Steinberg Cubase 4 Getting Started Manual

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Tutorial 1: Recording audio
5.Make sure “Cycle” is activated, set the left locator to 2 
and the right locator to 18.
This will loop or cycle between bars 2 and 18.
6.On the Transport panel, make sure “Mix (MIDI)” is se-
lected for the “Cycle Record Mode”.
This will allow us to record the electric guitar, and as each cycle repeats 
a new take will be created. We will then choose the best take to keep as 
our guitar line.
7.Activate the Record Enable and Monitor buttons on 
the “Elec Guitar” track.
8.Click the “L” button on the Transport panel once. 
This will make sure we start recording at the left locator.
9.Click the “Record” button on the Transport panel.
As you record the guitar, let the cycle repeat three times so we have 
three different guitar takes.
10.Click “Stop” when you’re finished. We’ve just re-
corded three different guitar takes. Now let’s figure out 
how to select the best sounding one.
Selecting different takes
1.Right-click on the new guitar audio event that we just 
recorded and choose a take from the “Set to Region” sub-
menu. 
Cubase has recorded all of the passes we made when we were record-
ing in loop mode (Cycle Recording). These passes are called “Takes”. In 
our example we have three different guitar takes. We can pick between 
them and choose which one sounds best.
2.Listen to the different takes and when you are done, 
choose “Take 1”.
Stacked recording
Stacked recording is very similar to cycle recording but with 
one difference – you can see the “Takes” that you record all 
the time instead of them being hidden underneath.
1.Create a new “Mono” track.
2.Re-name the track “Guitar 2”.
3.On the Transport panel, select the Cycle Record 
Mode “Stacked”.
The Cycle Record Mode pop-up menu.
4.Activate the Record Enable and Monitor buttons on 
the track “Guitar 2”.
5.Click the Record button on the Transport panel.
!Load the tutorial called “Cycle Recording 2” found in 
the “Tutorial 1” folder.
Cycle Record Mode
Current takeAvailable takes 
						

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Tutorial 1: Recording audio
6.When you are done recording, click “Stop”.
You should see the recorded audio events appearing below each other 
as separate takes.
7.Click the lower border of the “Guitar 2” track and drag 
downwards to resize it larger.
This allows you to see the audio takes much better.
8.Deactivate the Record Enable and Monitor buttons.
9.Open the Preferences dialog (Editing–Audio page) 
and make sure that the option “Treat Muted Audio Events 
like Deleted” is activated.
10.On the toolbar, select the Mute tool.
This will allow us to switch between our stacked recorded takes.
11.You will see three takes. The bottom two are muted 
and the top one that is green colored (Take 1) is the one 
that will currently play.
12.Mute “Take 1” and un-mute “Take 2”.
This allows “Take 2” to be heard. Notice that “Take” 2 is now colored 
green.
13.You can do the same for “Take 3”.
Continue to the following chapter, as we will show you 
how to edit what we’ve recorded using some of the tools.
!Load the tutorial called “Stacked Recording” found 
in the “Tutorial 1” folder. 
						

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Tutorial 2: Editing audio 
						

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Tutorial 2: Editing audio
Event operations
In this section we’ll learn how to edit events or parts. This 
includes rename, resize, split, glue, move, copy, repeat, 
mute, erase and adding a fade.
Renaming
If we look at the audio events that we recorded earlier, we 
notice that the bass track has an audio event on it called 
“Audio 01_01”. This is because the name of the track was 
originally “Audio 01” and the suffix “_01” means that it is 
the 1st audio file to be recorded on the track. The second 
audio file would be called “Audio 01_02”.
Naming your audio files keeps your project clean and easy 
to understand. Let’s rename “Audio 01_01” to “Bass”:
1.Choose the Object Selection tool.
2.Click on the event “Audio 01_01”.
3.Make sure “Show Event Infoline” is activated on the 
toolbar.
The “Event Infoline” gives us detailed information about 
an object or objects that are currently selected in the 
event display.
4.Change “Audio 01_01” to “Bass” underneath the 
word “File”.
This changes the audio file’s name directly on the hard drive – easy!
5.Notice that our audio event now says “Bass”.
Resizing
You resize an event by adjusting the start and/or end of 
the event. Used in combination with the split tool this is 
usually all the editing you’ll need.
1.Choose the Object Selection tool.
2.Click on the event you wish to resize.
In our case let’s change the “Bass” event.
3.Position the cursor over one of the squares at the bot-
tom right or bottom left of the event. Click and adjust the 
“Bass” event so that it lines up with “Elec Guitar_01”.
!Load the project called “Event Operations” found in 
the “Tutorial 2” folder.
The name has changed from “Audio 01_01” to “Bass”.
There is extra space on ei-
ther side of the Bass audio 
event that we don’t want.
White squares appear on 
the bottom left and bottom 
right of the event. Resize 
the event with these. 
						

