Steinberg Nuendo Expansion Kit User Manual
Have a look at the manual Steinberg Nuendo Expansion Kit User Manual online for free. It’s possible to download the document as PDF or print. UserManuals.tech offer 523 Steinberg manuals and user’s guides for free. Share the user manual or guide on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.
51 Editing drums ÖAll settings in a drum map (except the Pitch) can be changed directly in the drum sound list or in the Drum Map Setup dialog (see “The Drum Map Setup dialog” on page 52). Note that the changes you make will affect all tracks that use the drum map. About Pitch, I-note and O-note This can be a somewhat confusing area, but once you’ve grasped how it all works it’s not very complicated. Going through the following “theory” will help you make the most out of the drum map concept – especially if you want to create your own drum maps. As mentioned earlier, a drum map is a kind of “filter”, transforming notes according to the settings in the map. It does this transformation twice; once when it receives an incoming note (i.e. when you play a note on your MIDI controller) and once when a note is sent from the program to the MIDI sound device. In the following example, we have modified the drum map, so that the Bass Drum sound has different Pitch, I-note and O-note values. I-notes (input notes) Let’s look at what happens on input: When you play a note on your MIDI instrument, the program will look for this note number among the I-notes in the drum map. In our case, if you play the note A1, the program will find that this is the I- note of the Bass Drum sound.This is where the first transformation happens: the note will get a new note number according to the Pitch setting for the drum sound. In our case, the note will be trans- formed to a C1 note, because that is the pitch of the Bass Drum sound. If you record the note, it will be recorded as a C1 note. O-notes (output notes) The next step is the output. This is what happens when you play back the recorded note, or when the note you play is sent back out to a MIDI instrument in real time (MIDI Thru): The program checks the drum map and finds the drum sound with the pitch of the note. In our case, this is a C1 note and the drum sound is the Bass Drum. Before the note is sent to the MIDI output, the second transformation takes place: the note number is changed to that of the O- note for the sound. In our example, the note sent to the MIDI instrument will be a B0 note. Usage So, what’s the point of all this? Again, the purposes are different for I-notes and O-notes: ÖChanging the I-note settings allows you to choose which keys will play which drum sounds, when playing or recording from a MIDI instrument. For example, you may want to place some drum sounds near each other on the keyboard so that they can be easily played together, move sounds so that the most important sounds can be played from a short keyboard, play a sound from a black key instead of a white, and so on. If you never play your drum parts from a MIDI controller (but draw them in the editor) you don’t need to care about the I-note setting. ÖThe O-note settings let you set things up so that the “Bass Drum” sound really plays a bass drum. If you’re using a MIDI instrument in which the bass drum sound is on the C2 key, you set the O-note for the Bass Drum sound to C2. When you switch to another instrument (in which the bass drum is on C1) you want the Bass Drum O-note set to C1. Once you have set up drum maps for all your MIDI instruments, you don’t have to care about this anymore – you just select another drum map when you want to use another MIDI in- strument for drum sounds. I-note This is the “input note” for the drum sound. When this MIDI note is sent into Nuendo, (i.e. played by you), the note will be mapped to the corresponding drum sound (and automatically transposed according to the Pitch set- ting for the sound). O-note This is the “output note”, i.e. the MIDI note number that is sent out every time the drum sound is played back. Channel The drum sound will be played back on this MIDI channel. Output The drum sound will be played back on this MIDI output. If you set this to “Default”, the MIDI output selected for the track will be used. Column Description
52 Editing drums The channel and output settings You can set separate MIDI channels and/or MIDI outputs for each sound in a drum map. The following rules apply: When a drum map is selected for a track, the MIDI chan- nel settings in the drum map override the MIDI channel set- ting for the track. In other words, the MIDI channel setting you make in the Track list or In- spector for the track is normally disregarded. If you want a drum sound to use the channel of the track, set it to channel “Any” in the drum map. If the MIDI output is set to “default” for a sound in a drum map, the sound will use the MIDI output selected for the track. Selecting any other option allows you to direct the sound to a specific MIDI output. By making specific MIDI channel and output settings for all sounds in a drum map, you can direct your drum tracks directly to another MIDI instrument simply by selecting an- other drum map – you don’t