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

Korg Monologue and Volca Kick: An Earth-Shaking, All-Analog Bass and Rhythm Section

Cubase: Rendering Multi-channel Instruments To Audio

By John Walden

Groove Agent SE allows you to activate multiple output channels and route each drum sound to a different output.

Want to convert your multi-channel instruments into audio? Here’s how to do it in Cubase.

VST Instruments are wonderful things, but sometimes converting them to good old-fashioned audio is helpful. When using several heavy-duty virtual instruments it’s easy to push your computer beyond its CPU, RAM and disk-streaming comfort zones; converting your virtual instruments’ outputs to audio tracks when you’re ready to mix can free up resources. Alternatively, when porting the project to another system (be it a Cubase one or another DAW) for mixing, you can’t guarantee access to the same instrument plug-ins, and providing the audio files is the next best thing. And when archiving your project, it makes sense to include a version of everything in as future proof a format as possible — at present there’s nothing more future proof than audio files.

Going All Out

When the VSTi has only a single stereo output, the process is fairly straightforward, but if you’ve enabled multiple output channels, things can become more complex. Note that there are a number of different possible approaches, and their availability depends on which version of Cubase you’re using.

To illustrate the different approaches here, I’ll use Steinberg’s Groove Agent SE (GA SE, which is bundled with most versions of Cubase), but the same principles apply to lots of multi-out VSTis, such as NI Kontakt 5, Toontrack EZ Drummer and Steinberg’s Halion Sonic SE. Like most virtual drum instruments, GA SE features its own internal mixing environment, where you can balance and process the individual kit pieces before mixing them and outputting everything on a stereo channel. But many users prefer to do their drum mixing in Cubase’s main MixConsole, where they have access to all their favourite plug-ins and can automate the levels of kit pieces and route them to send effects, just like any other audio source. To make this possible, activate GA SE’s additional audio outputs using a pop-up menu, opened via the small downward arrow icon (located top-right of the VSTi’s window). In the first screenshot, I’ve activated outputs 2 to 9 as well as output pair 1 (the main stereo output).

Output busses can be used to route audio from a VSTi’s output to a stereo Audio Track, where it can be recorded in real-time. I’ve shown a single example here, but with lots of VSTi output channels the MixConsole can get messy, and you don’t get much control over the track layout.Once activated, go to the MixConsole, where it’s quick and easy to rename these output channels to something more meaningful (the edited names will then shown in the Activate Outputs pop-up menu). Next, in GA SE’s internal Mixer, set the routing of each drum/mic to the appropriate GA SE output channel. If all goes to plan, when you play back your GA SE MIDI track, the sounds should appear on the appropriate channel in the MixConsole.

Recording Via Groups

So far, so good: our VSTi multi-channel audio is routed to suitably labelled tracks in the MixConsole. But if we want to ‘capture’ each channel as separate audio files, how would we go about it? One thing we can’t do is use Cubase’s Track Freeze. While track freezing is useful in relieving some system resources, it doesn’t allow you to create separate files for each of the VSTi’s output channels. Cubase doesn’t allow you to directly record the audio from a VSTi onto these output channels, either. Indeed, the relevant MixConsole channels don’t feature record-enable buttons — only the default VSTi stereo output channel has one, and that’s to enable MIDI recording.

MixConsole’s Routing panel.However, you can ‘capture’ the various VSTi output channels to regular Audio tracks. And, while newer versions of Cubase offer more elegant solutions, which I’ll discuss below, there’s a (slightly clunky) routing workaround for older verions. In Devices/VST Connections, create a new Output Bus for each of the additional VSTi outputs you wish to record from. The Device Port setting for each of these should be ‘Not Connected’. Then create the same number of stereo Audio Tracks. With eight GA SE VSTi output ports in use, eight new Output Busses created and eight new stereo Audio Tracks also created, things can get a bit busy in the MixConsole, so some suitable track labels are also useful at this point!