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Tutorial 2: Editing audio
Splitting
Splitting is used to cut events. You can split or cut an event 
wherever you want or split them evenly to bars and beats. 
Splitting with “Snap” off
Splitting with “Snap” off allows you to cut anywhere with-
out locking to any kind of reference like bars and beats.
1.Choose the Split tool.
2.Make sure “Snap” is off (not highlighted).
Snap allows you to edit to various time frames. The most common one is 
bars and beats. Meaning you can cut exactly to the bar with “Snap” 
turned on. With it turned off you can cut anywhere. See more about 
“Snap” in the chapter “The Project window” in the Operation Manual.
3.You can now split or cut the audio anywhere by click-
ing on the event.
4.Undo your actions by choosing “Undo Split” from the 
Edit menu as many times as you used the Split tool.
Make sure there are no splits in the “Bass” event any more.
Splitting with “Snap” on
Having “Snap” on allows you to split or cut to a time refer-
ence. For example, if you want to cut the “Elec Guitar” 
track to bars or beats.
1.Choose the Split tool.
2.Make sure “Snap” is on.
Snap allows you to edit to various time frames. The most common one is 
bars and beats. Meaning you can cut exactly to the bar with “Snap” 
turned on. With it turned off you can cut anywhere. See more about 
“Snap” in the chapter “The Project window” in the Operation Manual.
3.If you are having trouble seeing anything beyond the 
“Tool Buttons”, right-click in the toolbar (the top bar that 
the “Tool Buttons” are on).
This allows you to change what you see at the top of the Project window. 
Customization is in the heart of Cubase.
4.Choose “Default” so that if you changed anything it 
will return to the default settings.
Here are the splits that were made to the Bass event.
There is more to see but your screen resolu-
tion may prevent you from seeing everything. Right-click in 
the toolbar. 
						

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Tutorial 2: Editing audio
5.Next, right click again and choose “Automation Mode” 
so that the automation tools are hidden from view.
Now we can see enough for us to continue on with the Split tool.
6.With most of the snap features in view, choose “Grid” 
from the Snap mode pop-up menu to the right of the Snap 
button.
This means we’ll be snapping to a grid.
7.Next choose “Bar” as the “Grid Type”.
This means you will split to bars.
8.You can now split the “Elec Guitar_01” event pre-
cisely to the bar. Cut on bars 6, 10 and 14.
Splitting with [Alt]/[Option]
1.Choose the Split tool.
2.Hold down [Alt]/[Option] and click on the bass event 
at bar 3 and the length of the split will be repeated until 
the end of the event.
You can try this with “Snap” on or off.
3.Select “Undo Split” from the Edit menu and return the 
bass to the way it was.
Gluing or joining events
Using the Glue tool allows you to join events together that 
have been cut using the Split tool.
1.Choose the Glue tool.
2.Glue together the split events in the “Elec Guitar” 
track by clicking just before each split.
Let’s make sure we glue all of them. 
						

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Tutorial 2: Editing audio
Moving events
1.Choose the Object Selection tool.
2.Move all the events in the Project window from bar 2 
to bar 1. Click and hold the mouse on an empty area of the 
Project window. Drag to create a selection of all the 
events. When you release the mouse button, all the events 
will be selected.
3.With all the events selected, click and drag them to 
bar 1.
4.Click on an empty area of the Project window so that 
no event is selected.
Copying events
Copying can be used to copy an event to another area in 
the Project window. If you want to make several copies in 
one go, see “Repeating” on page 38.
Using Copy and Paste
1.To copy an audio event, click on the desired event and 
choose “Copy” from the Edit menu.
In our case let’s choose the “Elec Guitar_01” event.
2.Position the cursor at the point in the project that you 
wish the copy to be made.
We’ll put our cursor at bar 17.
3.Make sure you click on the track that you want the 
copied event to be copied to. Choose “Paste” from the 
Edit menu.
It is possible that you may have another track selected. If so the “Paste” 
command would paste it to a different track. Always note the track you 
have selected before choosing “Paste”.
4.Now we have two guitar events. Note that we also 
copied the takes that were on the guitar track. We can use 
these later.
Using the [Alt]/[Option] key
1.Choose the Object Selection tool and hold down [Alt]/
[Option].
2.We are going to copy the “Guitar 2” events. Remem-
ber that there are three events since we used stacked re-
cording to record them. Select all of the “Guitar 2” events 
by clicking and dragging as described above. 
						

