Steinberg Cubase SX/SL 3 Getting Started Manual

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 5: Editing in the Project window 13 – 171
OK, that’s much better, but there are still things to fix. For example, the 
Wah guitar event ends after one bar, while the other events last two 
bars. Let’s add a copy of the guitar event:
7.Press [Alt]/[Option], click the Wah guitar event and drag it one bar to 
the right.
A copy of the event is created.
Now we have a two-bar, slightly cheesy disco pattern. We could just 
activate Cycle playback and listen to these two bars over and over 
again. Instead we’ll use the Repeat function:
8.Select all events by pressing [Ctrl]/[Command]-[A] on the computer 
keyboard.
This is the same as using the Select All function on the Edit menu. You can also select 
multiple events by [Shift]-clicking each event in turn or by dragging a selection rectan-
gle around them with the Arrow tool.
9.Pull down the Edit menu and select “Repeat…”.
A dialog appears.
10.Set the “Count” parameter to 3 and click OK.
All events are repeated three times, for a total of four two-bar patterns. This is just the 
same as copying by [Alt]/[Option]-dragging, but much quicker, especially if you need 
several copies after each other.
At this point, our song is eight bars long. It could use some variation!   
						

							CUBASE SX/SL13 – 172 Tutorial 5: Editing in the Project window
Muting and erasing events
A quick way of adding variation is to remove stuff. We could for exam-
ple let the different instruments appear gradually instead of all at the 
same time:
1.Select the Mute tool from the toolbar.
2.Click on the first two Bass Synth events, and then on the first two 
Hi Strings events.
They are “greyed out” indicating that they’re muted.
3.Start playback from the beginning.
Fine, now the bass appears at bar 3 and the strings at bar 5.
The Mute tool is very useful for trying out variations, etc. However, now 
that we’re sure that we want to remove those events, we might as well 
delete them for real:
4.Select the Eraser tool from the toolbar.
5.Click on the four muted events.
They are removed.
6.While you’re at it, remove the first and the second Wah guitar event too.    
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 5: Editing in the Project window 13 – 173
Splitting and resizing events
Well, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all – it may have been 
better with some guitar at the beginning, but maybe with some varia-
tion. Here’s an idea:
1.Pull down the Edit menu and select Undo.
The last deleted guitar event reappears.
2.Select Undo again.
The first guitar event reappears. 
Cubase SX/SL has unlimited undo – you could go back all the way to 
the start of this tutorial by undoing your actions, if needed. However, 
we will only need one guitar event for this:
3.Select Redo from the Edit menu.
The first guitar event is removed again.
4.Select the Scissors tool from the toolbar.
Now, the idea is to split the Wah guitar event into smaller sections, to 
vary them. However, currently you can only make edits at whole bar 
positions because the Snap Grid is set to “Bar”.
5.Pull down the Grid pop-up menu on the toolbar and select “Beat”.
Now you will be able to split or position events at each beat (quarter note) position.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SL13 – 174 Tutorial 5: Editing in the Project window
6.Click with the Scissors tool at the fourth beat in the Wah guitar event 
(at the beat just before the start of bar 3).
The event is split in two; one three beat long and another one beat long. If you were to 
play back this section now, you wouldn’t hear any difference, though.
7.Select the Arrow tool again.
8.Drag the first guitar event two beats to the left and play back.
Not too bad, but we could use a little more guitar in the second bar:
9.Position the pointer in the lower left corner of the second guitar event 
(the one bar long event).
The pointer is shown as a double arrow, indicating that you can resize the event by 
dragging.
10.Click and drag one beat to the left.
What you did was to resize the event. In effect, you make the event start playing earlier 
in the audio clip. Events could be viewed as “windows” looking into an audio clip – by 
resizing an event you get to see more or less of its clip.
OK, that brought some variation to the start of the “song”.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 5: Editing in the Project window 13 – 175
Adding a fade
The strings in bar 5 appear rather abruptly – they would benefit from 
being faded in. In the Mixing tutorial we created a fade by automating 
a fader – let’s try another method instead:
1.Click on the first Hi Strings event with the Arrow tool.
The event is selected. The blue handles at the top are fade and volume handles.
2.Click at the upper left handle and drag it to the right.
A thin blue line indicates the fade-in.
3.Play back to hear the fade.
You can adjust the length of the fade by dragging the handle. 
It’s not bad, but it would be even better if the fade-in was slower at the 
beginning and quicker at the end (i.e. more exponential).
4.To change the shape of the fade, double click on the fade line.
This opens a dialog in which you can adjust the fade settings:    
						

