Re-chord Industry

 

By John Walden

Using Cubase 7's powerful new Chord Track, you can completely rework your existing compositions.

The original project with the chord sequence extracted from a MIDI piano part. Note the Chord Track Inspector panel settings as discussed in the main text.

Cubase 7's Chord Track presents the tantalising possibility of changing a chord sequence that has already been recorded, and forcing your various MIDI tracks and monophonic audio parts to fit the new sequence. I can best explain how to make use of the Chord Track by taking you through an example, audio illustrations of which you can find on the SOS web site at /sos/jun13/articles/cubase-media.htm.

The first screenshot shows a simple piano, drums, bass and guitar (both DI'ed and played back through the VST Amp Rack) recording and a vocal arrangement for a song section. After several listens, though, I've decided that the chords seem too boring. Here's how to add a little something extra...

Ignoring the audio parts for the moment, select the MIDI piano part. You can then execute the Project/Chord Track/Make Chords menu option. The small dialogue box that opens has a few options but, for now, use the default settings. Cubase will add a Chord Track to the project and populate it with the chords from the MIDI piano part. It will also add scale markers to indicate the scale (or scale changes) that occur during the sequence.

You can instruct the Chord Track to ignore notes shorter than a particular length, and two further options dictate how much detail Cubase extracts from the MIDI performance. Alternative bass notes can be chosen (for example, for chord inversions), as can tensions (additional notes beyond the standard triad that give the chord its flavour). In this example, the original chords were simple major chords (A, D and E).

What's On The Menu?

The revised chord sequence modified using the Chord Editor and Chord Assistant. The original (top lane) and revised (bottom lane) piano pats are also shown. The revised part was created by setting the track to follow the Chord Track using Chords mode.

The Chord Track itself doesn't make a sound by default: it's simply a chord and scale template that other tracks can be made to follow. However, you can audition your chords by choosing a MIDI channel or a new virtual instrument as the monitor output destination, and it can be useful to have a piano instrument or something similar set up specifically for the purpose.

Before I show you how to get another track to respond to the Chord Track, let's use the track to make some changes to the existing chords. There are a number of ways to do this. The Chord Editor enables you to make manual changes to individual chords, and chord changes can also be moved, added or deleted. The full version of Cubase, though, includes the Chord Assistant, which can do some of your creative thinking, even if you're 'harmonically challenged'!

The behaviour of the Chord Assistant depends on what you select in the Chord Track. Select a single chord event and the Chord Assistant will offer you a number of alternatives for that chord. Select multiple events and the Chord Assistant instead presents a menu of suitable chord progressions. This is particularly useful if you want to experiment with adding an additional chord change or two: simply enter some new events (they'll have an 'X' displayed in them), select the chord events surrounding them, and see what the Chord Assistant offers up. Dragging the Complexity slider right generates increasingly sophisticated suggestions. The Cadence settings provide further fine-tuning possibilities, but for the sake of simplicity we'll stick with the defaults.

Changes

The Chord Editor makes it easy to manually edit your Chord Track chord sequence.

My initial chord progression consists of two sequences, each repeated twice, and as the Chord Assistant's algorithm uses some knowledge of music cadence (the sense that a phrase resolves itself to a satisfying musical end point), it's a good idea to focus work on these sorts of self-contained sequences. The second screenshot shows the changes to the Chord Track after a little experimentation. In some places (bars 1-4 and 9-12), I simply used the Chord Editor to add a little more colour. However, for bars 5-8, I used the Chord Assistant to suggest an alternative sequence. The Assistant generated a list of possibilities, which I auditioned while looping playback, by clicking on suggestions in the list. Any other tracks that are set to follow the Chord Track will then automatically attempt to adjust themselves to fit the new chord sequence.

Follow The Leader

If you select a single chord, the Chord Assistant will offer you some alternatives.

Getting those other tracks to respond to the Chord Track requires you to consider a few settings. First, in the Chord Track's Inspector panel, you have to make a choice between Basic, Piano or Guitar Voicings, as the chords generated by each are constructed in different ways. The voicing setting can be applied to the whole track, as in this example, or to individual chords, via the Info line. I suggest you start with the Basic and Automatic Voicings, because once you've got your head around them, it's easier to experiment with the others. These Voicings still force a target track to follow the Chord Track, but they do so by moving your existing notes as little as possible. Adding a negative mapping offset will also ensure that you catch any notes that are played very slightly ahead of a chord change but should be considered part of that chord.

