FM – 10-31-09 Happy Halloween!

I wish to mix my tracks live into 4 parts- bass, drums, keys and odds & ends and have them running concurrently on 4 Audio tracks live .

We would call these “STEMS” or “GROUPS. Are these “stems” recorded to their OWN tracks or do you want to be able to mix them into “GROUPS” Live?… So that you could make adjustments WITHIN the “groups” or “stems”? IE: All drums would be coming out of a “STEREO PAIR” but, you may want to be able to raise or lower the snare live… For this tutorial I will assume that all your tracks are separate…

I need to learn how to send these out of Cubase 4.5.2…

You will need to create GROUP tracks in Cubase…

PROJECT>ADD TRACK>GROUP CHANNEL…

In the OPTIONS box that appears, choose to create 4 and make them STEREO.

You will now have 4 STEREO GROUP CHANNELS.

NAME each one just like you name an AUDIO TRACK . IE: DRUMS / BASS / KEYS / ODDS&ENDS.

In the MIXER you can now select an output destination for each instrument…

So… You can now set the OUTPUT of each audio track to the appropriate GROUP…

IE: Kick – to DRUMS / Snare – to Drums, Hat – To DRUMS, etc…

Once you have completed the routing, you will have 4 FADERS (The GROUP tracks) that “contain”your different “groups” or “stems” of instruments.IE: 1 fader controls the volume of ALL drums, another fader controls ALL Keysboards, etc. NOTE: They will appear at the extreme RIGHT of the Mixer.

…to an M-Audio Firewire 410 interface , and then route these 4 audio tracks into the mixing desk that I will have on stage.

The FireWire 410 has 8 Line outputs on the back so, you can use these “line outs” in pairs…

IE; 1+2 = Drums / 3+4 = Bass / 5+6 = Keys / 7+8 = Odd & Ends… You would then just connect these

physical output “pairs” to your mixer… Just make sure that the pairs of faders on your mixer are

panned HARD LEFT & RIGHT to maintain the stereo imaging (if there is any).

To ROUTE the AUDIO that is coming from the FADER GROUPS directly to the various outputs

of your FireWire 410 you will need to set some things up in your VST Connections window…

Like this: Open VST Connections…

And you will see this – Make sure you have clicked on the OUTPUTS TAB!!!

Next, click on the ADD BUS button and add 3 Stereo buses.

Then click OK.

You will now see something like this…

Note that EACH pair of stereo outputs is assigned (in the device port column) to outputs 1-8

of MY Device. You should be able to achieve the SAME with your FireWire 410.

Finally, we need to set the OUTPUTS of our newly created GROUP tracks.

Open the mixer, locate the group channels we created earlier and set the outputs like this…

And this…

And this…

And so on.

If everything is set correctly, you will hear your groups out of the separate

pairs of outputs on the back of your FireWire 410.

NOTE: If you are ONLY monitoring the “MAIN” stereo out, you will NOT

hear anything routed to outputs 3-8 until you hook them up to your mixer.

FOR PC:

From your “C: drive” OR install them (in the first place) on a drive OTHER than

your “C: drive”

If you have already installed EZdrummer or an EZX pack that you want to “MOVE”…

The first thing you have to do is UN-INSTALL EZdrummer or EZX sound packs using

the WINDOWS “Add or Remove Programs” utility in the WINDOWS Control Panel.

NOTE: You may UNINSTALL and REINSTALL EZdrummer or EZX packs on THE SAME COMPUTER

as many times as you like WITHOUT re-authorizing.

AUTH CODES and SERIAL NUMBERS can allways be viewed in your Toontrack account.

FROM THE TOP…

If you want to bring (Import) an MP3 or Audio file into CUBASE and analyze it for learning/teaching or

Simply reusing it for a song or track you are composing – Here is how you do it…

For example, if you want to be able to slow down (tempo wise – without changing the pitch) an audio track so that you can figure out what is being played and examine the arrangement or simply use it as a loop, read on…

Although you could technically do this to an entire song (3 minutes +) it’s better to break the song/track up into separate 4 BAR segments. This is because all of the TEMPO/TIME stretching – compressing capabilities of CUBASE are based on the idea of working with “small” 1-4 Bar loops.

So, the first thing to do is define “LOOPS” or small segments of the song/track for processing.

To start, we will define a 4 bar area or “loop” that we want to examine.

To do this we want to set the LEFT / RIGHT boundary (or the start and end of the loop) markers in Cubase… Remember at this point the TEMPO that is set in Cubase has no relationship to the audio

you have just imported since the DEFAULT tempo of a new project in Cubase is 120 Beats Per Minute or 120 BPM. IE: Cubase has NO idea and does NOT care if the audio you just imported has ANY tempo value of any kind.

NOTE: To set (adjust) the Left and Right “markers” – Set LEFT Marker by holding down the “Ctrl” key

And clicking (and sliding) in the RULER area – Set RIGHT Marker by holding down the “Alt” key and

clicking (and sliding) in the RULER area.

