a pitch of C1) will not be altered in any way. However, at the very bottom of the GUI, Extract To Track has been specified — so when we hit the Apply button, all the selected C1 notes will be copied from our main drum MIDI clip into a new MIDI clip and placed on a new track. Hey presto! We can now assign this track to an additional kick drum sound, to layer perfectly with our original.

While this is an editing task that you could perform manually, that requires a number of steps. Using the MIDI Logical Editor preset is faster — and faster still if you assign this preset to a key command (the Key Commands window has sections covering both the MIDI and Project Logical Editors). For presets you use regularly, the task then becomes a single click, whether for one selected MIDI clip or several.

Add A Bass Note To Chords

Now we’re familiar with the MIDI Logical Editor concepts, our second example preset, Add Sub Bass To Chords, can be explained fairly easily. With a suitable MIDI clip selected, the Filter Target criteria in the preset will search through the clip to find notes. If it finds a time position where at least two notes are playing (a simple definition for a chord), it will select the lowest note in each chord.

The Add Sub Bass to Chords preset.

The Transform Action panel is also used here, and has two entries. The first subtracts 12 from Value 1 (in this context, Value 1 is note pitch), while the second subtracts 20 from Value 2 (note velocity). Also notice that the specified action is ‘Insert’. So, when we click Apply, this preset selects the lowest note in every chord in the clip, lowers its pitch by an octave, reduces its velocity value by 20, and then ‘inserts’ those transformed versions of the notes into the clip, leaving the original notes intact. So your clip now contains a lower (octave down) bass note for all the identified chords. Ta‑da! A simple way to beef up any MIDI part containing chords.

Incidentally, the most common of these (sometimes rather cryptic!) labels (Value 1, Value 2, etc) are explained within the Operation Manual PDF, should you need a reference.

The 10% to Downbeat 4_4 preset (at the top), with the MIDI before (middle) and after (at the bottom) the preset has been applied.

Beat Accenting

Our final preset example demonstrates something a little more sophisticated: the ‘note accenting’ preset, called +10% to Downbeat 4_4. As in the previous examples, the Target Filter is looking for MIDI notes and, for the notes selected, Value 2 (note velocity) is transformed by multiplying it by 1.1. However, it’s the additional Target Filter criteria that make this interesting. These all consider the position of the note within the bar, and each defines a position range around the main four beats of the bar (this is done using PPQ values; Pulses Per Quarter note, which is MIDI’s unit of timing).

Notice that the Bool term used for these Position filters is ‘Or’. This means that, to be selected for editing, the MIDI item must both be a note ‘And’ (the Bool term used in the first criteria) an event which sits within the first Position timing range, ‘Or’ in the second position timing range, ‘Or’ the third... and so on. Notice also that the last Position criteria is there to catch notes at the very end of the bar; that is, notes played ‘early’ at the start of the next bar.

The screenshot shows what this preset does to the MIDI velocity data for a simple MIDI clip created using the Arpache SX MIDI plug‑in. In the original pattern, every note has the same velocity but, after the preset has been applied (actually, I applied it five times to make the changes more obvious), notes falling on or very close to the beats are emphasised, giving the performance a stronger rhythmic character. You could easily apply this preset to any MIDI clip (for example, MIDI drums), and similar presets are available that emphasise different beat combinations. You can drag within the position displays if you want to adjust the range specified in these criteria. If you like this one, then do check out the Crescendo In Cycle range preset — that’s also brilliant.

Want to create some semi‑random changes to your MIDI parts? The Event Counter parameter provides one possibility when added to a suitable preset.

Homework

For your MIDI Logical Editor homework, I’ll leave you to ponder one final screenshot that shows one of my own DIY presets. As the preset title suggests, for the selected MIDI clip(s), the first Filter Target criteria is looking for MIDI notes. However, in the second criteria, for the Last Event type (the MIDI notes), only Every Other Event will be selected and, in fact, by then using the Event Counter (Parameter 1) set to 7 (Parameter 2), only every seventh note within the sequence ends up selected.

Repeated applications to something like the steady arpeggio pattern shown earlier will break up the regularity of the notes in an almost random fashion, so can create useful variety.

We could then apply a number of different Transformation Actions to process the selected note but, in this case, I’ve simply chosen to Delete them. Having deleted every seventh note in the original MIDI clip, if we apply the preset a second time, the selected (and then deleted) notes fall in different places. Repeated applications to something like the steady arpeggio pattern shown earlier will break up the regularity of the notes in an almost random fashion, so can create useful variety. You can increase this sense of randomness by creating a second preset that uses a different value (Parameter 2) for the Event Counter. If you create key commands for each preset, they’re then easy to execute on the fly — and, if you don’t like the results, just execute Undo until you get back where you started. Of course, if doesn’t just have to be Delete; you could apply Transform Actions to change the pitch, velocity or even the position (which can be an interesting way to add variations to the timing/feel) of the selected notes.

The Power Of Logic

This short introduction won’t make anyone a MIDI Logical Editor ninja overnight, but it does shows how gentle exploration and editing some of the supplied presets can take you towards understanding what’s going on under the hood. Hopefully, it also shows you that the MIDI Logical Editor needn’t seem so intimidating — and reveals some of the potential of this powerful Cubase feature!

Published September 2023