To get the original piano part to follow the new chord sequence, visit its Track Inspector's Chord Track section. There are a number of settings to choose from, but Chord mode is a good way to demonstrate the effect because this forces the MIDI part to follow the root note of the new chords, thus making the chord changes a little more obvious to the ear than Auto mode does.

Automatic Audio

If you select multiple events in the Chord Track, the Chord Assistant will suggest alternative chord sequences.

The process of slaving the bass and vocal audio tracks to the Chord Track can be broken down into three steps. First, open the audio part in the Sample Editor and, with the VariAudio tab selected, set the Chord Track display mode in the Toolbar. This colour-codes the pitch segments: green if the note is part of the current chord; blue if the note is part of the scale but not the chord; or red if it belongs to neither. They're useful clues as to which notes might work.

Next, set the Follow Chord Track mode in the track's Inspector panel. There are a number of options but for something simple like this, the Auto, Chord or Scale options are a sensible starting point. Each will re-pitch the audio in slightly different ways, so you need to experiment, but you can use the Reset button if you need to start again! For both tracks, the Chords option got me closest to a suitable result.

If that goes really well, step three (manual tweaking) may be unnecessary, but I did find myself wanting to make adjustments: I used Variaudio to change the pitch of a couple of notes, using the multi-colour segment display to help identify likely target pitches, and then applied a little pitch straightening. If you make manual corrections after applying automatic Chord Track re-pitching, remember to turn off Follow Chord Track in the track's Inspector, as your tweaks may otherwise get overwritten! Having done all this, use the Audio/Realtime Processing/Flatten function to make your changes permanent, and your job is done.

Setting the VariAudio display to Chord Track mode provides useful colour-coding of the pitch segments.There are some limitations to be aware of. First, the strummed electric guitar part hasn't been tweaked to follow the new chords — and that's because this is a polyphonic part, which Variaudio can't process. The only option (other than the third-party Celemony Melodyne Editor software) is to replace the part with a new take. Other than this, the only practical limitation for most people is that the further you pitch-shift audio, the more likely it is that you'll hear unwanted artifacts from the processing. Even then, though, you can often usefully employ the pitch-shifted part as a guide track.

Composer On Autopilot

I deliberately used basic Chord Track settings to demonstrate how the process works, but even with such simple settings you can perform miracles. I could just as easily have used the same approach to transform the 'major' feel of the progression into a 'minor' one. The various 'voicing' options can also be used in a similar way to generate more sophisticated results, and they're particularly helpful if you're trying to write MIDI parts for specific instruments, such as guitar or piano.    

Published June 2013

Adam Wakeman on the Korg Nautilus

Sweet Harmony

By John Walden

Want to fake some vocal harmony parts? Cubase 7 has a range of tools that can help you...

The Generate Harmony Voices dialogue box.

If you're blessed with access to talented and technically knowledgeable vocalists, recording and mixing vocal harmonies can a real pleasure, but some of us don't have this luxury, and find ourselves needing to fake realistic harmony parts. Cubase 7 has a number of tools that can be used to do this pretty convincingly. In this article, I'll work through two scenarios, each starting with a single vocal take: creating multiple harmonies for vowel-based ('ooh', 'ahh', etc) backing vocals; and creating lead-vocal harmonies that follow the actual lyrics!

The Generation Game

If you have a monophonic audio event selected, the Generate Harmony Voices option (found in the Audio menu) can be used to create up to four harmony parts from this original, each of which will be placed on a new audio track. If you've not defined a Chord Track for the project, these harmonies are created at a set number of semitone intervals from the original: the first harmony is +3 semitones; and subsequent voices are placed at -3, -6 and -9 semitones.