need to make any channel or output changes for the actual track. ÖTo select the same MIDI channel for all sounds in a drum map, click the Channel column, press [Ctrl]/[Com- mand] and select the desired channel. All drum sounds will be set to this MIDI channel. The same procedure can be used for selecting the same MIDI output for all sounds as well. It can also be useful to select different channels and/or out- puts for different sounds. This allows you to construct drum kits with sounds from several different MIDI devices, etc. Managing drum maps Selecting a drum map for a track To select a drum map for a MIDI track, use the Map pop- up menu in the Inspector or in the Drum Editor:Selecting “No Drum Map” turns off the drum map func- tionality in the Drum Editor. Even if you don’t use a drum map, you can still separate sounds by name using a name list (see “Using drum name lists” on page 53). The Drum Map Setup dialog To set up and manage your drum maps, select Drum Map Setup from the Map pop-up menus or the MIDI menu. This opens the following dialog: The Drum Map setup dialog. This is where you load, create, modify and save drum maps. The list to the left shows the currently loaded drum maps; selecting a drum map in the list displays its sounds and settings to the right. ÖThe settings for the drum sounds are exactly the same as in the Drum Editor (see “Drum map settings” on page 50). As in the Drum Editor, you can click the leftmost column to audition a drum sound. Note: if you audition a sound in the Drum Map Setup dialog, and the sound is set to MIDI output “Default”, the output selected on the Output pop-up menu in the lower left corner will be used. When audi- tioning a Default output sound in the Drum Editor, the MIDI output se- lected for the track will be used, as described in section “The channel and output settings” on page 52. !Initially, the Map pop-up menu will only contain one map: “GM Map”. However, you will find a number of drum maps included on the program DVD – how to load these is described below.
53 Editing drums Open the Functions pop-up menu in the top left corner to open a list of available functionalities: ÖDrum maps are saved with the project files. If you have created or modified a drum map, you should use the Save function to store it as a separate XML file, available for loading into other projects. If you always want to have the same drum map(s) included in your projects, you may want to load these into the template – see the chapter “File Han- dling” in the Nuendo Operation Manual. O-Note Conversion This function on the MIDI menu goes through the selected MIDI part(s) and sets the actual pitch of each note ac- cording to its O-note setting. This is useful if you want to convert a track to a “regular” MIDI track (with no drum map) and still have the notes play back the correct drum sound. A typical application is if you want to export your MIDI recording as a standard MIDI file – by first perform- ing an O-Note Conversion you make sure that your drum tracks play back as they should when they are exported. Use Head Pairs and Edit in Scores These options are explained in detail in the section “Set- ting up the drum map” on page 186. Using drum name lists Even if no drum map is selected for the edited MIDI track, you can still use the Drum Editor if needed. As previously mentioned, the drum sound list will then only have four col- umns: Audition, Pitch, Instrument (drum sound name) and Quantize. There will be no I-note and O-note functionality. In this mode, the names shown in the Instrument column depend on the selection on the Names pop-up menu, just below the Map pop-up in the Drum Editor. The options on this pop-up menu are the currently loaded drum maps plus a “GM Default” item which is always avail- able. This means you can use the drum sound names in any loaded drum map without using I-notes and O-notes, if you want to. Button Description New Map Click this to add a new drum map to the project. The drum sounds will be named “Sound 1, Sound 2” and so on, and have all parameters set to default values. The map will be named “Empty Map”, but you can rename it by clicking and typing in the list. New Copy Adds a copy of the currently selected drum map. This is probably the quickest way to create a new drum map: se- lect the map that is similar to what you want, create a copy, change the desired drum sound settings and re- name the map in the list. Remove Removes the selected drum map from the project. Load Opens a file dialog, allowing you to load drum maps from disk. On the Nuendo DVD you will find a number of drum maps for different MIDI instruments – use this function to load the desired maps into your project. Save Opens a file dialog for saving the drum map selected in the list. If you have created or modified a drum map, you should use this function to save it as a file on disk – this allows you to load it into other projects. Drum map files have the extension “.drm”. Edit head pairs Allows you to customize the note pairs, see “Customizing note head pairs” on page 187. Init Display NotesAllows you to reset the Display Notes entry to the original setting, i. e. the Pitch entry. Close Closes the dialog.
