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Cubase 9's Sampler Track

 By John Walden

The new Sampler Track and Sampler Control panel. (The reason for the two identical MIDI clips is explained in the main text.)

Amongst Cubase 9’s new features is a whole new track type dedicated to quick and easy sampling.

One of Cubase 9’s big headline new features is the Sampler Track, and it’s available in all three versions of Cubase (Pro, Artist and Elements). Compared with Steinberg’s HALion, or any ‘full-fat’ third-party sampler plug-in, the new Sampler Track is a little modest in terms of its actual sampling functionality, but it scores highly in terms of speed and ease of use, and its deep integration into your Cubase projects.

To explore some of the pros and cons in this first iteration of the Sampler Track, I’ll focus on one example: extracting hits from an audio drum loop. Cubase already offers plenty of scope for experimenting with pre-recorded drum loops — the Sample Editor, AudioWarp, HitPoints and Groove Agent SE features combine to form a powerful toolkit. So, in terms of creative workflow, let’s also consider what the Sampler Track brings to the party.

When A Drag Isn’t A Drag

In the new multi-pane, single-window layout of Cubase 9, one of the four tabs in the Lower Zone is Sampler Control. The easiest way to create a new Sampler Track is to drag and drop an audio sample into the (initially empty) Sampler Control zone from an existing audio track, the MediaBay or even from the Finder/File Explorer of your host OS. This process will automatically create a Sampler Track and map your sample across a default C3 to C6 key range ready to be played via MIDI — it’s super-easy!

The Sampler Control zone is split into four key sections. The waveform display allows you to define the loop and sustain regions for your source sample, while the keyboard display allows you to constrain the MIDI note-mapping range. The key control in the top-most toolbar strip is the Loop Mode. There are various options here, but for our drum-hits example selecting ‘No Loop’ and enabling the One Shot button (the icon looks like a circular target) is a good start.

Creating A Hit

In No Loop mode, all you need do in the waveform display is set the start and end points of the drum hit by dragging the two white ‘S’ markers to the desired locations. Zoom controls (located bottom right of the waveform display) allow more precise control. The markers also include fade options and setting a short fade out can be useful to avoid glitches on playback. That said, you get more control over the amplitude of the sample’s playback by visiting the Amp envelope...

The tiny envelope icon (top-right of the Amp section) replaces the waveform display with a flexible envelope editor, where you can add multiple nodes to create precisely the shape you require. For the example, I’ve chosen the ‘One Shot’ envelope mode and emphasised the attack portion of the drum hit for a bit more impact.

For our drum-hit example, the Amp envelope is set to One Shot mode and I’ve emphasised the attack portion of the sound. The Pitch and Filter panels offer similar envelope editing.

Similar envelope editors are available for the Pitch and Filter sections, and you can get creative by adding just a little bit of pitch variation and tonal changes via the filter. The different filter types allow gentle overdrive through to more extreme bit crushing. Again, for use with isolated drum hits, setting the pitch and filter envelopes to One Shot mode is best and you can control the degree of envelope modulation via the AMT slider located far-left in each envelope editor panel.

In terms of crafting your drum hit, some other interesting options in the Sampler Control panel are worth exploring — the reverse (backwards ‘R’ icon) button, for example. However, for isolating an individual drum sound from your loop and then tweaking its character, this really is a super-simple process.

Time To Play?

So, we’ve our isolated hit, but what next? For this example application at least, this is perhaps where the ‘first iteration’ of the Sampler Track feature becomes a little more obvious. I’ll focus on what’s possible within Cubase itself (HALion owners may have more options) and, in particular, how you might approach the most common situation, where you wish to extract several different individual drum sounds (eg. kick, snare, hi-hat, tom and crash) from a loop in order to build a basic ‘kit’ that can then be triggered via MIDI. Let’s look at the two most obvious possibilities, both of which work but have an element of clunkiness.

Method 1: Going Groovy

The Sampler Control Toolbar features a very interesting button called ‘Transfer to New Instrument’. Having defined your drum hit, click this to see options to export your selected sample (with all its settings) to a different virtual instrument plug-in. If you select Groove Agent (full version or SE) then, hey presto, a new instrument track is created for you, and your carefully crafted drum hit is inserted on an empty drum pad ready to play.

The Transfer to Groove Agent option creates a new instrument track and exports your sample configuration to a new instance of Groove Agent.

