Steinberg Cubase LE Operation Manual

							CUBASE LEThe Audio Part Editor 13 – 261
• If there is no selection, the whole part will be played back. Note that if the project 
cursor is within the part, playback starts from the current cursor position. If the 
project cursor is outside the part, playback starts from the beginning of the part.
• If the Loop icon is activated, playback will continue until you deactivate the Play 
icon. Otherwise, the section will be played back once.
Scrubbing
In the Audio Part Editor, the Scrub tool has a separate icon on the 
toolbar. Apart from that, scrubbing works exactly as in the Project win-
dow (see page 73). 
						

							CUBASE LE13 – 262 The Audio Part Editor
Common methods
Assembling a “perfect take”
When you record audio in Cycle mode an event is created for each re-
corded lap (see page 32). These are named “Take X”, where “X” is the 
number of the take. You can create a perfect take by putting together 
sections of the different takes in the Audio Part Editor. First, you have to 
create an audio part from the takes.
Creating an audio part
1.In the Project window, use the Object Selection tool to draw a rectan-
gle around the recorded events.
This is necessary, since clicking on the event may just select the event on top (the last 
take). If in doubt, check the Info line – it should say “Multiple Objects Selected”.
2.Pull down the Audio menu and select “Events to Part”.
The events are converted to an audio part.
•Note that the events cycle record mode also makes it easy to combine 
different takes in the Project Window. 
						

							CUBASE LEThe Audio Part Editor 13 – 263
Assembling a take
1.Double click the part to open the Audio Part Editor.
Now, the different takes will be placed on different lanes, with the last take at the bottom.
2.Use the tools to cut out pieces of the takes and assemble the final 
result.
This could include splitting with the Scissors tool, resizing events with the Arrow tool, 
muting events with the Mute tool or deleting with the Eraser tool. 
•Remember that the events on the lowest lane have playback priority. 
Use the Play icon to audition the result.
3.Close the Audio Part Editor.
You have now assembled a “perfect take”! 
						

							CUBASE LE13 – 264 The Audio Part Editor
Options and Settings
The following options and settings are available in the Audio Part 
Editor:
•Snap
You can specify an independent Snap mode (and snap value for the Grid mode) in the 
editor. The functionality is exactly the same as in the Project window.
•Snap to Zero Crossing
The Snap to Zero Crossing setting is global for the project, which means that if you ac-
tivate it in the Audio Part Editor, it will also be activated in the Project window and 
Sample Editor (and vice versa). For a description of this setting, see page 93.
•Auto Scroll
When Auto Scroll is activated on the toolbar, the window will scroll during playback, 
keeping the project cursor visible in the Editor. This setting can be activated or deacti-
vated individually for each window. 
						

							14
Working with hitpoints and
slices 
						

							CUBASE LE14 – 266 Working with hitpoints and slices
Background
Hitpoint detection is a special feature of the Sample Editor. It auto-
matically detects attack transients in an audio file, and then adds a 
type of marker, a “hitpoint”, at each transient. These hitpoints allow 
you to create “slices”, where each slice ideally represents each indi-
vidual sound or “beat” in a loop (drum or other rhythmic loops work 
best with this feature). When you have successfully sliced the audio 
file, you can do a number of useful things with it:
• Change the tempo without affecting pitch.
• Extract the timing (a groove map) from a drum loop. This can then be applied 
to quantize other events.
• Replace individual sounds in a drum loop.
• Edit the actual playing in the drum loop without affecting the basic feel.
• Extract sounds from loops.
• Note that the term “loop” is used throughout this chapter. Loops in this 
context usually means an audio file with a musical timebase, i.e. the length 
of the loop represents a certain number of bars and/or beats at a certain 
tempo. Playing the loop back at the right tempo in a cycle set to the cor-
rect length will produce a continuous loop, without gaps. 
						

