MPS-10 Version 2: Preset Kit P75 Tropical Pop Loop (feat. Trigger Reserve)

Cubase 15: The Pattern Sequencer

By John Walden

The Pattern Editor now has a dedicated Melodic mode with both Mono and Poly step‑sequencing options and a Chord Lane.

Cubase’s new synth sounds and Pattern Sequencer features are great on their own — but together they’re even better!

Steinberg introduced the Pattern Editor for Pro and Artist users in Cubase 14. While obviously pairing well with the (also new in 14) Drum Machine track/instrument type, as we explored in the SOS May 2025 workshop, you could also use Pattern Editor for melodic applications. But in Cubase 15, Steinberg took the Pattern Editor concept further. It now offers two distinct modes: Drum and Melodic.

The latter is new, and adds some very useful additional options to those I explored in the May 2025 article. So, let’s get into ‘writing mode’ and explore it, along with the new HALion/HALion Sonic Writing Room Synths expansion (also available in Artist and Pro).

To do that, I’ll target some analogue synth‑style sequenced bass, chord and melody ideas. And to help give you an idea of what I’m writing about, I’ve put an audio example on the SOS website (http://sosm.ag/cubase-0626).

Something Old, Something New

If you select the Pattern Event option when creating a new virtual instrument track, the Lower Zone automatically opens and offers a choice between the Drum or Melodic mode within the Pattern Editor. Both of these modes share many of the core features described for the earlier iteration of the Pattern Editor, providing a lane‑based sequencer grid with customisable step numbers (up to 128 steps), per‑lane and per‑step sequencing of parameters such as velocity, velocity variance and playback probability, and the option to add additional controller lanes related to parameters within the selected virtual instrument.

As I described in the SOS May 2025 workshop, patterns can be created manually on the grid in the usual way, but you also get a selection of tools for automatically populating the whole pattern, or a lane within the pattern — either in a completely controlled way, or harnessing a user‑specified degree of randomisation. It’s cool, creative, and can easily be used to nudge a new idea into being. All this core functionality remains but, as in the main screenshot, Cubase 15’s new Melodic mode has additional elements that directly support this use case; I’ll focus on those below.

Melody Maker

When you opt for Melodic mode, many familiar elements appear in the Lower Zone’s Pattern Editor, but there are some new and revised options to suit the melodic context. A similar grid‑based pattern editing panel dominates the display, but it’s now a conventional pitch‑based grid for your melodic instrument, rather than lanes corresponding to individual drums. You can adjust the step count and resolution as before, but when creating notes these can span multiple... 

Published June 2026

Introducing nanoKEY Fold: Portable MIDI Keyboard for Creators on the Move

Cubase Pro: Folder Tracks and Group Channels in v15.0.20

 By John Walden

The new combined Folder/Group tracks/channels now appear within the MixConsole and can be opened (as the Bass Folder is here) or closed, providing genuinely useful additional channel visibility options as track/channel counts rise.

Could the new Folder Track features in Cubase help you better organise your projects?

Once a Cubase project’s track count starts to grow, two of its track types can be really helpful in keeping things organised, efficient and under control: Folder Tracks and Group Channels (or, as labelled in the Operation Manual PDF, ‘Group Channel Tracks’!). The former are essentially just containers that let you organise tracks in the Project window, and quickly control their visibility. The latter provide all the features of a standard audio‑carrying channel (inserts, sends, EQ, the Channel Strip etc) but also help you organise the audio routing in more complex projects, allowing Cubase’s MixConsole to emulate the audio subgroup concept of a traditional hardware mixer. Putting both to full use makes managing more complex projects a whole lot easier, but both have been around for quite some time now...

Groups Meet Folders, Folders Meet Groups

In the recent Cubase 15.0.20 update of Cubase Pro, Artist and Elements, though, Steinberg sprang a bit of a surprise: it’s now possible to merge the functionality of Folders and Groups into what you might think of as a ‘super‑Folder’. It’s optional, so the tried and trusted options are still available, but now, when adding a Folder Track to your project (as shown in the screenshots), you have the option to enable Group Track‑like capabilities for any Folder you create. You can also add this capability to existing Folders, of course.

