Steinberg Cubase SE 3 Operation Manual

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Working with hitpoints and slices 17 – 311
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 two ways to invoke the hitpoint 
calculation:
• Select Calculate Hitpoints from the Hitpoints submenu on the Audio menu.
• Select the Hitpoint Edit tool from the toolbar or Quick menu.
The last method will calculate hitpoints if they haven’t already been calculated.
As outlined in the previous section, this makes the program...

CUBASE SE
17 – 312 Working with hitpoints and slices
1.Open a loop in the Sample Editor.
If you have already created slices you can open them in the Sample Editor by double 
clicking any event in the Audio Part Editor. If it is a new loop, follow the instructions in 
the tutorial.
2.Select the Hitpoint Edit tool.
When you point in the waveform display the pointer changes to a speaker icon.
3.Now you can simply point and click in any slice area and the corre-
sponding slice will be played back, from the...

CUBASE SE
Working with hitpoints and slices 17 – 313
The “Use” pop-up menu
The “Use” pop-up menu on the toolbar affects which hitpoints are 
shown and is a useful tool for removing unwanted hitpoints. The op-
tions on the pop-up menu are:
How many slices do I need?
If your main reason for slicing the loop is to change the tempo, you 
generally need as many slices as you can get, but never more than 
one per individual “hit” in the loop.
Option Description
All All hitpoints are shown (taking the...

CUBASE SE
17 – 314 Working with hitpoints and slices
Disabling slices
You might run into situations where there are too many slices – a sin-
gle sound may have been split into two slices for example. You could 
of course reduce the sensitivity to get rid of the hitpoints you don’t 
want, but then other hitpoints could disappear too, which may be un-
desirable. What you need to do in a situation like this is to disable an 
individual slice, using the Hitpoint Edit tool:
1.Select the Hitpoint Edit tool....

CUBASE SE
Working with hitpoints and slices 17 – 315
3.Raise the Sensitivity slider to a higher value so that a hitpoint appears, 
separating the two sounds.
Most likely this will add a lot of other unwanted hitpoints as well.
4.Audition to make sure you got what you wanted.
5.Select the Hitpoint Edit tool and point at the handle.
The speaker icon changes to a normal arrow pointer.
6.Lock the new slice by clicking on its handle.
Locked hitpoints are dark blue in color.
7.Drag the Sensitivity slider to...

CUBASE SE
17 – 316 Working with hitpoints and slices
4.Press [Alt]/[Option] with the Hitpoint Edit tool selected so that the 
mouse pointer changes to a pencil tool and click just before the start 
of the sound.
A new hitpoint appears. Manually added hitpoints are locked by default.
•If you click and keep the mouse button pressed, you can adjust the 
position of the new hitpoint by dragging.
Releasing the mouse button adds the hitpoint.
5.Audition the new slice with the Play tool to make sure you got...

CUBASE SE
Working with hitpoints and slices 17 – 317
About Q-points
Optionally, hitpoints can have individual Q-points. These are mainly 
used for audio quantizing. Their function is to define the point to which 
the quantizing will apply. Sometimes a slice might have a slow attack, 
and a peak further into the slice which you wish to use as the Q-point. 
When you apply quantize, the Q-point will define the point which will 
be stretched to a grid position when quantizing.
•To activate Q-points, open the...

CUBASE SE
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Using the Audio Tempo Definition tool
When this tool is selected, you can set the tempo, length (in bars and 
beats) and time signature for an audio file. The Audio Tempo Definition 
tool can be used to determine the tempo of an audio clip when calculat-
ing hitpoints. In case you have an audio clip with an unknown length and 
tempo you can calculate the tempo by defining the length of one bar:
Determining the tempo of an audio clip
You can use the...

CUBASE SE
Working with hitpoints and slices 17 – 319
5.Move the mouse pointer to the upper part of the ruler until the pointer 
changes to a hand symbol.
6.Click and drag the ruler to the right until the first bar in the ruler 
matches the first downbeat in the sample.
7.Release the mouse button.
Now the ruler grid is offset so that it starts on the first downbeat in the sample.
8.Audition the file to determine where the next downbeat occurs, i.e. the 
first beat of the second bar in the sample.
Stop the...

CUBASE SE
17 – 320 Working with hitpoints and slices
9.In this example the second downbeat in the sample is located at the 
start of the second beat of the second bar (at the cursor position in 
the picture).
10.Place the mouse pointer at the start of bar 2 in the waveform display.
The pointer changes to a metronome icon with a blue line indicating the pointer posi-
tion. The pointer will snap to the grid positions.