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
1.Let’s start by adding a string part to our song. From the 
Project menu–Add Track submenu, select “Instrument”.
In previous versions of Cubase Essential, you needed a MIDI track routed 
to a virtual instrument found in the “VST Instruments” window. You can still 
use this method but instrument tracks are far more convenient.
2.From the “Instrument” pop-up menu, choose “HALion-
One”, then click “OK”.
An instrument track is created below the selected track in the Project 
window.
3.Make sure the “Inspector” is shown.
4.Click in the name field of the instrument track. It should 
be the only instrument track you created, so the name 
should be “HALionOne 01”. We can double-click on this 
and change it to “Strings”.
5.Click on the “Edit Instrument” button to open the con-
trol panel for “HALionOne”.
!Load the project called “Recording MIDI 1” found in 
the “Tutorial 3” folder. 
						

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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”. In the “Sub Category” click on “Synth”. You 
have filtered the list to only show synth strings. Choose a 
string sound from the list on the right. Then click “OK”.
MIDI recording
Now that we have our sound, let’s record something. Re-
cording MIDI is very similar to recording audio, see the 
chapter “Tutorial 1: Recording audio” on page 23. 
Setting MIDI input
1.Make sure you have a MIDI keyboard connected to your 
computer either directly through USB or a MIDI interface.
See the chapter “Setting up your system” on page 13 for information on 
setting up MIDI in your computer.
2.We want to have our MIDI keyboard routed to this 
track and play “HALionOne”. Make sure the “Inspector” is 
shown so we can see our MIDI input and output routing.
3.Next, on the input routing pop-up menu, choose the 
MIDI input you wish to use. Most people leave this on “All 
MIDI Inputs” since you don’t have to worry about which in-
put is which. “All MIDI Inputs” takes the MIDI signal from 
all your inputs and routes it to this track. There are some 
cases where you wouldn’t want this but for 99% of the 
time you’ll be safe with this option selected.
4.Below the MIDI input routing pop-up menu, you can 
set the MIDI output. This is set to our virtual instrument 
“HALionOne”. If for any reason you need to change this to 
another instrument you can do this here.
!Load the project called “Recording MIDI 2” found in 
the “Tutorial 3” folder.
Right-click here to select “Always on Top”.
Category Sub Category Filtered List
The MIDI input routing pop-up menu. 
						

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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 without looping. We’ll cover MIDI cycle recording 
in the section “Cycle recording” on page 44.
8.Press [1] on the numeric keypad of your computer 
keyboard.
This will move the cursor to the left locator.
9.Click the Record button and record a few bars of 
music.
10.Click the Stop button when you are finished.
11.Turn off the Monitor and Record Enable buttons on the 
track so that we don’t hear the input or record on the track 
any more.
Congratulations! You have just created your first MIDI re-
cording in Cubase Essential. Move ahead to the next sec-
tion to learn how to play back MIDI.
MIDI playback
We are now going to learn how to play back MIDI in Cu-
base Essential. You might think this is very simple – just 
hit “Play”. It is actually this simple, but there are a few 
tricks to learn so that you’ll be playing back what you want 
with precision.
To start playback
Click the Start button on the Transport panel.
Press the space bar on your computer keyboard.
This toggles between start and stop.
Press the [Enter] key of the numerical computer keypad.
Double-click in the lower half of the ruler.
Select the MIDI event called “Strings” and choose 
“Loop Selection” from the Transport menu.
To stop playback
Click the Stop button on the Transport panel.
Clicking the Stop button twice moves the cursor to the 
position in the project, where you started playback.
Press the space bar on your computer keyboard.
This toggles between stop and start.
Press the “0” key of the numerical computer keypad.
Record Enable Monitor
!For this section, make sure you load the project 
“MIDI Playback” found in the “Tutorial 3” folder.
!The default key command for this is [Shift]+[G]. This 
is the quickest way to loop the selected MIDI event 
and start playback! 
						