Great as this is for your first drum hit, though, if you go back to the Sampler Control section to define a second drum hit, when you repeat the Transfer to New Instrument process it’s placed in a second instance of Groove Agent. Currently, there’s no option to ‘add to existing instrument’ — one for the future, perhaps. That’s a bit of a shame from a workflow perspective, but a simple workaround is to drag and drop this second sample from the pad in your second Groove Agent instance onto an empty pad in your first, and then delete the superfluous Groove Agent Instrument Track. Yes, this a bit clunky, but it works and, importantly, it takes only a few seconds. Repeat as many times as required and you’ll soon have a Groove Agent ‘kit’ ready to play. While Groove Agent already includes similar sample editing features for creating individual hits from within a drum loop, I find the Sampler Control environment a much more inviting place to do this sort of quick-and-simple sample editing.

Method 2: Multi-track Drums

Another option is to create multiple Sampler Tracks (one for each drum hit/sound that’s required) based on different edits from the same original drum loop. This is easy to do but, again, a little clunky. First, note that you have to select all of the Sampler Tracks, and record-enable them, when you want to ‘play’ this kit from a single MIDI keyboard. Second, you’ll need to constrain the MIDI note mapping for each of your Sample Tracks so that each sound only responds to a unique range of MIDI pitches. This is easy to do via the keyboard display in the Sampler Control section for each track, though, and it does mean you can actually define each drum sound to be triggered by two or three keys. (An upside is that using multiple keys per sound can make playing rolls or fast hi-hat patterns much easier!)

Groove Agent offers similar options to Sampler Control but, to me at least, the latter offers an easier working environment for basic sample editing.

Depending on how you set up the pitch behaviour (for example, if you don’t engage the Fix option, which causes all keys to trigger the sample at the same pitch), the fairly subtle shifts in pitch between adjacent notes can also be used to add useful variation to your performance. You end up with multiple Sampler Tracks to manage, of course, and, when you record your MIDI performances, you’ll create multiple (identical) MIDI parts. But if that bothers you, just hide all these tracks within a Folder Track.

Could Do Better?

There are a couple more general Sample Track ‘gotchas’ it’s worth being aware of. First, if you drag a new sample to an existing Sampler Control zone, the default behaviour is for it simply to replace the existing sample, so any existing (careful) editing will be lost — and there doesn’t appear to be an ‘are you sure?’ warning.

Second, note that any samples you drag and drop from outside the current project are not automatically added to your Project folder. Played on the same host system, these samples will be recalled when you reload your project but, if you want to move the project to another system, you will need to ensure you take these samples with you. The easiest way to do this is to execute the Media/Prepare Archive function as this will gather all the files referenced by the project and ensure they are placed in the project folder.

So, while there’s clearly scope for further development, the Sampler Track is already a very promising new feature and Steinberg deserve a big pat on the back for it — it’s a hugely creative feature that’s easy to get your head around, and allows you to work fast.

Published April 2017

Kevin Oneno Hastings talks to us about life as a musician

Cubase 9: Retrologue 2's Audio Input

 By John Walden

In this initial configuration, Retrologue’s side-chain input has been activated, the side-chain audio input level set to 7 and all Retrologue’s internal oscillators have been disabled.

Cubase 9 makes side-chain audio inputs possible for VST 3 instruments, the first being Retrologue 2.

Cubase has offered side-chain inputs for insert effects since v4.1, but not for VST instruments. With Cubase 9, though, plug-in designers were given the ability to create instruments with audio inputs. VST is Steinberg’s own technology, so it’s no surprise that the first instrument to exploit this feature is one of theirs: Cubase’s Retrologue 2. The new feature presents a number of creative options which, in essence, all boil down to the ability to apply Retrologue’s filter, effects, arpeggiator and modulation to an audio signal.

To start, you’ll need two tracks. The first, an Instrument Track, hosts an instance of Retrologue. The second contains the audio you wish to route into Retrologue — it could be a WAV file, or another VSTi. If you just want to hear your side-chain audio without any of Retrologue’s own oscillators, configure Retrologue as shown in the first screen (above). Three key things to ensure are that: (a) the Retrologue side-chain input is activated (the orange button on the control strip); (b) all Retrologue’s oscillator modules are off; and (c) the Audio Input knob, which appears only when the side-chain button is engaged, must be set above zero.