The original vocal (active) and the rather unmusical default four-part harmony generated in the absence of a Chord Track, all displayed in a single Sample Editor window. Note the drop-down menu at top-left that allows you to select which track is active for editing.In the absence of a Chord Track, although these default intervals are unlikely to result in anything that fits the harmonic structure of your song, they often serve as a useful starting point, particularly if you want to create a single harmony voice for a lead vocal. However, when you generate a four-part harmony, audio artifacts will become quickly apparent, particularly in the -6 and -9 semitone pitch-shifts. If your harmony parts are low in the mix, or you're deliberately going for a synthetic sound, this might be acceptable, but more realistic results are going to require fairly careful work.

As well as choosing the number of voices to be generated, you can control the vibrato strength. Higher values apply greater pitch straightening, and for some backing-vocal styles this can be quite effective. However, once the harmony is generated, you can't restore the pitch straightening without also losing any larger-scale pitch changes — so unless you're aiming for a deliberately synthetic texture, it's best to opt for a low value and perform any further pitch straightening that's required manually, using the Sample Editor.

A further option in the Generate Harmony Voices dialogue box enables you to open the harmony parts in the Sample Editor, but note that you can do this at any time by simply selecting the audio events and hitting the Enter/Return key. This allows you to see — and edit — multiple VariAudio 2.0 parts in a single instance of the Sample Editor, with one track 'active' for editing and the 'non-active' tracks appearing more faintly in the background. This is ideal for creating harmony parts. You can select which track is active for editing via the drop-down menu on the left side of the Sample Editor toolbar, or by clicking on a VariAudio segment belonging to a particular track.

Tied By A Chord

A three-part harmony that follows the Chord Track; more musical but still fairly static.

Configuring a Chord Track prior to using the Generate Harmony Voices function should — in theory, at least — mean that somewhat more musical harmonies are created, and this is a good place to start our first worked example, with block 'oooh'-style backing vocals.

Assuming you have one sung backing-vocal line, you can start by using the Generate Harmony Voices function to create four additional parts. These will automatically follow the Chord Track and, by default, you will end up with soprano, alto, tenor and bass parts (check the Inspector's Chord Track settings for each of the new tracks). The default output can be somewhat static and mechanical and, even in the context of a mix, a little further editing is generally required.

When doing such editing, use the Sample Editor and engage the Chord Track display option, so that the note segments appear colour coded (green for a note within the current chord, blue for a note within the current scale and red for anything else). This colour coding is a useful visual cue when you're manually editing the harmony-part pitches: unless you are feeling particularly experimental, avoid the red and aim for green or blue!

If the more extreme pitch-shifting makes some of the harmonies unusable, try resetting the pitch changes using VariAudio, and you can also try changing the Inspector's Chord Track settings to produce a second soprano or alto part, which might work better. Manually editing the VariAudio settings for this second version, perhaps adding some further pitch quantisation or applying a little audio quantisation, will help create the illusion of two different performances, even when both are 'faked' from the same original source.

You can also experiment with the way each harmony part follows the Chord Track. The Inspector's Chord Track tab provides plenty of possibilities, but it's going to be a case of trial and (lots of!) error; while I suspect that there are a few folks at Steinberg who understand fully how the various options interact, I found the Operation Manual a little lacking in its coverage of this feature. The Voicings setting is a good place to start: I recommend you set it to Basic, open the Settings dialogue box, and start experimenting with the Start Voicing setting. This changes the chord inversion used for the currently selected harmony. For the soprano, alto and tenor voices (the bass voice sticks to the root note of each chord), it allows you to quickly audition different possibilities.

Lead The Harmony

The Voicing Range control allows you to quickly audition different harmonies when a part is following the Chord Track.

Our second example is the creation of a single harmony that follows the lead vocal. The same techniques apply if you want to generate a couple of harmonies to add emphasis to selected words or phrases of the lead vocal. Generally, this requires a little more 'hands on' work than the preceding example. Let's take a typical scenario, in which we add a harmony part that's pitched a third above the main lead vocal (that is, based on the scale used for the melody, two notes above the lead vocal note).

The initial harmony track can be created via the Generate Harmony Voice function, or by simply duplicating the lead part. Either way, manual editing of the harmony part's pitch segments will be required to ensure that they all lie two scale-notes above the pitch of the corresponding segment in the original vocal. You might think it would be nice if Cubase had a 'scale snap' function, so that you could select all the notes, drag upwards from the original pitch and have them all jump to an appropriate note on the scale — but while there's a logic to the pitches required for this kind of harmony part, it's always best to let your ears be the final judge. If one or two notes simply don't sound 'right' a third above, feel free to experiment. Even working manually in this way, the process takes only a few minutes for each segment.