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Tutorial 2: Editing audio
3.Click and hold the selected events and drag to the po-
sition you wish the copy to be made. Then release the 
mouse button.
Don’t worry about the “Scissor” icon that appears. As soon as you click 
and hold on the event you are copying it switches to an arrow with a “+” 
sign indicating that you are copying.
Repeating
Repeats are great for repeating something over and over 
directly after the event you want to repeat.
1.Click the bass event with the Object Selection tool.
2.Choose “Repeat” from the Edit menu.3.In the dialog that opens, choose how many copies you 
wish to make by increasing the “Count” field.
You can choose to select “Shared Copies” if you want. 
Shared copies allow you to make aliases to the original 
event. This means that if you make changes to the original 
event (such as processing or editing), the copies will re-
flect those changes. This is a big time saver!
4.Click “OK” and the repeat will be placed directly after 
the Bass event.
Muting
Muting an event stops you from hearing just that event. 
You may want to mute events on a track so that the track 
continues to play except for the events you mute. Note 
that this is different from muting a track.
1.Choose the Mute tool.
2.Click on the event you wish to mute. 
						

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Tutorial 2: Editing audio
3.To un-mute an event, click on the muted event with the 
Mute tool again and it returns to normal.
If you drag with the Mute tool you can mute a number of 
events at a time. Equally this will un-mute events that are 
muted.
Erasing
1.Choose the Erase tool.
2.Click on the events you wish to erase.
Adding a fade
You can add a fade to an event to give the effect that the 
event is fading in or fading out.
1.Choose the Object Selection tool.
2.Click on the event you wish to add a fade to.3.Click on one of the blue triangles and move it so that a 
fade appears.
4.For more advanced fades you can double-click on the 
fade area to open up the fade dialog. See the chapter 
“Fades and Crossfades” in the Operation Manual for more 
information.
Event envelopes
An envelope is a volume curve for an audio event. This al-
lows you to adjust the volume of the event over time.
1.Select the Pencil tool.
When you move the Pencil tool over an audio event, a small volume curve 
symbol is shown next to the tool.
2.Click on the “Elec Guitar_01” event and notice that an 
envelope point appears.
Clicking either high or low on the event will change the event volume to 
either loud of soft.
Notice the blue triangles that appear at the top left and top 
right of the event.
Double-click here to open the fade dialog. 
						

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Tutorial 2: Editing audio
3.Clicking further on will create more points.
As you create more and more envelope points, you are adjusting the vol-
ume of the event over time. The waveform reflects the changes you make.
Processing audio
Cubase has the ability to make changes to the audio in 
more ways than splitting and resizing. You can normalize, 
reverse, pitch shift and time stretch, to name a few. For a 
full explanation on processing audio, see the chapter “Au-
dio processing and Functions” in the Operation Manual.
You can process the whole audio event or use the Range 
Selection tool and select just the section of audio you want.
Let’s show you how to Normalize and Reverse an audio 
event.
Normalize
Normalize raises the volume of the audio to the desired 
amount. Usually you adjust the slider to “0” dB or “-1” dB 
so that you get the maximum volume without clipping your 
audio. A common use for Normalizing is to raise the level 
of audio that was recorded at too low an input level.
ÖPlease note that in some situations, this function may 
lead to distortion. Therefore, you should use it carefully 
and listen to the audio material afterwards, to make sure it 
sounds as intended.1.With the Object Selection tool, click on the audio 
event you wish to change.
You can also use the Range Selection tool and select the section of au-
dio you want.
2.On the Audio menu–Process submenu, select “Nor-
malize”.
3.Adjust the slider to the amount you desire. A setting of 
“0” db or “-1” db is common.
4.Click the Process button and your audio is now nor-
malized.
For a description of the “More” and “Preview” buttons, see the chapter 
“Audio Processing and Functions” in the Operation Manual.
!Load the project called “Event Operations 2” found 
in the “Tutorial 2” folder. This project has all the event 
operation changes you’ve learned so far.
!Load the project called “Processing Audio” found in 
the “Tutorial 2” folder.