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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.
3.Click the Start button on the Transport panel and Cu-
base Essential will play looping over and over until you 
click Stop.
Recording modes with cycle off
There are three different modes for recording when the 
cycle is turned off. This is called linear recording.
Normal
“Normal” allows you to record on top of previously recorded MIDI. You 
will be able to see both MIDI parts on the screen overlapping each other.
Merge
“Merge” joins or merges any MIDI data previously recorded on the track. 
An example of this is when recording drums – adding the kick drum on 
one pass and then the snare drum on another pass. The MIDI data is 
then joined together as one MIDI part.
Replace
“Replace” mode will replace or overwrite any previous MIDI recording 
that was on the track.
Cycle recording
You can record MIDI while the Cycle is activated.
Recording MIDI drums
1.Let’s add another “Instrument” track and choose 
“HALionOne” as our instrument.
2.Click in the program field in the Inspector and load a 
drum sound of your choice found under the category 
“Drums&Perc”, sub-category “Drumset”.
3.Rename this new track to “Drums”.
4.Make sure the Cycle button is activated and set the 
left locator to “9” and the right locator to “13”.
This will loop or cycle between bars 9 and 13.
5.On the Transport panel, make sure “Mix (MIDI)” is se-
lected for the “Cycle Record Mode”.
This will allow us to record the drums, and as each cycle repeats, the MIDI 
will mix together into one part. This makes it easy to create complex drum 
rhythms.
The left locator set to “1”.
The right locator set to “5”.
Cycle activated
!Load the project called “Cycle Recording MIDI” 
found in the “Tutorial 3” folder.
Cycle Record Mode 
						

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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 will make sure we start recording at the left locator.
10.Activate the Record button on the Transport panel and 
let’s record hi-hat on the first pass, kick on the second 
pass and then finally snare on the third.
11.Hit “Stop” when you’re finished.
12.Now move and copy this drum part so that the rest of 
the song has a drum beat.
Move and copy were discussed in the chapter “Tutorial 2: Editing audio” 
on page 32.
13.Glue all the parts together as one.
The Glue tool was discussed in the chapter “Tutorial 2: Editing audio” on 
page 32.
The Key Editor
The Key Editor is where we can make changes to our MIDI 
data.
Erasing MIDI notes
1.Double-click on the “Drums” part so that the Key Editor 
opens.
Here we can see our drum notes lined up with a keyboard on the left. At 
the bottom we have the velocity of each of the MIDI notes and at the top 
we can see the time ruler.
!Load the project called “Key Editor” found in the 
“Tutorial 3” folder.
The Drum MIDI notes The Drum MIDI velocitiesKeyboard notes
Time ruler 
						

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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 hi-hat notes from bar 2 
through 8 using any method you like.
Copying MIDI notes
Let’s copy the MIDI notes in bar 1 to bars 2 through 8.
1.Lasso the hi-hat notes in bar 1. Hold down [Alt]/[Option] 
and drag the notes in bar 1 to bar 2. This copies them.
2.Continue copying until bar 9.
Creating or drawing in MIDI notes
Now we need to draw in a cymbal crash in bar 25.
1.Scroll over to bar 25 and click on the piano roll on the 
left hand side of the Key Editor. Click on the notes until you 
hear a crash cymbal that you like. There is a good one at 
C#2.
2.Select the Pencil tool of the Key Editor and draw in the 
crash cymbal note at bar 25 by clicking and dragging for a 
full bar.
Click and drag with the Pencil tool 
						

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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 Presets” button at the bottom left 
of the Key Editor.
2.Choose “Velocity Only” to view the velocity.
3.You can choose the MIDI information you wish view or 
change from the pop-up menu.
4.You can also select “Setup” to view more controllers.5.Use the Pencil tool of the Key Editor to draw in new 
velocities for the notes. You can even draw in curves and 
ramps.
Pick one from the list or choose setup for more controllers. 
						

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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 loop file in the Viewer section will display it 
graphically below in the Scope section.4.Click the Start button to listen to the loop. The “Play in 
Project context” option allows you to audition the loop in 
the project’s tempo. This is handy if the loop you are audi-
tioning has a tempo that is different from the one you are 
using in your project.
5.If you have many loops, you can search for them using 
the Text Search field at the top of the Viewer section.
6.Once you have found the loop you like, drag and drop it 
into your project. If you haven’t created an extra audio track 
for the loop, one will be created automatically for you.
7.Rename the new track to “Loop 1”.
!Load the project called “Loops” found in the 
“Tutorial 4” folder.
Search for sounds here
Your Loops Audition controls
Audition controls (Start, Stop, Pause, Cycle and level slider)
Play in Project context button
Auto Play – this automatically starts playback for the selected file.
Drag from the 
Loop Browser 
into your project. 
						

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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 stereo audio track.
2.Rename the track to “Loop 2” and make sure it is se-
lected, as “Insert into Project” works using a selected track.
3.Position the Project cursor where you would like the 
loop to be inserted. In our case, let’s choose bar 9.
4.In the Loop Browser right-click on the loop you would 
like to use and choose “Insert into Project at cursor”. This 
will drop the loop into the Project window at bar 9 on the 
“Loop 2” track.
5.Use the “Repeat” command to repeat the loop out un-
til the end of the project.
Make sure you read up on the Loop Browser in the chap-
ter “The MediaBay” in the Operation Manual.