Steinberg Cubase LE 4 Getting Started 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 LE: via virtual instruments, that is a syn-
thesizer inside your computer or through the use of a tra-
ditional hardware keyboard.
This tutorial will focus on virtual instruments.
Creating an Instrument Track
1.Let’s...

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Tutorial 3: Recording and Editing MIDI
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”. You have filtered the list to only show strings. 
Choose a string sound from the list on the right, e. g. 
“StereoST1”. Then click “OK”.
MIDI recording
Now that...

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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 C u b a s e  L E  k n o w  t h a t  y o u  w a n t  t o  
record on this track and no other one. 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...

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Tutorial 3: Recording and Editing MIDI
Cycle playback
Cubase LE 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”.
T h i s  t e ll s  C u b a s e  L E  t h a t  w e  w a n t  t o  l o o p  o r  c y c l e  b e t w e e n  b a rs  1  a n d  5.  
Meaning we will have a 4 bar loop since the end of bar 4 is the beginning 
of bar 5.
2.Make sure...

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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 LE 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...

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Tutorial 3: Recording and Editing MIDI
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.
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...

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Tutorial 3: Recording and Editing MIDI
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.
The Controller lane
The “Controller Lane” allows us to add in or...

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Tutorial 3: Recording and Editing MIDI
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. 

7
Tutorial 4: Mixing and Effects 

50
Tutorial 4: Mixing and Effects
Introduction
In this section we’ll draw from the last 5 tutorials and finally 
get a mix ready with proper levels, EQs and effects. Auto-
mation will be added and then we’ll export the audio.
Setting levels
The first thing we want to do is to set the levels for our 
project. This helps us get a preliminary balance of the mix 
so we can add EQ and effects later.
1.Select the Mixer from the Devices menu.
The default key command for this is [F3].
2.Click the Start button on...