The Pad Audio source track has a pre-fader send to Retrologue’s side-chain input and, with its own fader set to zero, you don’t hear any of the ‘dry’ sample.There are a couple of ways to send audio to the Retrologue side-chain input, the most flexible of which is to use a send from the source audio track. From the Send slot, you can select Retrologue’s side-chain input as a destination. Setting the Send as pre-fader is a good idea, as this allows you both to use the Send level to control the amount of signal going to Retrologue, and to control the level of ‘dry’ signal independently using the source track’s channel fader. Set the latter to full attenuation, and you hear only the audio routed, via the Send, to Retrologue. Hitting playback might confuse you: you’ll hear nothing! But as soon as Retrologue receives a MIDI note, you’ll hear your audio source processed by Retrologue.

Getting Creative

What can you do with your audio in Retrologue? Well, all sorts of creative things: you have access to all the synth’s filter, effects, arpeggiator and modulation features! You can also blend this signal with the dry, unprocessed, version of the audio source (by using the source track’s fader), and/or Retrologue’s three oscillators, its sub-oscillator, noise generator or ring modulation. I covered the basics of Retrologue’s sound engine back in SOS May/June 2016, so I’ll not go over the same ground here. Instead, I’ll take you through a couple of examples to illustrate the potential of the new audio-in feature: an audio drum/rhythmic loop sample, and a sustained pad sample.

Retrologue’s filter, perhaps with some tempo-sync’ed modulation of both the filter and the distortion level, can add a really nice edge to drums — transforming a ‘vanilla’ drum loop into hi-tech electronica in an instant. You can blend (and automate) the wet and dry sounds to taste too. Similarly, with a synth or vocal pad, if you configure the volume to be modulated by a square-wave LFO, you can add a cool rhythmic character to the part, and control its depth and tempo-sync via the modulation settings and LFO Frequency setting. There are, of course, many other, more adventurous, possibilities, but hopefully this illustrates where you can take things.

In this example, Retrologue’s Modulation Matrix is using LFO2 (itself set to a square waveform) to apply volume modulation to a vocal pad sound source and create a rhythmic effect.

Still, I’ll add a couple of further practical points. First, as mentioned earlier, you only hear this Retrologue-processed sound while Retrologue is receiving a MIDI note, so you can add further rhythmic elements to the sound based on how you trigger the MIDI notes. Second, if you trigger multiple MIDI notes, you hear multiple ‘streams’ of the audio input. This can sound great on a drum loop, especially if you’ve configured the filter or distortion settings to respond to the MIDI velocity or note — each note will yield somewhat different tonality. In both examples, you can also add Retrologue’s arpeggiator/pattern sequencer, one of the synth’s most impressive features; there are loads of excellent pattern presets. Whether your original audio source is a rhythmic drum loop or a sustained pad, engaging the arpeggiator can provide some excellent rhythmic effects.

Pitch Perfect

Something that the configuration described so far doesn’t do, which you might expect it to, is offer any option for real-time ‘key following’ of pitch — once processed, the pitch of the incoming audio remains the same on output regardless of which MIDI notes you use to trigger Retrologue. If you want to ‘play’ your carefully created sound in a melodic fashion, this is somewhat limiting, but there is a simple, albeit slightly clunky, workaround...

By combining the Sampler Track with Retrologue’s side-chain input, you end up with some considerable potential for DIY sound creation.In last month’s workshop, we took a first look at the new Sampler Track feature. This allows you to take any audio sample (a drum loop or sustained vocal/synth pad sound would suit) and create an ‘instant’ sample-based instrument; the Sampler Track feature can map that sample across the keyboard and, with appropriate settings, re-pitch the sample in real time on playback. In essence, you can quickly create a playable ‘melodic’ instrument from any single audio sample.

Alas, the Sampler Track is, at present, limited in terms of the sound modulation options it offers. But if you combine the Sampler Track with Retrologue’s side-chain input, giving you access to the filter, effects and modulation technology, then you have the best of both.

To do this, simply place the required sample in a Sampler Track and configure this track as the audio-in source for the Retrologue side-chain input. The ‘clunky’ element of all this is that you have to select, and record enable, both the Sampler Track and the Retrologue Track at the same time so they both receive the same MIDI note data from your MIDI keyboard. That aside, this works really well and, whether by accident or design, when you combine Retrologue’s audio input with the Sampler Track, you create a very powerful, creative and easy-to-use sample-based instrument.