55 How the Score Editor works About this chapter In this chapter you will learn: How the Score Editor and MIDI data relate. What display quantize is and how it works. Welcome! Welcome to scoring in Nuendo! The Score Editor has been created to allow you to get any possible piece of music displayed as a score, complete with all the neces- sary symbols and formatting. It allows you to extract parts out of a full orchestra score, to add lyrics and comments, create lead sheets, score for drums, create tablature, etc. In other words: just about any type of notation you could ever desire! There are a few basic principles to how the Score Editor works, which you have to understand to make full use of it. So please bear with us during this chapter, we’ll try to be as concise as possible. How the Score Editor operates The Score Editor does the following: Reads the MIDI notes in the MIDI parts. Looks at the settings you have made. Decides how the MIDI notes should be displayed according to the settings. The Score Editor takes MIDI data and settings as input and produces a score as output. The Score Editor does all this in real time. If you change some of the MIDI data (for example by moving or shorten- ing a note) this is immediately reflected in the score. If you change some of the settings (for example the time signa- ture or key signature) this is also immediately apparent. You should not think of the Score Editor as a drawing pro- gram, but rather as an “interpreter” of MIDI data. MIDI notes vs. score notes MIDI tracks in Nuendo hold MIDI notes and other MIDI data. As you may know, a MIDI note in Nuendo is only de- fined by its position, length, pitch and velocity. This is not nearly enough information to decide how the note should be displayed in a score. The program needs to know more: What type of instrument are we talking about, Drums? Pi- ano? What key is the piece in? What is the basic rhythm? How should the notes be grouped under beams? etc. You provide this information by making settings and working with the tools available in the Score Editor. An example of the MIDI/score relationship When Nuendo stores a MIDI note’s position, it makes the measurement in an absolute value, called ticks. There are 480 ticks to a quarter note. Have a look at the example be- low. A quarter note at the end of a 4/4 measure. The note is on the fourth beat of the measure. Now, let’s say you change the time signature to 3/4. This shortens the length of a “measure” to only three quarter notes – 1440 ticks. Suddenly our quarter note is in the next measure: The same note in 3/4. Why? Since you are not changing the MIDI data in the track/part (that would ruin your recording!) by changing the time signature, the note is still at the same absolute position. It’s just that now each “measure” is shorter, which effectively moves the note in the score. What we are trying to get across here is that the Score Editor is an “interpreter” of the MIDI data. It follows rules that you set up by making settings in dialogs, on menus, etc. And this interpretation is “dynamic”, or in other words, it is constantly updated whenever the data (the MIDI notes) or the rules (the score settings) change. MIDI data Score Editor Score display Score settings
56 How the Score Editor works Display quantize Let’s say you used the Project window to record a figure with some staccato eighth notes. When you open the Score Editor, these notes are displayed like this: This doesn’t look anything like what you intended. Let’s start with the timing – obviously, you were off at a couple of places (the third, fourth and last note all seem to be a 32nd note late). You can solve this by quantizing the fig- ure, but this would make the passage sound too “stiff”, and not fit in the musical context. To resolve this problem the Score Editor employs something called “display quantize”. Display quantize is a setting which is used to tell the pro- gram two things: How precise the Score Editor should be when display- ing the note positions. The smallest note values (lengths) you want displayed in the score. In the example above, the display quantize value seems to be set to 32nd notes (or a smaller note value). Let’s say we change the display quantize value to six- teenth notes in the example: With display quantize set to sixteenth notes. OK, now the timing looks right, but the notes still don’t look like what you intended. Maybe you can understand that from a computer’s point of view, you did play sixteenth notes, which is why there are a lot of pauses. But that’s not how you meant it. You still want the track to play back short notes, because it is a staccato part, but you want something else “displayed”. Try setting the display quan- tize value to eighth notes instead: With display quantize set to eighth notes. Now we have eighth notes, as we wanted. All we have to do now is to add staccato articulation which can be done with one simple mouse click using the Pencil tool (see the chapter “Working with symbols” on page 126). How did