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 start by adding a string part to our song. From the 
Project menu–Add Track submenu, select “Instrument”.
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”.
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”.
!Load the project called “Recording MIDI 1” found in 
the “Tutorial 3” folder.
Right-click here to select “Always on Top”. 
						

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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 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 22. 
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 12 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.
The MIDI input routing pop-up menu.
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.
Category
Filtered List 
						

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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 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 mu-
sic.
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 LE. Move ahead to the next section to 
learn how to play back MIDI.
MIDI playback
We are now going to learn how to play back MIDI in Cu-
base LE. 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 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 that the Cycle button is activated.
3.Click the Start button on the Transport panel and Cu-
base LE 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 up 
a drum sound of your choice found under under the cate-
gory “Drums&Perc”, sub-category “Drumset GM”.
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 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 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 31.
13.Glue all the parts together as one.
The Glue tool was discussed in the chapter “Tutorial 2: Editing Audio” on 
page 31. 
						

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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 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.
!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
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 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.
Click and drag with the Pencil tool
Pick one from the list or choose setup for more controllers. 
						

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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. 
						

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Tutorial 4: Mixing and Effects 
						

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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 the Transport panel and lis-
ten to your mix.
3.Move the faders for each track so that you can hear all 
of the mix the way you like it.4.If for any reason you need to get the fader back to 0dB 
(the default setting), you can [Alt]/[Option]-click directly in 
the fader area.
5.You can also change the fader by double clicking in 
the “Channel Level” area and entering the level manually.
6.Be careful when it comes to how loud you raise the 
faders. Make sure you keep levels at a good volume so 
that they are as loud as possible without clipping. You will 
always know when you are clipping: when the “CLIP” indi-
cator lights up on the output channel. If it does, lower your 
levels and click on “CLIP”. This will reset the warning light.
That’s it for setting the levels. Let’s look at pan next.
!Load the project called “Mixing 1” found in the “Tuto-
rial 4” folder.Channel meters Channel fader
Channel Level Peak Meter Value