For example, try it with a sample taken from your lead vocal — you’ll get instant EDM vocal ear-candy for your breakdown! In addition, once you have melodic parts coming into Retrologue’s side-chain, the arpeggiator features really come into their own. And, of course, you can still blend in Retrologue’s own oscillator sound sources with your side-chain audio for even more options. I’ve no idea if Steinberg have plans to merge or blend these separate features at some point — I hope so! — but in the meantime, this workaround gives you plenty of potential for instant, yet original-sounding, fun!

Published May 2017

Korg LP180: A Sleek, Refined, and Minimalist Digital Piano For The Home

Cubase Pro: Frequency EQ

By John Walden

Published June 2017

Frequency EQ: eight bands, with flexible filter choices, mid-sides and left-right options in each band, and very useful visual and audio-based feedback.

Cubase 9 Pro’s Frequency EQ plug-in can do everything from gentle tone shaping to delicate mid-sides surgery.

One of the excellent new features Steinberg introduced in Cubase Pro 9 is a brand-new EQ plug-in called Frequency EQ. All the previous EQ options are retained but Frequency EQ is a powerful plug-in, which represents a considerable step up. There are eight available frequency bands and you have the choice, on a per-band basis, of mid-sides or left-right EQ. So while Frequency EQ can most certainly be used for general tone-shaping duties, it’s also capable of much more surgical operations. And as we’ll see in a minute, the UI also includes some very neat features that can assist you in making your EQ decisions.

Setting The Tone

Bands one and eight offer a selection of cut filters as well as the low-shelf, peak, high-shelf and notch options.In the lower half of the display, the eight EQ bands can be toggled on/off individually. All bands feature low-shelf, peak, high-shelf and notch options, while bands one and eight also offer cut filters, with slopes all the way up to a whopping 96dB per octave — that’s very handy if you want to filter off everything below/above a very specific frequency. The cut filters also benefit from a Q control, which can add resonance (an EQ hump) at the turnover frequency. This can be a great way to add a nice bit of heft to a bass/kick sound while rolling off unwanted rumbles lower down the spectrum.

If you’re working with a stereo source, all eight bands can be used in Stereo (the default), mid-sides or left-right modes. In the latter two modes, each band offers you two sets of controls to apply different EQ settings to each channel. They can also be switched on/off individually.

In the upper half of the display is a real-time spectrum curve (or histogram, if you prefer) with variable-time averaging and peak hold, and a colour-coded EQ curve for the active EQ bands is also displayed. So far, so standard, but as you move the cursor within the spectrum display, Frequency EQ also gives you real-time data: the frequency, gain and musical pitch of the current cursor position are all displayed, which can be very useful.

Frequency EQ also offers two further bits of ‘assistance’. First, if you click on the small keyboard icon (located mid-left), a piano keyboard graphic appears under the spectrum display. Notes that most closely match the centre frequency of a specific EQ band appear colour-coded; hover the mouse over these and you get both note pitch and frequency data in a small pop-up panel. And, if you want, you can drag an existing colour-coded note along the keyboard to change the band’s centre frequency.

Second, and really useful when you’re trying to identify a specific frequency to adjust, is the Auto Listen for Filters option (toggled on/off via the speaker icon, located top right). With this enabled, move any control or drag a frequency band node in the display, and Frequency EQ solos just that band. You can, therefore, really focus in to find a specific ‘problem’ frequency or hear what your shelf or cut filters are doing at the top/low end as you make adjustments. Ear training might not have been Steinberg’s first thought when designing Frequency EQ, but it is a useful bonus of the Auto Listen feature.

Notch it

Let’s look at some examples of applications for Frequency EQ, starting with something that’s simple but can, on occasion, be incredibly useful. As mentioned above, all frequency bands offer a ‘notch’ filter type, which is similar to the standard peak-cut filter but offers control over much narrower frequency ranges. If you have a noise issue within your audio at a very specific frequency — 60 or 50 Hz mains hum would be a good example — then a notch filter might allow you to kill it with minimal impact on the (wanted) frequencies around it. This is pretty surgical stuff; Notch is the narrowest EQ filter Cubase has ever offered.

Incidentally, when trying to locate a problem frequency to cut, it’s common practice to apply a healthy amount of boost and then sweep through the frequency range until you find the offending element. Obviously, the Auto Listen function really comes into its own here. However, once you’ve identified the frequency, Frequency EQ’s INV buttons (located beside each of the Gain knobs) can also instantly convert your boost into exactly the opposite amount of attenuation, which is neat!