In the MixConsole’s Routing panel, set the output destination of the appropriate VSTi channel to the respective Output Bus. Then set the input of the respective stereo Audio Track to that Output Bus. Enable the Audio Track’s Monitor button and — via the Output Bus — the VSTi’s output gets routed to the Audio Track. Record-enable the Audio Track, and you can capture the VSTi output. Yep, it’s a bit of a faff... but it works!

Rendered Useful

More recent versions of Cubase Pro or Artist offer a more elegant option: Render In Place, which can create audio channels in place of all your VSTi’s active audio outputs. For our GA SE example, you’d simply select the MIDI clip and choose Edit/Render In Place. The Render Settings panel allows you to customise how the rendering is handled, but the default settings should work well enough. With the ‘dry’ render-in-place option, the VSTi’s audio is unprocessed, and any inserts and sends you’ve added to your VSTi’s output channels will be copied to the new audio tracks — so you’ll have an identical set of mixer channels, ready to be mixed or exported/archived.

This process works very well with Steinberg’s GA SE or Halion Sonic SE but, for some third-party plug-ins (and Kontakt is an example) it has a tendency to generate rather more audio tracks than you might expect! That said, such ‘bonus’ tracks will contain only empty audio clips, so they’re easy to spot and remove.

When applied to an Instrument track with multiple outputs, the Render In Place facility creates an audio track for each activated output.

Export Business

For Cubase Pro users, the Channel Batch Export feature is another option. Choosing File/Export/Audio Mixdown opens the usual Audio Export Mixdown dialogue box; the Channel Selection Panel hosts most of the options we need. Here, amongst all the other track output options you’ll see a section devoted to VST Instrument Channels, and if you expand this then all the VSTi outputs you activated will be displayed. If you then activate the Channel Batch Export option at the top of the panel, you can select as many of the VSTi output channels as you like, enabling the rendering of all the outputs in a single-pass operation.

The Channel Batch Export options.

As when creating your project’s final stereo bounce, before you hit the Export button, you can tweak some settings to define the properties of the audio that’s ‘exported’. One option worth exploring is the Naming Scheme. Via this, you can ensure that the resulting audio files — and any new Audio Tracks created, if you activate the Import Into Project option — are given memorable names. Whether for later audio-only mixing sessions, or for archive purposes, this will make life much easier.

Lessen Obsolesence

As mentioned earlier, transforming your multi-channel VSTi outputs into audio tracks can be useful for both mixing and project portability. But it’s also a sad fact of modern music technology that software instruments inevitably evolve into something new (and can’t be relied upon to play in older projects), lose links to sample long-forgotten libraries, or disappear completely with old, obsolete or broken computers. Rendering audio from your multi-channel VST instruments gives you both flexibility (for mixing) and security (for archiving). Your future self will thank you for being so well prepared! 

Published September 2017

Korg PA4X Style Play Tutorial: Chord Recognition/Scan, Memory Button

Cubase: Create Arpeggios With Chord Pads

 By John Walden

If you want more than just block chords, you need to go beyond the blue Chord Pads and green chord-variation options.

With only the most basic of keyboard skills, you can use Cubase to play convincing piano parts in real time.

In two articles back in SOS May and June 2015 I explored Cubase’s Chord Pads and Chord Assistant. The first piece explained how to use the Chord Assistant as a ‘songwriting assistant’, which suggests potentially more interesting chord sequences, and the second focused on using Chord Pads to embellish less-than-stellar piano skills (such as my own!). As I described in that piece, once you’ve configured the Chord Pads, you can use them to trigger even complex chords with a single finger; I find them incredibly useful for laying down basic chord sequences either for use with virtual instruments or with the Chord Track (explained in SOS June 2013).

