Screen 1: The Iconica Sketch patch and MIDI track layout required for the workflow described here is very straightforward. Based on a simple chord sequence, some ‘before and after’ example MIDI clips are shown on the right.
Get better results from Iconica Sketch’s strings with the Cubase Logical Editor.
Iconica Sketch is an excellent, compact orchestral library (it’s under 5GB) included in the Pro, Artist and Elements versions of Cubase 13. As the name suggests, it’s pretty good for sketching out ideas, but the sounds themselves are capable of much more than this — they come from Steinberg’s full (190GB) and very impressive Iconica. Sketch includes multi‑articulation patches for each major instrument section, but there are no ‘full’ ensemble patches. This is perhaps not such a bad thing, because although ensemble patches can provide instant gratification from a few simple chords, they’re of little use if you’re trying to write something a real orchestral string section might play — to do that, you really need to create separate lines for each string sub‑section.
To turn your simple chords into those individual MIDI lines for Iconica Sketch, Pro and Artist users need to do just a little patch configuration, and then take a quick dip in Cubase’s Logical Editor. Although we’re looking at strings here, the process can easily be adapted for the brass and woodwind sections.
Patch Work
The workflow I propose comprises two main steps, but there’s an optional third one too. For the first step, the basic configuration is shown in Screen 1. This includes arranging the instrument patches in a single instance of HALion Sonic: these run from Violin I on MIDI channel 1 through to Basses on MIDI channel 5. Note that I’ve also edited the keyswitch assignments for the individual patches to span C‑1 to F#‑1. As I’ll explain shortly, this will allow you to include real‑time articulation switching for all the sub‑sections. It’s worth mentioning that all these patches offer the same seven performance articulations. For the shorter articulations, velocity controls dynamics, while for the sustained articulations you use the mod wheel to add crescendo/decrescendo to the performance.
Finally, alongside the Instrument track that’s hosting HALion Sonic, I’ve added five suitably named MIDI tracks to the project. In their individual Inspector panels, I have set all of these to send MIDI data to HALion Sonic, but note that each uses the MIDI channel number required to target the desired instrument patch (channel 1 for Violins I, channel 2 for Violins II, and so on).
Now, select these five MIDI tracks (to record‑arm them all) and play some four‑note chords on a MIDI keyboard, plus any keyswitches needed to switch articulations in your performance. These full chords will get transmitted to all five tracks, and if you engage record when doing this, you’ll end up with five identical MIDI clips. This might initially sound fairly epic — there are a lot of strings, so it makes a big sound — but it’s not really what we want here, because every note in the chord is being played by all five sections. In a real string section, when it comes to basic chordal parts each sub‑section usually tends to play a single note of the chord (unless a sub‑section is playing ‘divisi’ and being divided into further sub‑groups).
Think Logically
So, how do you thin out the five identical MIDI clips such that each one contains one particular note from the full chord and, when combined, the section as a whole plays the full chord, as might be the case with a real string section? You could edit each clip manually, of course, muting or deleting notes from each one to leave each sub‑section playing a single note at a time. But that task gets tedious very quickly, and can interrupt your creative flow. Thankfully, with just a little work in the Logical Editor, you can automate this process pretty easily.
Screen 2: Two examples of Logical Editor presets that allow each string sub‑section to play a single‑note line from a four‑note chord.
Screen 2 shows two examples of the Logical Editor presets required for this. The main part of the screen shows a preset I’ve named Isolate String Basses Celli. There are two filters specified in the Event Target Filters panel, and both act to select/deselect specific notes. Thanks to the Context Variable entry in the second line, the first two lines only select notes within the clip when Note Number in Chord is not zero. Zero represents the lowest note in a chord, so this selects every note within a MIDI chord except the lowest one. Lines 3 and 4 apply a second note‑based filter that selects notes only if their pitch is greater than or equal to C0. This criterion means that any keyswitches used during a performance (all of which lie below C0) will not be selected. There are no entries in the Event Transform Actions panel, but note that it is set to Delete. When these criteria are combined, then, and the Logical Editor preset is executed on one of our MIDI clips (either the Basses clip or the Celli clip) Cubase selects and deletes all notes above C0 that are not the lowest note in the chord and are above C0. In other words, we end up with a clip containing just the lowest note in the chord plus any keyswitches, meaning our bass (or cello) patch will now just play a single line from the full chord.
You’ll need five similar Logical Editor presets in total, one for each sub‑section/part. They all follow a similar pattern, but obviously some tweaks are required. As an example, the second part of Screen 2 shows just the Event Target Filters for my Isolate Strings Violins I preset (the Event Transform Actions panel remains the same). Note that the only difference is that, in this case, the filtering leaves in the fourth highest note within the chord (Parameter 2 is set to 3) as well as the keyswitches.
Make Mine A Macro
Once the five Logical Editor presets have been created, thinning out each MIDI clip simply involves selecting the clip and executing the appropriate preset. If you wish, this can be achieved from a menu: MIDI/Logical Editor/Apply Preset. This pops open a panel with all the Logical Editor presets listed, and it’s very easy to step through the five MIDI clips to do what’s necessary. You can also assign any Logical Editor preset to a key command. But for a faster approach, check out the Macro shown in Screen 3, which can be executed with a single keystroke. Providing you have the MIDI tracks laid out in the way suggested here, selecting the topmost MIDI clip (for the Violins I MIDI track) and executing the Macro will execute the required Logical Editor preset for Violins I, then select the next MIDI clip (thanks to the Navigate – Down command) and repeat the process. In all, it takes less than a second to transform your chord into five MIDI clips, each with the desired single‑note line, and with your keyswitches remaining intact.
Screen 3: If you want to work fast, try chaining the various Logical Editor presets into a Macro that you can execute with a single keystroke.
Make It Real (Time)
To close, let’s consider one question that the above approach raises: why can’t this ‘chord separation’ task be carried out in real time, as you play the MIDI chords? Well, unfortunately, Cubase’s MIDI Input Transformer (the real‑time version of the Logical Editor) doesn’t support the Context Variable option, I suspect because the unpredictable timing of incoming notes makes this sort of processing trickier to perform reliably. I do wonder, though, whether Steinberg might be able to add such capability to the (already excellent) Chord Pads system. Those trigger the whole chord at once, so in theory at least, it would be possible — in fact, it would be a very cool solution to this problem, and could also have applications beyond just orchestral strings. Pretty please, Steinberg?
In the meantime, in case you do a lot of orchestral composing, would like to do this in real time and have some money to throw at the problem, it’s worth drawing your attention to a Mac/Windows app called Divisimate (https://divisimate.com), which you might want to check out. This software sits between your MIDI keyboard and Cubase and, amongst other things, allows you to split out the notes of an incoming live chord onto different MIDI channels.
Of course, whether a part is sustained or played rhythmically, there can be (much!) more to creating a string performance than relying exclusively on block chords. Indeed, for a convincing result, further refinement of the parts may well be required. You might try lowering the basses by an octave, or revoicing the other notes within the chord to create different inversions. Equally, you might edit the Violins I and II lines to let them ‘cross’ in pitch, and create more harmonic interest. Or perhaps you could let the basses, celli, violas and second violins carry the chord and add a melodic top line in the first violins. While it would be great to see a real‑time option for this sort of thing in the Cubase feature set in the future, the Logical Editor approach I’ve described here already gives you a great starting point for creating more detailed string (or brass/woodwind) arrangements in double quick time. And if you’d like to hear what all this can sound like, check out the two audio examples we’ve put on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase-0424).
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