this work? By setting the display quantize value to eighth notes, you give the program two instructions, that would sound something like this in English: “Display all notes as if they were on exact eighth note positions, re- gardless of their actual positions” and “Don’t display any notes smaller than eighth notes, regardless of how short they are”. Please note that we used the word “display”, which leads us to one of the most important messages of this chapter: Choose your display quantize values with care As explained above, the display quantize value for notes puts a restriction on the “smallest” note value that can be displayed. Let’s see what happens if we set it to quarter notes: With display quantize set to quarter notes. Oops, this doesn’t look too good. Well of course it doesn’t! We have now instructed the program that the “smallest” note that occurs in the piece is a quarter note. We have explicitly told it that there are no eighth notes, no sixteenths, etc. So when the program draws the score on screen (and on paper) it quantizes the display of all our eighth notes to quarter note positions, which makes it look !Setting a display quantize value does not alter the MIDI notes of your recording in any way, as regular quantizing does. It only affects how the notes are displayed in the Score Editor (and nowhere else)!
57 How the Score Editor works like above. But again, please note that when you hit Play, the passage will still play as it originally did. The display quantize setting only affects the score image of the re- cording. One last important note: Using Rests display quantize Above we used display quantize for notes. There is a sim- ilar setting called “Rests” display quantize which is used to set the smallest rest to be displayed. Often, this setting is very effective: Let’s start with the following note example: As you see, the first note appears one sixteenth note late. If we change the display quantize value for notes to eighth notes, the score will be displayed like this: With Notes display quantize set to eighth notes. Unfortunately, this moves the first note to the same posi- tion as the second, since sixteenth note positions aren’t allowed. We can solve this by inserting extra display quan- tize values within the bar with the Display Quantize tool (see “Inserting display quantize changes” on page 78), but there is a much easier way: Change the display quan- tize value for notes back to sixteenths, but set the display quantize value for rests to eighth notes! This tells the pro- gram not to display any rests smaller than eighth notes, except when necessary. The result looks like this: With Notes display quantize set to sixteenth notes, but Rests display quantize set to eighth notes. How did this work? Well, you instructed the program not to display any rests smaller than eighth notes, except when “necessary”. Since the first note appeared on the second sixteenth note position, it was necessary to put a sixteenth rest at the beginning of the figure. All other rests, however, can be hidden by displaying the notes as eighth notes, and were therefore not “necessary”. This leads us to the following general guidelines: ÖSet the Notes display quantize value according to the “smallest note position” you want to be shown in the score. For example, if you have notes on odd sixteenth note positions, the Notes display quantize value should be set to sixteenth notes. ÖSet the Rests display quantize value according to the smallest note value (length) you want to be displayed for a single note, positioned on a beat. A common setting would be to have Notes display quan- tize set to 16 (sixteenth notes) and Rests display quantize set to 4 (quarter notes). Handling exceptions Unfortunately, the guidelines above won’t work perfectly in every situation. You may for example have a mix of straight notes and tuplets of different types, or you may wish to display equally long notes with different note values de- pending on the context. There are several methods you can try: Automatic display quantize If your score contains both straight notes and triplets, you can use automatic display quantize. When this is acti- vated, Nuendo tries to “understand” whether the notes should be display quantized to straight notes or triplets. See “If your music contains mixed straight notes and trip- lets” on page 74. Using the Display Quantize tool With the “Q” tool, you can insert new display quantize val- ues anywhere in the score. Inserted display quantize val- ues affect the staff from the insertion point onwards. See “Inserting display quantize changes” on page 78. !Even if you manually enter notes in the score using perfect note values, it is very important that you have your display quantize settings right! These values are not just used for MIDI recordings! If you for example set the display quantize value for notes to quarter notes and start clicking in eighth notes, you will get eighth notes in the track (as MIDI data), but still only quarter notes in the display!