If you have an old‑school Folder within your project, the Enable Group Channel option lets you easily convert it to the new format.

This combined Folder/Group Track option is a feature some users have been requesting for years, probably because a number of other DAWs already facilitate such an approach, so it’s great to see it in Cubase. So, with ‘Folders As Groups’ now official A Thing, let’s consider what it can do for your project management and workflow — and whether there are any catches.

Convenience (In) Store

The new Folders can be opened/closed as before within the Project window’s Track List but, as shown within the Inspector panel, they now also have full audio capabilities.

As soon as your track count requires vertical scrolling of the Project window’s Track List, the convenience of using Folders is abundantly apparent. Whether the new Folder type or the old ones, probably the most obvious strategy is to add one for each subset of your tracks (drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals...).

With the appropriate tracks placed in each of your (sensibly named) Folders, you can use them in the Project window for the Folder’s long‑standing primary...

Published July 2026

Introducing the KORG multi/poly Synthesize

Cubase Pro: Reference Tracks

By Matt Houghton

Cubase offers various options for comparing your mixes with reference tracks.

When Sample Magic announced that they'd soon stop supporting their Magic AB plug-in, some of you asked me to recommend other mix-referencing tools. Several plug-in options exist, including Mastering The Mix's Reference, Melda's MCompare, and ADPTR's Metric AB, but you may be able to do what you want using Cubase alone...

Simple A/B'ing

Cubase's Pro's Cue Sends can be used to monitor your reference tracks via the Control Room without the signal flowing through your project's master stereo bus — but while this side-steps any bus processing, it also skips the loudness metering, and it uses up one of only four available Cue Sends.An obvious approach is to put references on a track in your mix project and align the clips with the relevant parts of the arrangement. If you don't use master bus processing, this can work well: keep the reference track muted, and when you solo it, it will play and all the other tracks will be muted. But if you use master-bus processing, as many of us do, you don't want to apply this processing to your references. There are a couple of ways around this.

One is to create a second stereo output in the Studio/Audio Connections window and route your reference track to that. This bypasses the processing but now your references aren't reflected on the master-bus loudness metering. If that's important to you, you could use a Group track as your master bus, and route that and your reference track to the default stereo output (on which you put no processing).

Right On Cue

Cubase Pro's Control Room offers an alternative. Although (curiously) the Control Room doesn't allow you to select different output busses, you can monitor artist cue mixes, and can route your references to one of those. Go to Studio/Audio Connections, make sure the Control Room is activated, and in the Control Room tab hit Add Channel. Select Add Cue, create a stereo Cue Mix with a meaningful name (eg. 'Reference'), and leave it routed to no output.

Again, you'll need a track in your project to host your reference tracks. Set its output to No Bus. Strangely, there's no option to display the Cue Mixes in the Track Inspector, so to send your reference track to your Cue Mix you'll need to open the track's Channel Settings window (you'll find Cue Sends in a tab adjacent to the regular sends) or the MixConsole (if Cue Sends aren't there make them visible via the Racks drop-down). Enable the Reference send and set it to unity gain. In the Control Room section of the mixer, next to the main Mix button, you'll see a button marked C1 (for Cue Mix 1). With your mix playing, hit C1 to toggle between monitoring your reference track and your mix project. If you go to Edit / Key Commands and search for Cue 1 On/Off, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to this action.

It's pretty slick, but there are a couple of down sides. First, Cubase gives you a rather meagre ration of Cue Mixes — you have a maximum of four in your project — which could be problematic if you need them for another purpose. Second, Cubase's master-bus metering continues to tell you what's happening in your mix while you listen to your references — so if you want to match the loudness of the reference to that of your mix (as you should) you'll need a separate loudness meter on your reference track, which is a bit of an inconvenience.

Although (curiously) the Control Room doesn't allow you to select different output busses, you can monitor artist cue mixes, and can route your references to one of those.

