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

Korg DSN-12 Analog-Style Creation Tool for Nintendo 3DS

Cubase 12 Drum Processing With Raiser

By John Walden

Raiser provides powerful limiting options with a very flexible release section.

With its Raiser plug‑in, Cubase Pro can raise hell with your drum sounds!

For users of Cubase Pro, one of the more intriguing additions bundled with v12 was the Raiser plug‑in, which brought us some new limiting options. Indeed, Raiser has a number of interesting features. For one thing, the real‑time graphic display provides very clear visual feedback on changes to the overall waveform due to the limiting and the amount of peak gain reduction that is occurring. Also, the DIC (Detect Intersample Clipping) button ensures your peak signal level does not exceed the maximum output level (even between samples) specified by the Ceiling control. And engaging the Compare switch allows you to hear the processed waveform (with the limiting applied) but at a volume that’s comparable with that of the unprocessed (bypassed) signal, making it easier to judge whether the limiting is introducing undesirable artefacts.

Sweet Release!

The various release modes allow you to customise the release behaviour in some interesting ways.However, arguably Raiser’s key feature is its release section. Operation is pretty intuitive: as you raise the input gain the signal level increases and, eventually, you’ll push the peaks up against the ceiling, thus triggering limiting. But the release controls provide some very cool options to configure the limiter’s behaviour and can strongly influence the perceived loudness you’re able to achieve. This includes the ability to configure very fast release times, which means there’s lots of potential when dealing with sounds that have a strong transient element, such as drums.

There are two elements to the fast release behaviour. First, you can select different release modes (the options are shown in one of the screenshots), and these combine with the release time knob to control the overall release behaviour. Second, a Fast button lets you toggle on/off an initial, very fast release phase that occurs before that defined by the main release control. Steinberg’s documentation suggests this be engaged for percussive material, and in all that follows I’m going to assume that this is turned on. So, if you’d like to make your drums loud and proud, let’s explore just how far Raiser can take them.

Getting Your Bearings

As with any dynamics processing on drums, there are multiple points at which you can insert Raiser in your signal chain. Perhaps the most dramatic impact on your overall drum sound comes from using Raiser on your drum bus or, for parallel processing, as a send effect from your drum bus. However, it makes a lot of sense to start by getting yourself accustomed to the controls, and processing a single drum such as a kick or snare will make it easier to appreciate both what the various controls are doing to your signal, and how they interact.

A composite screenshot showing how varying the gain and release time result in both increases in average loudness and also a change in the waveform shape for individual drum hits. See the main text for an explanation of each panel.In the first of the audio examples that accompany this workshop (https://sosm.ag/cubase-0523) I’ve done exactly that, and panel A of the final screenshot demonstrates the effect on five snare hits. The release time was constant (30ms using Restricted Max mode) but the gain varies from 0dB (the first hit) up to 18dB (the last hit). Initially, adjusting the gain control simply increases both the peak and average loudness of the individual drum. However, once your peaks hit the ceiling, limiting kicks in, and any further increase in gain produces average loudness increases without any further peak level increases. For each individual drum hit, you can see the difference between the original waveform (light blue) and the waveform after limiting is applied (darker blue). You can, of course, use this processing to raise the perceived loudness of the drum (making it seem more prominent in the mix) while retaining control over its peak level. However, as with any limiter, if you add more than a few dB of perceived level in this way, you might well start to negatively impact the character of the sound, so you have to listen carefully.

Panel B shows a composite of a similar set of five hits but this time I’ve kept the gain fixed (at a whopping 18dB!) and changed the release time from 500ms (first hit) to 5ms (last hit). Again, you can clearly see the changes this induces on the waveforms. There are a number of key takeaways. First, longer release times can produce a very natural‑sounding result, but too long and the release from one hit won’t be completed before the next hit, and it can therefore change the latter’s sound and impact; your release time setting may, therefore, be influenced by the tempo of the performance and the frequency with which the drum is hit. Thankfully, Raiser’s waveform/gain‑reduction display makes this easy to visualise, so it’s easy to configure on a single drum channel, but as I’ll explain shortly, where Raiser is being used on a bus you may need a pretty fast release to allow a full release between every drum/cymbal strike.

Second, the higher the gain settings and the faster the release times, the greater the shift in emphasis from the transient to the ‘tail’ of the sound, something that’s made obvious by the changes in the waveform. For the snare used in the audio example, this means you gradually hear a shift away from the initial ‘crack’ and into the ‘rattle’ of the snares themselves. If you audition the audio examples, you’ll also hear a resonance of the drum (which you may or may not like) become more noticeable. There’s no right or wrong here; you just need to be aware in order to have control. You can think of it as an additional creative option to customise the sound of your drums after the fact!

Third, and perhaps most significantly, Raiser lets you achieve some considerable increases in average loudness before these sorts of audio artefacts become really obvious. With instances of Raiser placed on each individual drum channel of a full drum mix, the second audio example illustrates this pretty well. Your mileage may vary but, to my ears at least, because each limiter is only having to manage a single drum sound, you can achieve some considerable increases in average level before the overall drum mix starts to take on a ‘slightly trashy’ flavour.

Taking The Bus

Whether for convenience or simplicity, or out of necessity (working with stereo drum loops?), you might prefer to use a single instance of Raiser on a stereo drum mix/bus or as a parallel send effect. So how does it fare in this role? I’ve included a couple of audio examples to illustrate this approach, each of which runs through the same four‑bar drum performance a number of times, using gradually more extreme gain and release time settings. However, panels C, D and E of the final screenshot show how the release time may need to be shorter when Raiser is placed on a bus. In each case, gain is set to 12dB but the release time varies: 300ms (A), 10ms (B) and 2ms (C).

...a fast release, and the combination of the Fast switch and the Restricted Max mode is a good starting point; this allows you to get any limiting out of the way quickly between individual drum hits.

Again, there are some key takeaways. First, and particularly true for busier or more up‑tempo drum performances, you need to be using Raiser’s options for a fast release (for example, a sub‑10ms release time), and the combination of the Fast switch and the Restricted Max mode is a good starting point; this allows you to get any limiting out of the way quickly between individual drum hits. Second, the converse can also be true; slower release times (50ms and longer) can run the risk of robbing some energy from the performance (transients might get caught up in limiting triggered by the previous hit, as in C) despite any increase in level. Third, as long as you’re content with modest increases in average loudness, you can achieve a surprisingly natural‑sounding end result.

Fourth, if you do choose to push things a little harder, the sound can begin to get a bit ‘gungy’ (for example, open hi‑hats, ride and crash cymbals can become very splashy). But while this may not sound so natural, in the right musical context it may provide just the character you require. Finally, this grungy element is incredibly easy to dial in if Raiser is used as a send effect rather than being inserted on the drum bus, as you can drive Raiser as hard as you like, then alter the blend to taste by automating the fader levels on the (clean) drum bus and (trashy) send track for different sections of your song.

It’s worth me pointing out that while I’ve focused on acoustic drums in these examples, precisely the same principles apply with electronic drums — though, depending on the musical genre, you may find that you feel rather less constrained about keeping things ‘natural’. With that thought, I’ll leave you to raise hell with Raiser!   

Published May 2023

Korg SDD-3000 PEDAL Introduction & Overview

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 electribe – A closer look with Harrison Zafrin

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