Steinberg Cubase 5 Operation Manual

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MIDI processing and quantizing
Making your settings permanent
The settings described in the chapter “MIDI realtime para-
meters and effects” on page 305 do not change the MIDI 
events themselves, but work like a “filter”, affecting the 
music on playback. Therefore, you may want to make them 
permanent, i.e. convert them to “real” MIDI events, for ex-
ample to transpose a track and then edit the transposed 
notes in a MIDI editor. For this, you can use two com-
mands from the MIDI menu:
“Freeze MIDI...

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MIDI processing and quantizing
2.Set the locators to encompass the part.
Simply select the part and choose Locators to Selection from the Trans-
port menu (or use the corresponding key command, by default [P]).
3.Make sure the track holding the part is selected in the 
Track list.
4.Select Merge MIDI in Loop.
5.In the dialog that appears, activate the desired effect 
options, make sure that Erase Destination is activated and 
click OK.
Now a new part is created on the same track, containing the...

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MIDI processing and quantizing
Dissolving parts into separate pitches
The Dissolve Part function can also scan MIDI parts for 
events of different pitches, and distribute the events into 
new parts on new tracks, one for each pitch. This is useful 
when the different pitches are not used in a melodic con-
text, but rather for separating different sounds (e.g. MIDI 
drum tracks or sampler sound FX tracks). By dissolving 
such parts, you can work with each sound individually, on 
a separate track....

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MIDI processing and quantizing
You can specify a gap or overlap for this function with the 
“Legato Overlap” setting in the Preferences (Editing–MIDI 
page).
When using Legato with this setting, each note will be extended to end 
5 ticks before the next note.
When you activate “Legato Mode: Selected Only”, the 
length of the note will be adjusted so that it reaches the 
next selected note, allowing you e.g. to only apply Legato 
to your bass line (when playing on a keyboard).
Fixed Lengths
This...

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MIDI processing and quantizing
OK and Cancel
Clicking OK performs the automatic delete according to 
the rules set up. Clicking Cancel closes the dialog without 
deleting notes.
Restrict Polyphony
Selecting this item opens a dialog in which you can spec-
ify how many “voices” should be used (for the selected 
notes or parts). Restricting the polyphony this way is use-
ful when you have an instrument with limited polyphony 
and want to make sure all notes will be played. The effect 
is achieved by...

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MIDI processing and quantizing
Extract MIDI Automation
This is an extremely useful function as it allows you to 
quickly and easily convert the continuous controllers of 
your recorded MIDI parts into MIDI track automation data, 
making them available for editing in the Project window. 
Proceed as follows:
1.Select the desired MIDI part containing the continuous 
controller data.
2.Select “Extract MIDI Automation”. (This command is 
also available on the Key Editor context menu.)
The controller data...

26
The MIDI editors 

338
The MIDI editors
Introduction
There are several ways to edit MIDI in Cubase. You can 
use the tools and functions in the Project window for 
large-scale editing, or the functions on the MIDI menu to 
process MIDI parts in various ways (see “What is affected 
by the MIDI functions?” on page 326). For hands-on 
graphical editing of the contents of MIDI parts, you use the 
MIDI editors:
The Key Editor is the default MIDI editor, presenting 
notes graphically in an intuitive piano roll-style grid.
The...

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The MIDI editors
Handling several parts
When you open a MIDI editor with several parts (or a MIDI 
track containing several parts) selected, you might find it 
somewhat hard to get an overview of the different parts 
when editing.
For such cases the editor toolbar features a few functions 
to make working with multiple parts easier and more com-
prehensive:
The Part List menu lists all parts that were selected when 
you opened the editor (or all parts on the track, if no parts 
were selected), and...

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The MIDI editors
The Key Editor – Overview 
The toolbar
As in other windows, the toolbar contains tools and vari-
ous settings. You can specify which toolbar items should 
be shown and store/recall different toolbar configurations 
– see “Using the Setup options” on page 471. 
The info line
The info line shows information about selected MIDI 
notes. You can edit all values on the info line using regular 
value editing (see “Editing on the info line” on page 348 
for details). Length and position...