							CUBASE SX/SL13 – 176 Tutorial 5: Editing in the Project window
5.Click one of the buttons to the right below the curve display to get a 
more exponential fade curve.
6.Click OK to close the dialog and play back the section again.
Now we would want the same fade to be applied to the second string 
event. While we could repeat the settings manually, it’s probably eas-
iest to copy the faded event:
7.Remove the second string event by clicking it with the Eraser tool.
8.Select the Arrow tool again, press [Alt]/[Option] and drag the first 
string event two bars to the right.
As you can see, the copied event retains the fade you created.
That concludes this tutorial! 
Now you’ve tried some of the many editing features in Cubase SX/SL’s 
Project window. If you like, you could use your new skills to change the 
end of the eight-bar “song”, which ends rather abruptly. For example, 
you could apply fade-outs, resize events to make the different instru-
ments end one by one, or create more copies to make the song longer. 
Or, you can move on to the next chapter, in which we’ll take a look at 
VST Instruments.  
						

							14
Tutorial 6: Using VST
Instruments 
						

							CUBASE SX/SL14 – 178 Tutorial 6: Using VST Instruments
About this tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to set up and use VST Instruments – soft-
ware synthesizers (or other sound sources) that are contained within 
Cubase SX/SL. For detailed descriptions of procedures and the pa-
rameters of the included VST Instruments, see the Operation Manual 
and the separate “Audio Effects and VST instruments” document.
Preparations
Just like the previous chapter, this tutorial is based on an existing file, 
included on the Cubase SX/SL DVD.
• Below, we assume that you have followed the previous tutorials and 
copied the “Tutorial Projects” folder to your hard drive.
If not, please see page 132.
1.Close any open projects, by making their Project windows active and 
selecting “Close” from the File menu.
This is just to make things clear and avoid confusion – you can have several projects 
open in Cubase SX/SL if needed.
2.Pull down the File menu and select Open.
3.In the file dialog that appears, navigate to the Tutorial folder on your 
hard drive, select the file “Tutorial 6.cpr” and click Open.
• At this point, a dialog may appear asking you to resolve missing MIDI 
outputs.
This is because you probably don’t have the same MIDI output configuration as the 
creator of this project. Just click OK to close this dialog for now. 
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 6: Using VST Instruments 14 – 179
The “Tutorial 6” project opens. If you followed the previous tutorial, 
this will look oddly familiar… It’s the same eight-bar “song” that you 
created in tutorial 5, but with three extra tracks.
Activating a VST Instrument
The three tracks at the bottom of the Track list are MIDI tracks, as indi-
cated by the yellow border and the MIDI symbol to the left in the Track 
list. As you can see, one of the tracks is called “MIDI Bass” – our first 
goal in this tutorial is to replace the “Bass” audio track with a bass 
sound from a VST Instrument.
1.Pull down the Devices menu and select VST Instruments.
The “rack” that appears can contain up to 64 VST Instruments (32 if you are using Cu-
base SL). However, the maximum number of instruments possible to use simultaneously 
depends on your computer performance and the complexity of the instruments.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL14 – 180 Tutorial 6: Using VST Instruments
2.Click in the first VST Instrument slot.
A pop-up menu appears, listing the included VST Instruments.
3.Select “vb-1” from the Synths submenu.
The VB-1 virtual bass unit is loaded, and its control panel appears.
4.In the control panel, make sure the “power button” in the left corner is 
activated (lit).
There is a mirror of this power button in the VST Instrument slot.
5.You can keep the control panel open or close it – it doesn’t matter, as 
long as the VST Instrument is activated (power button is lit).
Since we cannot hear the instrument yet, there’s not much point in making any control 
panel settings though. If you close the control panel for the instrument, you can click 
the Edit (“e”) button in the slot to bring it up again.
OK, so now we have activated a VST Instrument. Now you need to 
route a MIDI track to the instrument.