58 How the Score Editor works Permanent alteration of MIDI data As a last resort, you can resize, quantize or move the ac- tual note events. However, this would result in the music not playing back like it originally did. Often it is possible to get the score to look the way you want without altering any MIDI data. Summary This closes our discussion on the basic concept of display quantizing. There are a number of other special situations which require more advanced techniques, which you will find out about in the next chapters. You will also read about other settings which work along the same lines as display quantize but each with its own application. These are called “interpretation options”. Entering notes by hand vs. recording notes Sometimes you will enter and edit notes by hand (or rather using the mouse and/or the computer keyboard) and at other times you will record them from a MIDI keyboard. Most of the time, you will do a combination of both. In the chapter “Transcribing MIDI recordings” on page 71 you will find out how to make a recorded score as legible as possible without performing any permanent changes to the MIDI data. The chapter “Entering and editing notes” on page 81 shows you how to enter and edit notes using the mouse. In real life, even if you have recorded the piece perfectly, you will often have to do some permanent edit- ing to your recording before printing. Which leads to this conclusion: !You will have to read both chapters in order to un- derstand how to produce legible scores!
60 The basics About this chapter In this chapter you will learn: How to open the Score Editor. How to switch between Page Mode and Edit Mode. How to set up the page size and margins. How to hide and show the symbol Inspector, the toolbar and the extended toolbar. How to set up the ruler. How to set a zoom factor. How to make initial settings for key, clef and time signature. Preparations 1.In the Project window, create a MIDI track for each in- strument. You can prepare a piano (split) staff from a single track, i. e. there’s no need to create one track for the bass clef and one for the treble clef. 2.Name each track after the instrument. This name can later be used in the score if you like. 3.Record into the tracks or create empty parts on all tracks. You can make very long parts that cover the entire project, or you can start out with shorter parts to begin with. If you choose the latter option, you can always go back later and add new parts or copy existing parts. Opening the Score Editor Editing one or several parts To open one or several parts in the Score Editor, select the parts (on the same or on different tracks) and select “Open Score Editor” from the MIDI menu or “Open Selec- tion” from the Scores menu. The default key command for this is [Ctrl]/[Command]-[R]. You can also select the Score Editor as your default ed- itor, allowing you to open it by double-clicking parts. This is done with the Default Edit Action pop-up menu in the Preferences dialog (Event Display–MIDI page). Editing whole tracks When preparing a score for printing, you probably want to open whole MIDI tracks in the Score Editor. To do this, se- lect the track(s) in the track list and make sure no parts are selected – then open the Score Editor as described above. Editing parts on different tracks If you have selected parts on two or more tracks (or sev- eral entire tracks – no parts) and open the Score Editor, you will get one staff for each track (although you can split a staff in two, e.g. when scoring for piano). Think of the Project window as an overview of your entire score and the tracks as representing one instrument each. Editing predefined combinations of tracks In the section “Layout operations” on page 165, you will find out how to open the Score Editor for a certain combi- nation of tracks that you edited before. Quickly switching between display of parts or tracks When the option “Double-click on staff flips between full score/part” is activated in the Preferences dialog (Scores- Editing page), double-clicking on the blue rectangle to the left of a staff will switch between display of either the whole score or the current voice. The project cursor The project cursor appears as a vertical line across the staff. When you open the Score Editor, the view is auto- matically scrolled so that the project cursor is visible in the window. This means you don’t always see the beginning of the edited part when you first open the Score Editor. Hold down [Alt]/[Option] and [Shift] and click anywhere in the score to move the project cursor there. This is handy when the project cursor isn’t visible. This is not possible if Keyboard Input mode is activated, see “Entering notes using the compu- ter keyboard” on page 84.