Creating a harmony lead vocal at an interval a third above the original lead vocal requires manual editing of pitch segments — and ear-based decision-making as to what interval works best for each note.If you want to add harmony parts to the occasional word or phrase of a lead vocal, rather than the whole part, make a duplicate of your lead vocal track and manually edit it to isolate just the words or phrases that you want to harmonise. This allows you to make sure the editing of the starts and ends of each word are as clean as possible. Once this is done, select all these separate audio events and use the Bounce Selection function (in the Audio menu) to recombine them into a single audio event. You can then apply the Generate Harmony Voices function to just the required phrases and follow up with any manual pitch editing. as for our 'third above' example.

Once you're happy with your harmonies, whether backing vocals or lead harmonies, it can be useful to apply the Flatten function (in the Process section of the Sample Editor) to each track, just to lock the VariAudio changes in place. Mix the 'fake' parts a few dB beneath the original vocals, apply a little panning, and the job is done.

Keep It Real

If you just want harmonies for certain words, edit a copy of your original to isolate just those words prior to generating the harmony parts.

The technology behind the Generate Harmony Voice function, VariAudio and the Chord Track is very clever, but it's not without limitations. The human voice reveals the artifacts of pitch shifting like no other sound can, and the harder you push the technology in your quest to create the perfect fake harmony, the more obvious the 'fake' becomes. Equally, while one or two auto-generated voices can often be made to sound very effective, their artificial nature becomes more obvious as you add more voices that have been generated from a single source. If you limit yourself to one or two voices with pitch-shifting of a few semitones, though, you can create something quite convincing, particularly if you're willing to perform a little manual editing on the result. That said, in some musical styles, the rather synthetic nature of extreme pitch-shifting is not a problem — indeed, it is an intentional part of the sound — in which case, feel free to push the VariAudio envelope as far as you like!  

Audio Examples

The author has provided a couple of audio files to accompany the worked examples in this article. You can find them, along with a detailed description, on the SOS web site.

/sos/jul13/articles/cubase-media.htm 

Published July 2013

Korg Arranger Keyboard Comparison - i3, EK-50, and XE-20

Freq Out!

By Carsten Kaiser

To receive multiple channel signals, your analysis Group track needs to be configured as a 5.1 surround channel.

Let's assume you've recorded and edited your next hit single in Cubase, and now you'd like to construct a mix whose instruments go hand in hand, complementing each other tonally but not treading on each other's toes. When frequency clashes between different parts are occurring, EQ is the traditional starting point, but modern DAW projects, which can comprise a huge number of tracks, group channels, send effects and so on, complicate the job of equalisation considerably. This is where frequency analysis tools come into play, and there's a perfectly good one built into Cubase 7's Studio EQ plug-in.

If you want to compare even just five or six main tracks (or groups) in your project, though, your screen will soon become unworkably crowded using this sort of analyser. A better option for such comparative analysis jobs is a tool that can monitor frequency activity on several channels at once, within a single plug-in instance. There are various such third-party plug-ins, including Melda's MultiAnalyzer, Blue Cat's FreqAnalystMulti, Vertex DSP's MultiInspector and Voxengo's SPAN Plus. In this workshop, I'll explain how to use SPAN Plus for the job, but while the setup might change for some of those other plug-ins, the same principles will still apply.

SPAN Plus is very reasonably priced ($49.95), but I appreciate that not everyone wants to open their wallet every time they read an SOS Cubase column! Fortunately, Voxengo also offer a freeware version of SPAN. Despite its stripped-down range of functions, this freebie plug-in provides enough analytical capabilities in many cases. Even if it just helps you to get the kick and bass out of each other's way by suggesting where to apply EQ cuts, it could help you take your mixes to the next level.

Project Prep

Naming the SPAN Plus input channels and choosing appropriate group names makes this process much more intuitive.

First, you'll need a Cubase Project containing multitrack audio. The examples use multitrack drums and bass guitar, and it will be easier to follow my instructions if your Project uses similar audio.