Although the Chord Pads offer some very useful performance options (changing the chord voicing or adding chord tensions in real-time, for example), with the exception of the option to trigger a single MIDI pattern, all you get is ‘block’ chords, in which every note plays simultaneously. Sometimes that’s fine but, just as I like to fingerpick chords on my guitar, I’d also like to be able to play arpeggiated chords on a piano or synth. An arpeggiator MIDI plug-in such as Cubase’s Arpache 5 can help a little, but they can sound rather repetitive and for a more human-sounding result, you need to ‘play’ the arpeggios yourself... Or you would if the Chord Pads hadn’t recently been updated with Sections Player options...

One Section At A Time

Sections triggers are a static set of up to five MIDI keys that can trigger certain notes from whatever Chord Pad chord is currently active. Consequently, without having to move your hand to voice a complex chord shape, you can ‘arpeggiate’ whatever chord the current Chord Pad is set to.

If you activate the Sections option in the Players tab, the Sections (brown) and Subsections (pale yellow/green) triggers become active.

Easy Piano 101

Let’s assume you’ve already configured a series of chords in the Chord Pads zone (the screenshot shows a set of chords in the key of D minor). Open the Chord Pads Editor and select the Sections option. The GUI’s mini-keyboard will include a set of brown Sections triggers keys alongside the existing blue (the MIDI notes for triggering the Chord Pads) and green keys (the various chord modifier triggers).

You can adjust the MIDI notes used for the Sections triggers in the Player Control section of the Remote Control tab. In this example, I’ve set them to the C2-G2 range for Sections 1 to 5. Note that I’ve also defined five further triggers, termed Subsections. These appear in pale yellow/green and I’ve set them to MIDI notes A2 to E3 so they run on directly from the Sections triggers. These make some further options available, and I’ll return to these.

Under the Player Control tab of the Remote Control section, you can adjust the MIDI note numbers assigned to the Sections and Subsections triggers.

While it’s possible to make a number of adjustments to how the Sections triggers respond, things should already ‘just work’. If you hold down a Chord Pad trigger with a finger on your left hand, you can arpeggiate the chord in any pattern you like using the Sections triggers with your right hand (I’m assuming you’ve set up the MIDI notes as shown in the screenshot, above). When you change chord, again using one finger of the left hand, your right hand can continue to trigger notes (or ‘sections’ in Cubase speak) of the new chord. The Sections triggers can be played individually or in any combination you like — pressing them all together will get you back to those block chords.

Next Steps

The precise way in which the Chord Pads and Sections triggers interact can be fine-tuned. Under the Players tab of the Chord Pads Editor, once Sections is selected, clicking on the Custom button opens the dialogue box shown in the screenshot. It features four elements, each of which tweaks how the various triggers behave.

You can fine-tune how the Sections and Subsections triggers behave using the Custom options panel.The Play Modes settings allow you to adjust which trigger should be played first. With Sections selected (as in the screenshot), you trigger the Chord Pad first but it won’t play any MIDI notes until you also press one of the Sections triggers. I tend to find this the most logical arrangement, but check out the Chord Pads setting, which does the opposite, and Combination which does a bit of both. Oh, and if you don’t even want the bother of holding down that single left-hand finger on the Chord Pad trigger, tick the Latch Chord Pads box!

Whether you need to worry about the Chord Note Distribution settings depends on how many individual notes any of the chord voicings of your Chord Pads use. If all your chords have five notes or fewer (generally the case unless you’ve used the MIDI Learn option to build stacked chords), each Sections trigger will have a single note from the chord assigned to it until you run out of notes. So, for example, if the Chord Pad contains a simple three-note triad, only the first three Sections triggers will be active for that chord. But if your chord has six or more notes, these settings establish the rules for distributing the notes across the five Sections triggers. This is where the Sections terminology comes from — some of the triggers can end up with two or more notes assigned to them, and these are, in effect, ‘sections’ of the chord. Anyway, if your chords are fairly complex, these settings are worth exploring. The settings shown in the screenshot are a very simple starting point, and guarantee that the first Sections trigger only has a single note (the lowest note in the chord) assigned to it, while any ‘extra’ notes (notes six and beyond) are triggered along with the fifth note in the chord by the last trigger.

