Steinberg Cubase SX/SL 3 Getting Started Manual

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 10: Editing MIDI 18 – 221
Drawing events in the Key Editor
When you move the pointer in the note display, its bar position is indi-
cated in the toolbar, and its pitch is indicated both in the toolbar and 
on the piano keyboard to the left. This makes it easy to find the right 
note and insert position.
To insert new notes in the Key Editor, proceed as follows:
1.Select the Pencil tool.
2.Click at the desired time position and pitch (height).
A note is inserted with the following additional properties:
•If you just click once, the created note will get the length set on the 
“length Q” pop-up menu on the toolbar.
You can create a longer note by clicking and dragging the pointer to the right with the 
mouse button pressed. The length of the created note will be a multiple of the Length 
Quantize value.
•The notes will get the insert velocity value set on the toolbar.
Velocity values are viewed and edited in the controller display, see page 225.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL18 – 222 Tutorial 10: Editing MIDI
About Snap
Snap activated on the toolbar.
The Snap function helps you find exact positions when editing in the 
Key Editor. It does this by restricting horizontal movement and position-
ing to certain positions. Operations affected by snap include moving, 
duplicating, drawing, sizing, etc.
•When the “Bars+Beats” display format is selected in the ruler, the 
quantize value on the toolbar determines the snap value.
•When any time-based display format is selected in the ruler, editing 
snaps to the visible grid.
Selecting and moving events
To select events in the Key Editor window, proceed as follows:
1.Make sure the Arrow tool is selected.
If not, click on the Arrow icon in the toolbar.
2.To select a single event, click on it.
To select several events, use [Shift]-clicking or click and drag a selection rectangle.
To move events in the Key Editor window, proceed as follows:
1.If you want to move more than one event, select them as described 
above.
If you want to move a single event, you don’t need to select it.
2.Click on one of the events with the Arrow tool and drag it to the desired 
position.
If Snap is activated on the toolbar, this determines the exact position of the moved 
events.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 10: Editing MIDI 18 – 223
About quantize
Quantizing in its fundamental form is a function that automatically 
moves recorded notes, positioning them on exact note values.
• Normally, quantizing affects MIDI notes only (not other event types).
However, you can choose to move the controllers together with their respective notes 
by activating the “Move Controller” option in the Quantize Setup dialog. This dialog is 
described in detail in the Operation Manual.
• In the Project window, quantizing applies to all selected parts, affecting all 
notes within them.
• In the Key Editor, quantizing applies to all selected notes. If no notes are se-
lected, all notes will be affected.
Here follows a simple step by step example of using the quantize 
function:
1.Let’s say you have recorded a series of eighth notes, which you have 
opened for viewing in the Key Editor.
As shown in the illustration below, some of them have ended up slightly beside the ex-
act eighth note positions.
Now there are two basic ways you can proceed:
•To quantize all notes, no notes need to be selected.
•To quantize some notes only, select them.
Only the selected notes will be quantized.
In this example, we have chosen to leave all note events unselected – 
this means all notes will be quantized.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL18 – 224 Tutorial 10: Editing MIDI
2.Open the quantize pop-up menu on the toolbar.
The menu contains three main categories of note values, Straight, Triplet and Dotted.
3.For this example, select straight 1/8 Note quantize from the menu.
4.Select “Over Quantize” from the MIDI menu.
This quantizes the MIDI notes according to the Quantize pop-up menu setting.
Straight note values
Triplet note values
Dotted note values    
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 10: Editing MIDI 18 – 225
Editing velocity in the controller display
The Key Editor controller display is used for viewing and editing vari-
ous values and events. The controller display can have one or several 
lanes, each showing a separate event type.
•If no controller display is shown, right-click (Win) or [Ctrl]-click (Mac) 
anywhere in the editor window and select “Create New Controller Lane” 
from the pop-up menu that appears.
This displays the controller display at the bottom of the Key Editor window.
•If you click the arrow to the left of the controller display, a pop-up ap-
pears allowing you to select what event type you wish to view.
For this example, select “Velocity”.
•When “Velocity” is selected for viewing, the controller display shows 
the velocity of each note as a vertical bar.
Velocity events in the controller display.
•To change the velocity of a single note, click on its velocity bar with 
the Pencil tool, and drag the bar up or down. If there are several notes 
on the same position only the velocity value of the selected note is 
changed. If there is no note selected the velocity values for all notes 
on this position will be changed.
While you drag, the current velocity value is shown in the display to the left.
•To change the velocity values of several notes, you can either draw a 
“velocity curve” with the Pencil tool or use the Line tool to create a ve-
locity ramp.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL18 – 226 Tutorial 10: Editing MIDI
An example
In the following example we will create a velocity ramp using the Line 
tool:
1.Add some notes in the note display by using the Pencil tool.
2.Select the Line tool from the pop-up menu that appears by clicking on 
the Line tool icon.
The other tools available on this pop-up menu are described in the Operation Manual.
3.Click where you want the ramp to start, move the pointer to where you 
want the ramp to end and release the mouse button.
When the mouse button is released, the velocity values will be scaled according to the 
ramp curve.    
						

							19
Tutorial 11: Customizing 
						

							CUBASE SX/SL19 – 228 Tutorial 11: Customizing
About this tutorial
This chapter describes how you can set up and customize Cubase 
SX/SL in various ways according to your personal preferences.
Most parts of Cubase SX/SL can be customized to your liking: key 
commands can be freely changed and assigned to functions, the gen-
eral look of the program can be changed, items can be hidden in the 
toolbars, the Track list and the Transport panel, etc.
This tutorial deals with adapting your work environment to what you 
need to do and how you want to do it. We will describe how to set up 
preferences, key commands, workspaces etc. and create a template.
This will show you some of all the ways in which Cubase SX/SL can 
be tailored to best suit your needs and purposes. However, you should 
also read the chapter “Customizing” in the Operation Manual since 
many available options and settings are not described in this chapter. 
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 11: Customizing19 – 229
Setting preferences
Most of the settings for making the program behave the way you want 
are found in the Preferences dialog:
1.Pull down the File menu (or, if you are using Mac OS X, the Cubase 
SX/SL menu) and select Preferences.
The Preferences dialog appears. This is divided into a number of pages you can select 
in the list to the left.
2.Select the “Editing” item in the list to the left.
The editing page contains options for how the program should behave.
3.Activate the option “Auto Select Events under Cursor” by clicking in 
its box to put a checkmark in it.
When this option is activated, all events “touched” by the project cursor are automati-
cally selected. This can be helpful when rearranging projects, since it allows you to se-
lect whole sections (on all tracks) simply by moving the project cursor.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SL19 – 230 Tutorial 11: Customizing
Now, let’s activate another useful option. If you are usually working on 
single projects for long periods of time (i.e. more than one “session” 
with the program), you might want to have that project automatically 
open when you launch Cubase SX/SL:
4.In the list to the left in the dialog, select “General”.
The General settings page is displayed to the right. Among other things, it contains the 
“On Startup” pop-up menu, which allows you to specify what should happen each 
time you launch Cubase SX/SL.
5.Pull down the “On Startup” pop-up menu and select the option 
“Open Last Project”.
Now, you have instructed Cubase SX/SL to open the last saved project each time you 
launch the program.
6.If you like, make other settings in the Preferences dialog.
To get a description of the options and settings on the Preference pages, click the 
Help button.
7.When you are finished, click OK to close the dialog and apply the set-
tings.
The changes you have made will be saved globally for all projects you work on.