To use SPAN Plus, you'll need a dedicated 'analysis channel' in Cubase. SPAN Plus can be fed with up to eight channels using, for example a 7.1 source, but the maximum number of input buses for a single channel in Cubase is six. Start by creating a group channel, and in the configuration dialogue, choose 5.1. Name this group channel SPAN. Now configure the group channel to provide your six distinct input buses, as follows:

1. Create buses: Choose Devices/VST Connections and select the Group/FX tab. Then right-click on the bus named SPAN and choose Add Child Bus to SPAN/Add All Mono Child Buses to SPAN. You've just created six new input buses for your frequency-analysis group channel.

2. Rename buses: Rename these buses according to your own analysis needs. I've used shorthand for various instruments (KK for kick, BS for bass, and so on).

3. Assign outputs: In the 'output routing' column, set the group channel's output bus routing to 'no channel'. This ensures that the analysis channel's audio stream won't screw things up by reaching your master bus!

Setting Up SPAN Plus

Adding child buses to your Group channels will make each channel in the group available as an individual send destination.

Now you're ready to load SPAN Plus into one of the SPAN group channel's insert slots. Before the fun part starts, we just need to organise this plug-in's routing — because otherwise it's easy to lose your way while doing the multi-channel analysis. Here's how:

1. Set up inputs: Click on the 'routing' label (not the arrow on the right-hand side of the label, but the label itself). Then click on the IN Channel Labels button and rename the first two channels In1 and In2.

2. Set up groups: Open the Group Names dialogue box and rename the groups to match the input-channel names on your SPAN group channel.

3. Route inputs to groups: Inside the Channel Routing dialogue, route SPAN's inputs to different groups (A to F).

4. Assign channels to groups: still inside the Channel Routing dialogue, set the group assignment for channel A to group KK, channel B to group BS, and so on. You can now see these separate groups at the bottom of the plug-in.

On With The Show!

To feed the plug-in with the corresponding channels, route send signals from those tracks you wish to compare into the dedicated inputs you've created for SPAN Plus. Do not forget to activate these send routings on the instrument channels! In my example, I've routed sends from several drum instruments (kick drum, snare drum, and so on) to their respective input buses.

As you let your song play, activate the KK group button at the bottom of the SPAN Plus GUI. You'll instantly get a visual representation of the frequencies present in your kick-drum signal. From the Underlay menu above the spectrum window, you can choose another signal with which to compare your kick. In the example, I've chosen BS, which is the bass guitar, so I can check whether the bass and kick might be interfering with each other. Armed with this information, I can then use EQ on either or both tracks, knowing precisely where I'm most likely to be able to cut frequencies to make the tracks sit rather better together and avoid undesirable masking.

It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see that you can do similar analyses to see if your bass notes and guitar chords are struggling in the mid-range and upper octaves, or if the cymbal sound and any special effects are occupying the same parts of the frequency spectrum. Using this method, you have countless possibilities for really digging deep into the frequency analysis of your productions. Yes, you still need to use your ears and your EQ tools as normal, but it should become much easier to zoom in on problem areas in your mix.

More Power

SPAN Plus Enables you to underlay the frequency plot from one channel beneath another, and to colour code the plots. Here, you can see three channels being analysed.

If you find this a useful tool, you might find yourself wanting yet more analytical power. Despite the six-input limitation of Cubase's buses, it's possible to use SPAN Plus for more extensive analysis, because it provides up to 48 virtual import/export slots — and these can be used across different instances of SPAN Plus. Start by opening an instance of SPAN Plus in the insert slots of each of the channels that you'd like to analyse. Then:

1. Rename: Open the plug-ins' GUIs and rename each new instance of SPAN Plus in its top-right corner to reflect the track in question (Kick, Bass, Snare, and so on). Don't forget to give the analysis graph of each instance a different colour!

2. Export Graphs. Open the GUI of your first SPAN Plus instance (Kick, for example). Press the Import/Export button and click on 'Export to'. Choose entry 1. Your kick-channel analysis is now ready to be imported into other instances of SPAN Plus. Repeat this procedure for each Cubase channel you'd like to analyse.