After setting the L & R “Markers we can preview the “LOOP” by clicking on the “LOOP Enable” icon in

The transport bar.

Once we like what we HEAR, we will “split” the “loop” by Right Clicking, Hovering over the “EDIT” category and then choosing “Split Loop” from the sub category of the menu.

Next, we’ll select the area that we just “split”

Now COPY / DRAG this “loop” to a new track… NOTE: whenever you drag a piece of audio –

(or MIDI for that matter) to a “blank” area, Cubase will “Auto-Create” a NEW track for you.

Now, we want to turn what we have identified as our “loop” into a NEW piece of audio.

You will now see this dialog box…

Next, focusing on our new piece of audio or “loop”, we want to figure out what the ACTUAL tempo of this loop is… First, double click on it to open the “SAMPLE EDIT” window.

The Sample Edit Window…

Since we KNOW this “loop” is 4 BARS long, we need to tell Cubase, right here…

After telling Cubase the correct BAR count, it calculates the TEMPO as seen above.

Cubase now tells us that the ACTUAL TEMPO of this 4 bar loop is 104 Beats Per Minute.

The last step before closing the sample edit window is to enable the “PREVIEW”

Button.

After closing the SAMPLE EDIT window, you will notice that the “loop” region

Looks like this…

This indicates that this “loop” or “region” will adjust itself to whatever tempo

You set in the “TEMPO TRACK”…

Let’s open up the TEMPO TRACK window and set the TEMPO…

Like this…

Now we’ll see the BARS and BEATS grid change to the NEW (correct) Tempo!

You can now change the TEMPO TRACK at will and the TEMPO of audio region we worked on will

Change accordingly – Without changing the pitch!

I recently got a call from one our regular clients about some funky-ness while

“Dragging & Dropping” MIDI in Cubase 4. In this case we were using Toontrack’s

EZdrummer. It’s usually very straight forward… You open up the Grooves window in

EZD, find what you want and just drag it over to the MIDI track that is assigned to EZD.

BUT, instead of the “chunk” of MIDI just dropping where we wanted it – It would create a

couple of NEW, UNWANTED tracks. Worse than that, it kept creating new pairs of these

unwanted tracks EVERY TIME we did a Drag and Drop from EZD.

I figured that this HAD to have something to do with a preference in Cubase 4… So, I did

some digging and this is what I figured out…

NEXT…

When you do a MIDI “Drag and Drop, you are essentially IMPORTING MIDI into your

Project so, I had a look at the MIDI Preferences in Cubase 4…

To get to your Preferences, Click on the FILE MENU and then Click on PREFERENCES

As shown here…

NEXT…

What I discovered was right here…

The DEFAULT Setting has these two options (see below) ON!

I’m not quite sure what “Auto Dissolve Format 0″ is or does but,

After much playing around with it, I determined that things are better

With this setting OFF. The next setting is the more obvious one…

“Import To Instrument Tracks”… This one is the real culprit. This

Was creating new instrument tracks EVERY time we did a Drag And Drop.

SO – Shut these two “preferences” OFF and Dragging And Dropping MIDI

In Cubase 4 will act the way you’d expect.

The following takes place on November 7th, 2008 with a PC running Windows XP PRO, Service Pack 3…

Ok, so I go to install some ANTARES stuff on a new PC and everything is going fine until the computer restarts (this is normal for iLOK/PACE) and the installer says it will now “RESUME” it’s install. I Click OK, GO AHEAD or whatever and at about 90%  done (according to the progress bar) it just sits there. So, I wait, and wait, and wait.

I power the computer off and upon restarting, Ive got NO iLOK drivers and I can’t run any of my iLOK protected stuff. What gives!?

Well, here is what’s going on… The last part of the ANTARES install - INSTALLS the iLOK drivers. For some reason this latest version of the iLOK (or PACE) drivers does NOT like it when you are connected to the internet. So, just disconnect your internet connection - IE: unplug your Ethernet cable or turn off your wireless connection and BINGO! - When you next restart your computer, the install will complete.

At this point you can re-connect to the internet.

I’ve just discovered something that kind of blew my mind.

If you are trying to use REASON 3.0.4 with Cubase of any flavor via REWIRE… IT WILL NOT WORK…

Unless you download and install this well hidden patch from the Propellerhead site here…

http://www.propellerheads.se/download/index.cfm?fuseaction=get_article&article=vista_installer

NOTE: Cubase 4 LE can NOT rewire to REASON. This was a policy decision by Steinberg.

Fred Here - From OBEDIA!

This is my very first blog post. I just wanted to say hello.

I’ll be posting comments and tips here as well as thoughts that occur to me while my endless

desire to break, fix and figure out better ways to work with Digital Audio Workstations continues.

I work with lots of progames including Cubase, Nuendo, Reason, FL Studio, ProTools, etc.

Although I don’t get asked about it too much - I am also a surround expert so, you may hear thoughts

about that too.

Finally, I’m heading up to the AES show in the first week of October and I hope to bring back some pictures and video of cool new gear.

Later. -Fred