							CUBASE LEWorking with hitpoints and slices 14 – 267
Using Hitpoints
The basic functionality of using hitpoints to slice up a loop is to make 
a loop fit the tempo of a song, or alternatively to create a situation that 
allows the song tempo to be changed whilst retaining the timing of a 
rhythmic audio loop, just like when using MIDI files. 
What audio files can be used?
Here are some guidelines to what type of audio files will render the 
best results when slicing files using hitpoints:
•Each individual sound in the loop should have some kind of noticeable 
attack. 
Slow attacks, legato playing etc. may not produce the desired result.
•Poorly recorded audio might be difficult to slice correctly.
Normalizing a file first can improve the performance.
•There may be problems with sounds drowned in smearing effects, like 
short delays.
Calculating hitpoints and slicing a loop – a quick tutorial
Before proceeding, find a suitable loop using the above mentioned 
criteria. At this point it doesn’t matter whether you know the original 
tempo of the loop, as this will be automatically detected. Proceed as 
follows:
1.Create a new empty project.
2.Create an audio track.
3.Place a suitable audio file at the start of a measure on the audio track.
Any type of drumloop should work well. 
4.Select the audio event and select “Locators to Selection” from the 
Transport menu.
This sets the left and right locators to encompass the selection.
5.Double click the event to open the Sample Editor.
Here you can check if you need to adjust the event start and end points to make the file 
loop seamlessly, by activating Cycle mode in the editor, and playing it back using the 
Play button in the Sample Editor. 
						

							CUBASE LE14 – 268 Working with hitpoints and slices
6.Click the Hitpoint Mode button on the Sample Editor toolbar.
The program calculates the hitpoints in the event.
The Hitpoint Mode button.
7.As you now can see, hitpoints have been set at the beginning of each 
sound in the loop (or at least at most sounds), and the right half of the 
toolbar now shows the Sensitivity slider and additional pop-ups.
Make sure that the “Use” pop-up is set to “Sense”.
8.If you now move the Hitpoint Sensitivity slider to the left, this gradually 
hides the hitpoints. Moving the slider to the right increases the sensitiv-
ity to reveal additional hitpoints detected during the calculate process.
The basic aim is to add, remove or in various other ways edit the hitpoints so that one 
individual sound is played between each hitpoint. This is described in detail starting on 
page 270. 
						

							CUBASE LEWorking with hitpoints and slices 14 – 269
9.Once the hitpoints have been set correctly, enter the length of the 
loop (using the Bars and/or Beats value fields) and the time signature.
The “original” tempo of the loop is now displayed to the right on the Sample Editor 
toolbar. This tempo is based on the length specified for the loop. Note however that 
the loop will adapt to the tempo set in Cubase LE in the next step.
10.Pull down the Audio menu, and select “Create Slices” from the Hit-
points submenu.
Now the following happens:
• The Sample Editor closes.
• The audio event is “sliced” so that there is a separate event for each hitpoint.
• The audio event is replaced by an audio part, containing the slices (double 
click the part to view the slices in the Audio Part Editor).
• The loop is automatically adapted to the set tempo in Cubase LE.
11.If you activate cycle playback on the transport, the loop should now 
play back seamlessly at the tempo set in the program!
If the loop was two bars long, the loop will be adapted to this length in the Project win-
dow, whatever the tempo setting.
•Note that if the tempo in Cubase LE is lower than the loop’s original 
tempo, there may be audible gaps between each slice event in the part.
This can be remedied by using the Close Gaps function on the Audio menu – see 
page 281. 
						

							CUBASE LE14 – 270 Working with hitpoints and slices
Editing hitpoints
In this section, we go back a bit and look at what can be done with hit-
points in the Sample Editor. There are three ways to invoke the hitpoint 
calculation:
• Select Calculate from the Hitpoints submenu on the Audio menu.
• Click the Hitpoint Mode button in the Sample Editor toolbar.
• Select the Hitpoint Edit tool from the toolbar or Quick menu.
The last two methods will calculate hitpoints if they haven’t already been calculated.
As outlined in the previous section, this makes the program calculate 
(or detect) hitpoints in the audio event, and you can use the Sensitivity 
slider to change how many hitpoints are shown. 
For some loops, this may be all that is needed to set the hitpoints so 
that each slice to be created will contain a single “hit” or sound. How-
ever there will almost certainly be cases when the automatic calculation 
may add a hitpoint where there shouldn’t be one, and fail to add a hit-
point where one is needed, even if the Sensitivity slider is set to maxi-
mum. If there are too many or too few hitpoints in a loop, it will most 
probably not play back properly.
When this occurs, you have to edit the hitpoints manually in the Sample 
Editor.