Steinberg Cubase Essential 4 Getting Started French Version Manual

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Tutorial 3: Recording and editing MIDI
Introduction
In this chapter, we are going to add some more instru-
ments to our song. In the previous tutorials, we have re-
corded audio. Now we are going to record using MIDI.
There are two ways in which we can have MIDI sounds 
appear in Cubase Essential: via virtual instruments, that is 
a synthesizer inside your computer or through the use of a 
traditional hardware keyboard.
This tutorial will focus on virtual instruments.
Creating an Instrument Track...

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Tutorial 3: Recording and editing MIDI
6.If you want “HALionOne” to stay always on top while 
you are working you can right-click on the bar near the top 
of the instrument and select “Always on Top”.
Browsing sounds
We are now going to load sounds into our virtual instrument 
“HALionOne”.
1.Click the “Preset” button in “HALionOne” and choose 
“Load Preset” from the pop-up menu.
2.In the “Category” section, make sure only “Strings” is 
selected by deselecting anything else and clicking on 
“Strings”....

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Tutorial 3: Recording and editing MIDI
5.Activate the Record Enable and Monitor buttons on 
the track and play some notes on your MIDI keyboard.
You should see and hear the MIDI signals coming in to the right of the 
track.
Setting the track to Record Enable lets Cubase Essential know that you 
want to record on this track. You can have many tracks Record Enabled 
at a time.
6.Set the left locator to bar “1” and the right locator to 
bar “57”.
7.Make sure Cycle is turned off.
We are going to record...

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Tutorial 3: Recording and editing MIDI
Cycle playback
Cubase Essential has the ability to loop or cycle a section 
of your project. To set the cycle location you need to use 
the left and right locator.
1.On the Transport panel, set the left locator to “1” and 
the right locator to “5”.
This tells Cubase Essential that we want to loop or cycle between bars 1 
and 5. Meaning we will have a 4 bar loop since the end of bar 4 is the be-
ginning of bar 5.
2.Make sure that the Cycle button is activated....

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Tutorial 3: Recording and editing MIDI
6.Activate the “AUTO Q” button. This is the automatic 
quantize function which will lock our MIDI to the beat as 
we record it. Great if we play off time a bit.
7.Next we have to set the value of our quantize. This is 
so Cubase Essential knows what to lock our MIDI notes 
to. Choose “1/8” notes from the “Quantize Type” pop-up 
menu.
8.Activate the Record Enable and Monitor buttons on 
the “Drums” track.
9.Click the “L” button on the Transport panel once. 
This...

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Tutorial 3: Recording and editing MIDI
2.We want the song to start off with hi-hat and kick 
drum. Erase the snare by clicking once and holding the 
mouse while dragging a selection over the snare drum. 
Make your selection from bars 1 through 8.
A common term for this is to “lasso” the notes.
3.Press the [Delete] key to delete the snare notes.
4.Zoom in on the bar 1 and delete all the hit-hat notes 
with the Erase tool of the Key Editor so that you only hear 
1/4 notes.
5.Now erase all the other...

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Tutorial 3: Recording and editing MIDI
The Controller lane
The “Controller Lane” allows us to add in or modify MIDI 
data such as velocity and controller information. The most 
common use for this is to edit velocity, pitch bend and 
controller numbers for things like filter etc.
If you find that the MIDI velocity is too loud or quiet on cer-
tain notes, you can view and edit them at the bottom of the 
Key Editor.
1.Make sure you can see the Controller Lane by clicking 
on the “Controller Lane...

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Tutorial 4: Working with loops 

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Tutorial 4: Working with loops
Loop Browser
The Loop Browser allows you to have a single window 
that gives you quick and easy access to all your loops. In 
the Loop Browser you can search for audio files, use tags 
to categorize, audition the audio in the open project’s 
tempo and a whole lot more.
Adding loops
1.Select “Open Loop Browser” from the Media menu.
2.Once the Loop Browser has finished scanning your 
hard disk(s) for loop files, they will be displayed in the 
Viewer section.
3.Selecting a...

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Tutorial 4: Working with loops
Making copies
Now that we have our loop let’s copy it using the “Repeat” 
function.
1.Click on the loop event in the Project window to select it.
2.Choose “Repeat” from the Edit menu.
3.In the dialog that opens, set the “Count” field to “13”.
4.Click “OK”. The loop will be copied 13 times and all 
repeats will be placed one after the other.
Insert into Project
We are now going to add one more loop. This time we’ll 
use the “Insert into Project” command.
1.Create a new...