I’ve not yet worked out why the self-explanatory Mute Sections panel might be particularly useful, but if you can conceive of a use for it, it’s there. The final panel, though, is certainly useful. The Subsection Assignments allow you to duplicate your Sections triggers across a further five triggers (the yellow/green keys mentioned earlier). Perhaps the most useful thing about this is that you can apply a pitch offset. In this case I’ve set all of them to +12 semitones, which means my Subsections triggers offer me the same chord arpeggio-made-easy options but with the selected chord played an octave higher. This is great for a bit of variety, and you can mix and match between Sections and Subsections triggers if your fingers are up to the task.

Not Just Piano

As I mentioned, the combination of Chord Pads and the Sections Player makes it much easier for someone with ‘modest’ piano skills to generate more realistic-sounding piano parts. Once you get used to the Sections triggers concept, you may well find your daily five-finger piano exercises feel somewhat less urgent! However, realistic piano parts are not the only thing you can use the Sections Player for. For example, the ability to spread a full chord out into ‘sections’ could be very useful when creating orchestral string parts, and it could work particularly well if you use MIDI Learn to configure ‘stacked’ sets of chord notes spanning multiple octaves for each Chord Pad. Mind you, this would be even better if, at some stage, Steinberg took the Chord Note Distribution options a little further and allowed you to specify precisely which notes belonged to which Section trigger... and I wonder what the ability to send specific notes from a Chord Pad to different combinations of MIDI channels might then offer? This could be a very cool way to control separate orchestral sections (violins, violas, cellos, brass, woodwind, etc.) using the Sections triggers. Go on Steinberg give that one a think through and see what magic you can come up with!

Published October 2017

Tank and The Bangas Performs Oh Heart Live at Korg USA

Cubase: Vocal Timing Correction

By John Walden

Where the lead vocal and double track have obvious timing differences, the first task it to fix any timing issues in the lead part.

Vocal perfection means timing correction — and Cubase’s AudioWarp gives you the tools you need.

Just as some singers can be a little ‘pitchy’, others can find timing troublesome. And while it’s always best to get the performance right, sometimes you need to tweak vocal timing after the recording stage. Cubase’s AudioWarp gives you all the power you need to get things right, and while the process isn’t too difficult there are a few options to explore. We’ll start by getting a lead vocal to sit better with the track’s groove, and then consider how to tighten double-tracked vocals.

Guided By The Groove

There are three main options: quantise to the beat/bar grid; quantise to a groove; or adjust the timing manually. Which of these is most appropriate depends on the project’s style and the nature of the vocal part. Slower phrases may just need small manual edits so that certain words hit the beat accurately. For faster-paced phrases with more words/syllables, you might want to experiment with either or both quantise options, to see if the part can be locked more tightly to the underlying groove.

Before we start, note these few things. First, it’s easy to overdo it, so perform vocal edits with great care — try not to tamper with the ‘human’ feel of the part, unless as a deliberate effect. You’re only looking to reinforce the groove by fine-tuning the timing of those vocal transients that should have hit the rhythm but didn’t quite make it. Second, good results can mean fiddly edits, so it’s best to work on short sections rather than taking on the whole song at once. Third, working on a copy of your vocal (via Render In Place) means you can return to the original if things go pear-shaped. Finally, let your ears guide you more than your eyes — what’s right according to the grid doesn’t always sound best musically.

Lead Vocals

The first screen shows both a lead vocal and a double-track, with obvious timing differences. It’s an up-tempo project (about 190bpm) with a fairly rapid-fire vocal, so it’s worth trying to quantise the lead part. With the clip selected, either in the Lower Zone or the Sample Editor, choose Create Warp Markers via the Hitpoints tab. This will automatically generate Warp Markers that AudioWarp will use, but once you select the AudioWarp tab and can see the markers it’s a good idea to check the results manually. If required, engage the Free Warp button and add additional markers by clicking on the waveform where they’re required. Targeting both the start of words and the ends of words will give you greater control over automatic quantising and manual editing. (Don’t move any Warp Markers using Free Warp yet we’ll come to that later).