The Logical Approach

The Project Logical Editor can be used to create a handful of basic 'building block' commands to use in Macros (see below).What if you want to meter what you're listening to on Cubase's master meters? Here's an approach that uses Cubase's powerful Project Logical Editor (PLE) and Macro facilities. We'll use these to automate both the 'simple' A/B mute/solo approach described above, and the bypassing of the master bus processing. As with other approaches, you'll need to create a track for your references, but this time leave it and your mix routed to the main Stereo Out. Name this track 'Reference' and mute it.

Next, we'll make four simple PLE presets to use in our Macro. A little quirk of Cubase is that you need to be in the Project page to access the PLE (I have no idea why!). From here, go to Project / Project Logical Editor. The PLE can appear daunting, but we can just customise an existing preset. I started with the 'Visibility — Show Tracks containing Drum in the Name' preset. In the top section, change the second row's Condition from 'Contains not' to 'Equal' and change Parameter 1 from 'Drum' to 'Reference'. The bottom section tells the PLE what action to perform, so change the Operation from 'Hide Track' to 'Solo'. That's your first PLE preset done, so click on the + icon at the top to save this as a new preset called 'Reference — Solo'.

Next change the Operation from 'Solo' to 'Mute' and save it again, this time as 'Reference — Mute'. With the same PLE window still open, in the top section, change the second row's Parameter 1 from 'Reference' to 'Stereo Out', and in the bottom section change the Operation to 'Inserts Bypass'. Save this as a preset called 'Stereo Out — Bypass Inserts'. Finally, change Parameter 1 in the bottom section from 'Enable' to 'Disable', which does the reverse (it will reactivate the Stereo Out bus's inserts) and save this as 'Stereo Out — Activate Inserts'.

These simple Macros run the Project Logical Editor presets and bypass the master-bus processing whenever the reference track is soloed. This way, you always have access to the built-in metering of the master stereo bus, but the bus processors will act only on the mix you're working on, not the reference track.Finally, we'll stitch these presets together using a pair of Macros that we can assign keystrokes. Go to Edit /Key Commands and open the Macro window at the bottom. Hit the New Macro button, and label your Macro 'Reference Track — On'. In the upper pane's search bar type 'Process Project' to take you to the relevant folder (I find this quicker than scrolling). Open this, and locate the PLE presets you just created. Select 'Stereo Out — Bypass Inserts' and hit the Add Command button. Then select 'Reference — Solo' and hit the Add Command button again. Create another new Macro called 'Reference Track — Off' and add the commands 'Reference — Mute' and 'Stereo Out — Activate Inserts'.

You'll find your two new Macros in the Macro folder in the upper pane, and here you can assign them shortcut keys. Sadly, I've been unable to find a way to toggle between the two Macros with a single key command, but I did find easy to remember shortcuts: Ctrl+R for 'Reference Track — On' and Shift+Ctrl+R for 'Reference Track — Off'. It's worth mentioning that I'm on a Mac, so the Ctrl key may be assigned to different functions on Windows, but you get the idea. Now, with your mix playing back, hit Ctrl+R to switch to your references, and Shift+Ctrl+R to switch back to your mix.

Checking reference mixes with this technique can be performed using just a couple of key commands.Note that this won't work if you have other tracks soloed in your mix, or any automation of the master fader. If the solo issue really bothers you, put the 'Deactivate All Solo States' command at the beginning of your 'Reference Track — On' Macro, though note that you'd have to re-solo things when you switched back to your mix. Note also that you won't be able to take advantage of Cubase's Solo Defeat Mode. On the plus side, you can use Cubase's loudness metering to make sure your reference is at the same level as that particular part of your mix (using clip gain on the references is the best approach), and thus ensure that you're making objective comparisons.

Decisions, Decisions...

While none of these options for monitoring reference tracks and clips is perfect, they can all work pretty well if they fit your own workflow. Each one offers different pros and cons — hopefully there's a tactic here that will do the job for you.

 Published July 2019

KORG multi/poly Synthesizer Overview