Wide Boy

Frequency EQ can be great for drum overheads. Here band one cuts the very low end while also giving the kick drum a lift. Band two is set to M-S mode and helps focus the low end in the centre of the stereo image, while band eight, also in M-S mode, adds a little extra to the sides at the high-mids/top-end for additional stereo width. All other bands have been switched off.Given the mid-sides and left-right options, one application of Frequency EQ is to manipulate the stereo image of a recording. There are lots of possibilities but two examples illustrate the potential. First, imagine you have recorded a stereo guitar track (perhaps it’s a two-amp electric guitar performance, with a mic on each cab). Come mix time, you find you need to EQ the left and right sides of the stereo file differently. Previously in Cubase, this would have required the stereo file to be split into two mono tracks. With Frequency EQ, though, you can just switch a band or two to L-R mode and tweak away to your heart’s content. This could be done for corrective or creative reasons — some gentle cuts and boosts in the mid/high-mid frequency ranges, but applied at slightly different centre frequencies, can usefully increase the apparent stereo separation of the two channels.

A second example is a stereo drum track and, more specifically, a stereo drum overhead recording. At the low end, you can set a band to M-S mode and apply a little cut to the sides signal, along with a little boost to the mids — this can help focus the kick drum into the centre of the stereo image more tightly, where that’s needed. At the same time, should you wish, you can push some of the higher-frequency drum resonances and cymbals a little wider in the stereo image by applying a high-frequency boost to the sides and cut to the mids. Mid-sides or left-right EQ can also be particularly useful for teasing out specific parts of the drum kit within the stereo overhead recordings, making it much easier to emphasis individual elements where desired.

Decluttering Reverbs

Clean up your reverb return? As described in the main text, M-S EQ can help you ‘place’ your reverb to keep it audible while decluttering the centre of the stereo field.Another neat mid-sides EQ trick involves Cubase’s reverb FX Channels. In a busy mix, a bit of EQ can often be applied to the return from the reverb to roll off some of the low end and, for a warmer sound, some of the top end also. Frequency EQ’s cut filters can perform this role and stop the reverb cluttering up the mix.

However, you can take this a little bit further by applying a mid-sides peak filter. For example, you might apply some gain reduction in the low-mid frequency range to just the mid channel to ‘clear out’ the reverb from the (often overcrowded) centre of the stereo image. You might apply an opposite boost to the sides, either at the same frequency, or perhaps slightly higher, to place a little more of the reverb at the extremes of the stereo image where it might be competing less with other elements.

Master Tweaks

EQ to ‘rescue’ a stereo mix needs to be subtle. Here I’ve tried to lift a vocal with a bit of mid-band-only gain at around 300Hz, while also taming a keyboard part on the left side of the stereo image at around 1kHz.Mid-sides and left-right EQ can also be very useful at the mastering stage, so here are two quick examples. First, mid-sides EQ can be used as a ‘sweetening’ tool on a stereo mix, in much the same way as described above for a drum bus, to focus the lower frequencies in the centre of the stereo image and to add a little extra stereo width at the top end. Second, imagine you have a stereo mix and you realise there’s a problem with a specific instrument, but you don’t have the option to go back to the mix to attend to it. This might be anything from the lead vocal needing a subtle volume adjustment, to the kick drum needing a little boost or the left-sided crash cymbal needing to be tamed a little. Because you can selectively apply EQ to the mid, sides, left or right channels, you can apply gain boost/cut at not just the dominant frequency of the problem instrument (which you could do with any EQ) but also focused on its spatial position in the mix. Yes, this might be a bit of a rescue job, but where the tweaks needed are modest it could be a life-saver — and with automation to target specific points in time, your surgery might be made less invasive still.

Frequency EQ is by far the most powerful, versatile and intuitive EQ plug-in ever bundled with Cubase — the above examples really just scratch the surface of what’s possible. Naturally, it is only available to ‘Pro’ users, but if you’ve been looking for an extra excuse to move to Cubase Pro 9, Frequency EQ might be it! 

Matt Beck (M.D. for Rob Thomas) Interview at Korg USA

Using Cubase On Stage

By John Walden

Arranger Events on the Arranger Track can be triggered in real time.

Cubase’s natural home may be the recording studio, but you can also use it for on-stage improvisation.

Way back in SOS July 2010 (http://sosm.ag/jul10-cubase), I looked at the Arranger Track‘s primary function, which is to enable you to play through an existing project in a non-linear fashion. This is achieved by defining time-based sections of the Project Window called Events; they can be of any length, can overlap and, helpfully, can also be named (verse 1, chorus 2, bridge, breakdown and so forth). The Arranger Track then allows you to create ‘Chains’ that sequence these Events in any order you like (including repeats). You can define multiple Arranger Chains and can ‘flatten’ a Chain to create a conventional linear project if required.