Open the Quantize Panel and you can apply some standard quantisation to the musical grid or, if your project contains a key rhythmic element, apply a ‘Groove Quantize’ (which I covered in SOS July/August 2012: http://sosm.ag/cubase-0712 and http://sosm.ag/cubase-0812). My project had a very nice tambourine groove, so I selected this part, generated Hitpoints, and engaged the Create Groove From Hitpoints button in the Hitpoints tab. The rhythmic timing of the tambourine was added as a new option in the Quantize Panel’s drop-down menu. With my lead vocal clip selected, I could choose this groove template and see/hear exactly what this did do to the timing of the vocal.

Applied to strongly rhythmic material such as drums/percussion, bass or rhythmic guitar, or keyboards, Groove Quantize can seem like magic, but good results on vocals are not a given — even if you cut the algorithm some slack by exploring the Non-Q, iQ Mode and Randomise settings, to help keep things ‘human’.

The Quantize Panel can be used to apply a groove quantise, or simply to quantise your Warp markers to the beat/bar grid.If you don’t like the results, hit Reset Quantize (bottom-left of the Quantize Panel) and try a bit of gentle tightening to the grid (with or without swing). A 16th note-based quantise, with the Non-Q and Randomize set to around 5 ticks, and the iQ Mode strength to around 10, is a good starting point. With the iQ Mode, if you press the Quantize button repeatedly as you audition the results, your Warp Markers move iteratively tighter to the grid.

Whether or not you feel groove or grid quantisation has helped, some final manual adjustments will probably be necessary. Engage Free Warp mode, and you can manually move a Warp Marker: hover over the marker until it is highlighted, and then just click and drag. When you move a Warp Marker, whether dragging it forwards or backwards, all audio between the Warp Marker and the next one you’re dragging it towards/from gets time-stretched/compressed. If your markers are few and far between, this can throw out the timing of other words — this is why we need the extra Warp Markers at the start and end of words, as discussed at the outset.

Warp Markers aren’t only for adjusting the start time of a word — you can also use them to stretch/compress words/syllables and re-position their ending (their ‘note off’ position, as it were). Often overlooked by inexperienced vocal editors, this can really help to lock a vocal to the musical groove.

Double Trouble?

Once happy with the lead vocal timing, it’s time to look at the double-tracks. You could follow the same processes described above. But once you have the lead vocal timing as a guide, I find it’s generally quicker to manually tweak the double. One feature I’d love Steinberg to add to the AudioWarp section of the Sample Editor is the option to overlay the waveforms of multiple clips with transparency between them — rather like you can in VariAudio. If this were possible, you could overlay the waveform of your doubled vocal on top of the time-corrected lead. Adjusting the Warp Markers within the double would then be much easier. You could, I suppose, use VariAudio to make such timing adjustments, but I find that a little more fiddly than using the dedicated AudioWarp tool. As shown in the main screenshot, the workaround is simply to place the lead and double-tracked vocal parts on adjacent tracks in the upper panel of the Project window. If you’ve zoomed in far enough, the alignment between the two waveforms can easily be seen, and this changes in real-time) while you adjust the Warp Markers on the double in the Lower Zone. Manual editing takes a little time but it’s a simple enough task and solid timing between the lead and double can really add the sort of polish to a track that no amount of compression, EQ and reverb can!

Vocal Harmony?

The same basic approach can be applied to stacks of backing vocals — sort the timing of one ‘lead’ backing vocal, so it fits the project’s groove, and then match the timing of the other backing vocals to that ‘master’. Perhaps the only thing to add is that just how closely you chose to match the timing of any multitrack vocal parts is a matter of personal taste and musical style. As with pitch-correction, overdo the time-correction and you’ll lose the ‘humanity’ of the performance. You can always use the Quantize Panel to add back a little random variation if you do decide you have taken things a little too far, but it’s usually better to keep some of the natural variation.