3. Import Graphs: Open a plug-in instance of your choice and click on the Import/Export button. Then choose Import From > Bass (stereo) in the first import slot. Choose the Snare (stereo) entry in the second slot and Cymbal (stereo) in the third slot. You will now see the analysis graphs of the kick, bass, snare and cymbal tracks.

Even More Fun

Need even more graphs? No problem. Go back to the multi-channel instance of SPAN Plus you set up earlier.

1. Rename main instance: In your SPAN Plus group channel, open the SPAN Plus GUI and, in the top-right corner, rename it Analyser Group.

2. Export graphs: Click the Import/Export button and, at the bottom, choose the third group (SN, for example). You will now see the analysis graph for the snare signal as well as the underlying graph of the cymbal signal. Click on 'Export to' and choose a free slot. Choose the fifth group and export it to another free slot.

3. Import Graphs: At the bottom of the Import/Export settings, click on the first group and import the graphs of both groups you've just exported to the available import slots. You will now see all six of the different analysis graphs at once.

If you really want to, you could choose to combine both techniques: setting up several multi-channel analysis instances, you could compare a maximum of eight different signals at once. These would include your chosen analysis group, its underlying graph and up to three imported stereo groups, along with their accompanying underlying graphs.   

Published September 2013

Discovering Nautilus with Megan O'Neill and Luke | Ep7

Step Up!

By John Walden

Cubase's StepDesigner offers a surprising amount of creative potential.

The StepDesigner interface with note data in the upper section and controller data (in this case velocity) in the lower one.

Recently, I had the pleasure of working with Sugar Bytes' excellent Thesys MIDI step sequencer plug-in. Thesys provides multiple lanes for each sequence, holding note data, velocity, pan and other MIDI controller data that can be used to control various synth parameters, and one of the really interesting features of Thesys is that you can change the step length of each of these lanes independently, allowing you to develop all sorts of evolving sounds. In short, there's a lot of fun to be had here and, as a Cubase user, it got me thinking: could the humble StepDesigner MIDI plug-in that comes bundled with Cubase be pressed into service to do something similar?

Quick Step

Aside from velocity and gate (note length), you can also pick two other continuous controller numbers to build into your patterns.

StepDesigner might not win prizes for elegance, but it is straightforward to use. It's placed as a MIDI Insert on the MIDI track that drives your target synth and, once opened, provides two main panes for editing: the upper note area and the lower controller lane. Patterns can be up to 32 steps in length and you can adjust this and the timebase of the steps (1/16th, 1/8th, for example) via the narrow control panel that runs along the top of the window. Other useful options include a swing control and buttons to shift the pattern left and right or reverse it and shift the notes up and down an octave.

Each instance of StepDesigner can contain up to 200 patterns. The current pattern number is indicated in the control strip at the base of the window and, during playback, MIDI notes can be used to automate pattern changes. Sets of patterns can be saved as presets for later recall.

Notes can be added to the pattern grid via the mouse. You can also click and drag to enter multiple notes, while the range of pitches displayed can be scrolled up and down if you want to enter higher or lower pitches. Notes longer than an individual step can be added via the Tie lane (between the Note and Controller lanes) and, for notes shorter than a step, you can add controller data to the Gate lane. Simply select Gate from the drop-down menu and draw in controller data to define note lengths. This menu allows you to toggle the controller lane between four sets of controller data: velocity and gate, and two, user-defined, continuous controllers. Note that velocity and continuous controller (CC) data is added here in the same way.

Your choice of which two CCs you use is configured via the Setup button. This selection box simply lists the CC numbers, so you'll need to check your target synth's MIDI specifications to work out exactly which CC numbers you require. In my example project I used Halion Sonic SE.

Out Of Time

As described in the main text, pairing two StepDesigner patterns of different step lengths allows you to create some interesting evolving sequences.