The ability to experiment with different arrangements without the fuss of manual copying, moving and pasting can obviously be incredibly useful in the studio, but as the Arranger Track’s Events (song sections) can be triggered by key commands and/or MIDI events, it’s a really useful live improvisation tool.

Key Performance

The main screenshot shows an example project: I’ve added an Arranger Track and set up seven different Arranger Events that each define a musical section. Note that I’ve named the sections for ease of reference and have included a number in each name — more on that in a moment.

Key commands can trigger Arranger Events, with numbering based on the Event order in the Inspector panel.While you can see an Arranger Chain, it’s actually the lower half of the Arranger Track’s Inspector Panel that we’re most interested in. This lists each of the Arranger Events I’ve created. Internally (it’s not displayed in the GUI), Cubase numbers these Events from top to bottom (Arranger Event 1, Arranger Event 2 and so on), and I’ve made sure the numbers I’ve used in my Event names correspond to that numbering. Here’s why...

Having created some Arranger Events, open the Key Commands dialogue box and navigate to the Arranger section. You will see the options to assign key commands to as many as 20 different Arranger Events — and here they are all numbered according to Cubase’s scheme. My suggestion above to include numbered names for your Events makes it much easier to work in this section!

Now choose a suitable set of key combinations to trigger each Arranger Event. In the screenshot, I’ve used the number keys that correspond to the events, as they’re really easy to find on a QWERTY keyboard during a live performance. The downside, of course, is that some commands (mainly for tool selection) are already assigned to some of these keys by default, and you have to override these, though you could, if you wish, save different key-command preferences for studio and live use. How simple/complex you need your trigger Key Commands to be amidst the chaos of the average gig is something I’ll leave up to you!

Universal Remote

Triggering can also be achieved via an external MIDI controller.The Key Command option works a treat, but if you have a suitable MIDI controller — something with a bank of drum pads would be ideal — you can use this instead. In the screenshot example, the eight drum pads of my Novation Impulse MIDI controller keyboard are set up in a Cubase Generic Remote device, which is easy to configure: from the Devices/Device Setup menu, select the Remote Devices category and then hit the ‘+’ button (top-left) to add a new device. I selected Generic Remote and configured the MIDI in/out ports to point to the Impulse.

For clarity in the screenshot, I deleted all the default mappings and have simply created eight new entries, one for each of the eight drum pads. The MIDI Learn option can be used to link the Note On event from each pad to the appropriate entry in the top half of the dialogue. Note that I’ve also had to ensure that the R (receive) flag is set in the Flags column (click on the entry and a pop-up menu choice allows you to do this for each pad).

Commands can be specified for each controller via pop-up menus in the Device Setup dialogue box.In the lower half of the dialogue, I’ve set each pad to execute a Command (in the device column) and specified that to be an Arranger command (in the Channel/Category column). With this done, in the Value/Action column you’re given options to set each pad to trigger playback of up to 20 Arranger Events (exactly as for the Key Commands). All these settings can be selected by clicking in the appropriate cell of the table and choosing from the pop-up menus that appear.

Once you press Apply, all settings should become active, although it’s good practice to Export the settings to an XML file for safe keeping. If all has gone to plan, your MIDI controller should now cue the corresponding Arranger Event in your Project just as for the Key Commands. While my example used drum pads, you could just as easily dedicate a spare octave or two on a MIDI keyboard if that’s all you have available. Another option would be a dedicated MIDI floorboard if you like to keep both hands free.

Out Of The Loop

Whether via Key Commands or MIDI control, once you hit one of the physical triggers, playback of the corresponding Arranger Event will begin. Unless you trigger another Event, or stop playback, that Arranger Event will simply loop, which is great for extended bits of improvisation over your Cubase backing.

The Stop settings allows you to configure how quickly the next ‘cued’ Arranger Event takes over from the one currently playing.Exactly what happens when you trigger a further Arranger Event depends on the Stop setting (located at the bottom of the Arranger Track Inspector Panel). The default setting is ‘End’. In this mode, the playback of the currently playing Arranger Event will complete before any newly triggered Event takes over. This allows you to ‘cue up’ the next change and Cubase simply keeps everything in sync. There are other options though; in similar fashion to the Groove Agent plug-in, you can choose between 4 bar, 2 bar, 1 bar and 1 beat as the resolution for the switching.

There are a couple of practical points worth noting. First, given that the current Arranger Event will just loop in the absence of other instructions, it’s probably good practice to extend your ‘ending’ Arranger Event into a number of empty bars beyond the last note(s) played. This gives you a little slack to stop playback. Second, while triggering Arranger Events in this fashion means your live performance arrangements can be more fluid, it doesn’t provide you with a means of mixing and matching individual loops on the fly in the same way that (for example) Novation’s Launchpad does.

However, if you do want to take things up a level, you could always add a few ‘mute track’ MIDI controllers to your Generic Remote configuration, and control send levels, panning and plug-in parameters via MIDI too. For even greater control, you can then drop individual tracks in/out as specific Arranger Events are in playback.

Finally, it’s worth noting that your Generic Remote configuration is a system-specific setup. That means that you can load each project in your live set in turn as required, and your Arranger Event triggers will simply line themselves up numerically with the corresponding Arranger Events in each project.

 

Published July 2017

The 2017 NAMM Show (Highlight Video)

Triggering Live Loops With Cubase's Groove Agent SE

By John Walden

Screen 1: A combination of Groove Agent SE and the Chord Pads feature can make live loop triggering possible in Cubase.

Live loop triggering may not be Cubase’s raison d’être, but it can be done...

Last month, I demonstrated how to use Cubase’s Arranger to trigger pre-configured song sections on the fly, whether in a gig setting or to improvise a performance of a particular song/project in the studio. This Arranger Track approach is perhaps best suited to triggering complete song sections, but what if short loops are more your thing? What if you want to layer different loops on the fly? Step forward Groove Agent SE!

GA SE Into The Abyss

GA SE, bundled with Cubase, is an easily overlooked gem. Its primary role is as a virtual drum instrument, but, as a number of the kit presets show, GA SE’s pads can also be used to trigger samples of all sorts — including audio loops. As you can also create your own ‘kits’, with different samples on each pad, there’s nothing to stop you building a complete GA SE kit comprising only audio loops.

To start from scratch, create a new Instrument track with an instance of GA SE. By default, this should give you a Beat Agent kit with no samples loaded; you just drop your loop samples onto a selection of the Instrument pads. There are eight banks of 16 pads, so you’re unlikely to run out of slots, though, as I’ll explain, you may run out of fingers! The default bank (bank 3) is a good place to start; MIDI note triggers start at an easy-to-remember C1, and extend up to D#2. If you intend to use an external MIDI controller with drum pad triggers, rather than a keyboard, you’ll need to match the MIDI note mapping to GA SE.

Audio loops can be dragged and dropped onto pads from the Project window, MediaBay or your OS’s file browser. Note that exactly where you drop a sample on a pad (top, middle or bottom) changes the way the sample is handled on import. A set of related audio loops can be imported as a single operation; simply select all the samples, drag them and hover the mouse over the lower third of the first empty pad to be used. Releasing the mouse button will place one sample onto each of a consecutive set of empty pads — very slick, quick and easy! One thing that’s worth noting is that you can drag-and-drop to create new kits and you can edit them, all while your Cubase project is playing back. Another thing to note is that if you use the scissors tool to split out a shorter section of a loop on the Project page, and then drag this region to GA SE, the sample start/end markers will match those of the region. So you can easily, say, trim out a kick or snare drum from a loop and assign it to a key via GA SE, without ever halting playback.

Sample Behaviour

GA SE offers a huge range of editing options for samples, but when working with loops the main options you’ll want to consider are those in the Samples tab. As shown at the bottom-left of Screen 1 (above), I’ve set the playback mode to Until Release. This forces your loop to play for as long as you hold down the MIDI trigger note. The Sync switch is linked to the Key On Del(ay) setting and can be thought of as a sort of real-time quantise. However, unless you set a very short bar division (for example, 1/32nd), it can make playing your loops feel a little unresponsive (I’ve therefore turned it off here). In the lower-right area, I’ve set the AudioWarp and Sync settings to Music and Tempo respectively. This combination simply means that your audio loop will be tempo matched to the project’s global tempo. But whether GA SE gets this right depends on GA SE’s ability to extract accurate tempo information from each of the original files. If things aren’t sync’ing nicely you can adjust the original tempo setting once the file has been imported, but it’s worth noting that life’s much easier if you get it right on import. The MediaBay offers the option for re-checking the original tempo of a loop, if required, prior to import.