Used as described above, StepDesigner is a perfectly respectable pattern sequencer, but as all elements of the pattern (notes, velocity, gate and CCs) operate to the same number of steps, you can't create the 'different step length' effects possible in Thesys. So, I thought, how about using two (or more) instances of StepDesigner, all targeting the same synth, but set to different step lengths? Well, perhaps this wasn't what Steinberg had in mind (for reasons that will become obvious in a minute) when creating StepDesigner plug-in, but it can be made to work. There are, however, a couple of limitations... You're limited as to where you can insert your additional StepDesigner plug-ins. You might think that the obvious location would be the MIDI Insert slot beneath your first instance of the plug-in, but this doesn't work because the MIDI note output from the first StepDesigner instance is interpreted as program change data by the second instance, and CC data just doesn't seem to be passed at all. So you need to create a second MIDI track, with its own StepDesigner inserted, that targets exactly the same synth. In this way, the two instances of the plug-in do not interfere with each other (well, they do, but I'll come back to that issue in a minute) so both sets of StepDesigner data get to the synth.

The screenshot shows an example setup, with a 16-step pattern of notes playing in one instance of StepDesigner (top) while a second instance (bottom) is sending CC data to Halion Sonic SE's filter resonance in a 15-step pattern. Both patterns play back continuously and in sync with the project but, on each cycle through, the shorter filter cutoff pattern is offset by a single step relative to the note pattern. As a result, instead of the relationship between the notes and filter sweep staying constant, they change over each cycle and, in this case, only start to repeat after 15 cycles.

Changing the Step Length setting — in this case set to 1/2 — provides further variation.

You can, of course, add a third MIDI track and a third instance of StepDesigner, and then use this to set another synth parameter in motion over a different pattern length. The next screenshot shows a 28-step pattern set to vary Halion Sonic SE's filter cutoff. However, there's an extra trick employed here: the step size setting has been set to a half rather than a sixteenth. Each step in this instance of StepDesigner, therefore, lasts for half a bar and the whole 28-step pattern for 14 bars. Combine this with your two other levels of variation from the first two tracks and, well, it makes my head hurt trying to calculate, so let's just say the variation in the synth tone cycles over a long period! If you target a suitable combination of synth parameters and step lengths in this way, the sequence can take on a real ebb and flow, and the effect can be very cool indeed; it certainly avoids some of the 'rigidity' that's often associated with poor electronic music.

Hit The Buffers

StepDesigner's velocity and gate lanes can only be used when that instance of the plug-in is also sending note data (the velocity and note length data are part of the MIDI data passed with each note) but, as mentioned earlier, StepDesigner allows you to select two CCs of your choice to use in the other two lanes. You might think, therefore, that using two instances of the plug-in would give you four possible synth parameters to tweak and three instances would provide six. That's what I expected when I started experimenting, but found that it's here you're confronted by a second limitation.

I'm not sure if this is a 'feature' or simply a bug (I'll let you decide!) but, regardless of how many StepDesigner plug-ins you have active in your project — even if they are targeting different MIDI synths — they all seem to share the same two CC numbers. If you select a CC combination in one instance of the plug-in, the changes you make are applied to all instances (at least, that's my experience using Cubase 7 running on Mac OS X). It's almost as if the two CC numbers are stored at a Project level (they apply globally for that Project) rather than at a plug-in-level (applying just to that instance of the plug-in). I've not found a way around this, so it means that two CC numbers per project are all you can control via StepDesigner.

Making Notes

Combining two StepDesigner instances where both contain note data can create a 'moving melody' effect.

That may be disappointing, but there is one extra trick the plug-in can perform that Thesys (at least a single instance of Thesys) can't, which is to combine note sequences with different step lengths. This might sound like an odd thing to do but it can create some really interesting rhythmic and melodic results, with an effect that's not unlike singing in the round. The final screenshot shows an example. Both instances of StepDesigner are targeting the same synth, but use different MIDI tracks. The lower one is playing a very simple 16-step pattern of four notes, and provides a solid bass that syncs, without fail, to the project tempo. The upper pattern contains a more melodic phrase at a higher pitch and uses a 15-step pattern. As the patterns are repeated, the melody phrase gradually shifts one step at a time relative to the bass notes. The effect can be almost hypnotic — a solid bass and a repeating, but somehow 'moving', melody — with the synth tone itself also shifting if you apply some CC control as described above.

Step On It

With modern music technology, the user is often spoilt for creative choice and it's refreshing to take a simple tool and see just how far you can push it. StepDesigner might not be one of the more whizz-bang elements of the Cubase feature set but, despite the occasional quirk, with a little lateral thinking it's capable of great things.    

Published October 2013