Trigger Happy?

That can be enough to start playing: you simply start triggering loops in any combination you like and (the accuracy of your playing aside) they should stay in sync. Note that triggering is velocity sensitive, so you can also use your playing dynamics to adjust the mix balance between the various loops in your set.

I mentioned earlier that there are some cons, though, and one limitation will soon become obvious to anyone who’s used a dedicated ‘live’ loop-triggering device such as Novation’s Launchpad: loop playback doesn’t ‘hold’. This means that, rather than hitting (and then releasing) a note to trigger a loop, with playback continuing until you hit that same note again, with the GA SE setup I’ve described you must hold the note for as long as you wish the loop to play. In practice, when you just want three or four loops playing at the same time, this is no big deal, but by the time you get to seven or eight loops, it can start to feel like a game of tabletop Twister! As we’re trying to squeeze a function out of GA SE that it wasn’t really designed for, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by that. Nonetheless, Cubase’s Chord Pad feature gives us a workaround. I wrote about the Chord Pads back in SOS May 2015 (http://sosm.ag/may15-cubase — though it’s since been refined somewhat). When this is activated on a track, you can trigger even complex chords from a single MIDI note.

Screen 2: By combining the various Chord Pad options, you can use a Pad to trigger useful combinations of your GA SE loops from a single MIDI note.One user option for the Chord Pad feature is to define exactly which MIDI note combinations are triggered by each Chord Pad. You do this by right-clicking on a Pad and using the ‘Assign Pad from MIDI input’ option (see Screen 2); hit some notes on your MIDI keyboard and the Chord Pad ‘learns’ them. You should then also disable the ‘Adaptive Voicing’ option and then engage the ‘Lock’ option for each Pad; with this done, only the notes you have linked to the Pad will be played when you trigger it.

The trick is to set up a few Chord Pads with note combinations that trigger ‘good’ combinations of your GA SE loops, giving you a single finger trigger for those multiple loops. Providing you set the Chord Pad triggers to work in a different note range to that which GA SE is using for the individual loops (you do this in the Remote Control tab via the Pads Remote Range in the Chord Pad editor), then you get the best of both worlds: triggers for individual loops and, using the Chord Pads, triggers for particular loop combinations. Do note that Cubase will still try to work out the harmonic relationship between the various notes within your ‘chord’ —you just have to ignore the chord labels that it generates.

Screen 3: The Pads Remote Range should be set so it doesn’t clash with your GA SE pad triggers. You can also engage the Latch Chords option to reduce the chance of broken fingers!

Holding On

As shown in Screen 3, the Chord Pad section has one further setting that, rather temptingly, suggests it might solve another limitation of our GA SE-based loop-triggering tool — the Latch Chords toggle. As mentioned earlier, a dedicated tool like Novation’s Launchpad ‘holds’ a loop active until you hit the trigger again; you don’t have to leave a finger on it all the time you want the loop to play. The Chord Pad’s ‘Latch Chords’ option sounds like it might offer something similar, and it does... but with the catch that, with ‘Latch Chords’ engaged, you can only ‘latch’ one Chord Pad at a time. As soon as you press another Pad, the previous one is toggled off. That’s not a huge compromise, though, as this behaviour allows you to ‘hold’ a single Chord Pad (which, in turn, ‘holds’ a set of your GA SE loops) while, at the same time, you can drop other individual loops in/out via the GA SE note triggers. And with this approach, our fingers don’t have to do quite so much dancing!

All Together Now

OK, so this GA SE approach to loop triggering might lack some of the bells and whistles offered by a dedicated (software or hardware) live looper setup, but if you like to keep everything ‘in house’ Cubase will get you up and running. And you can, of course, combine last month’s Arranger Track approach with the GA SE loop triggering I’ve described here.

There are some other possibilities to investigate in future workshops, though. For instance, given that all the triggers used can be derived from MIDI data, you could record that MIDI input so that you can edit the ‘performance’ later. However, if you want to capture an audio version of your performance, perhaps as a multitrack audio session that might later be mixed elsewhere, things aren’t quite so simple. Another avenue to investigate is what GA SE can do with MIDI loops, rather than audio ones: GA SE offers some really useful facilities for sync’ing playback, and you could, if you put your mind to it, build something quite special in GA SE for live performance. Anyway, all this relates to the Cubase and VSTi audio routing system, and that will have to be a topic for another article on another day! 

Published August 2017