Cubase vst- Getting into the Details by - HTML preview

Tempo Mapping “freely recorded” Music using Time Locked Tracks

The Master Track editor interacts with Cubase VST’s Time Locked Tracks in a special and very useful way. If you change the tempo in the Master Track editor, notes on Time Locked Track will get moved, bar-wise, so as to make them still appear on the same time positions. You can use this to your advantage:

• To “reposition” Events in music recorded without a metronome, so that they fit the meter positions in Cubase VST.
• To match music to for example sound effects or other audio Events that occur on fixed time positions, rather than meter positions.

Observe this when working with Time Locked Tracks

Time Locked Tracks are described in general in their own chapter in this book. Please just observe the following points:

• The time it will take to recalculate Time Locked Tracks depends on the number of tempo changes in your Arrange window. When you work with the Master Track editor it is common to have very large amounts of Tempo Events. This will lead to noticeable recalculation times (sometimes very long) in two cases: when you adjust the Tempo curve and when you use Straighten Up.
• Try to avoid to edit a Part on a Time Locked Track in a MIDI editor, at the same time as you are changing the tempo in the Master Track editor. The reason is that if a tempo change happens to move an Event so that it winds up on a position before the beginning of its Part, this Event will be lost!

Working with Time based Events

If you already have Events on Time Locked Tracks which indicate important positions (Hits) in the music, you can use these as a basis for your tempo changes: 1. Time Lock the Tracks that have Events which happen on “fixed” Time Positions.
2. Open a MIDI editor and select the Events you want to use as Hitpoints in the Master Track editor. Note down the position of the first of the selected Events. 3. Open the Master Track editor and set the Song Position to the position of the first Event you copied.
4. Select Paste. The Events are now Pasted in as Time Hits and can be used as a basis for Tempo Matching or Straighten Up, as described in the previous section.

Repositioning “freely recorded” Music

Many musicians find it constraining to record in time with a metronome. With the Master Track editor you can record in “free time” and later adapt the recording to Cubase VST’s meter positions:

1. Turn off the Metronome and perform a recording.
If you plan to preserve the feeling in the recording, make sure you get a take that contains all the tempi just as you want them.

2. For safety, make a copy of the Track and Mute it.

3. Open the recording for editing, for example in Key Edit. Select all Events and drag them so that the first Event winds up on position 1.1.0.
This assumes the Part begins on 1.1.0. If it doesn’t you can either move the Part or use the Pencil in the Arrange window to adjust the beginning of it.

4. Select a number of Events on easily defined meter positions.
For example if the piece contains a relatively simple bass line (mainly happening on quarter notes and eighth notes), select the notes in this bass line. If it is a more complex piece you might have to work a bit on the selection, or maybe only do a bit at a time. Try to not select notes that are more tightly spaced than quarter notes. (It probably isn’t necessary and linking them will take more time.)

5. If selecting notes in the actual recording doesn’t work for you, you might try recording a special Track with a drum sound, where you simply tap the beat while listening to the recording. Then you can use this Track for reference instead of the notes in the actual recording.

6. When you have the selection right, copy the Events (using Copy on the Edit menu). Close the editor.
7. Open the Master Track editor. Position the Song Position on 1.1.0.

 

Pasting always happens at the Song Position!

 

8. Paste.

 

All the notes will now appear as Time Hits.

 

9. Use the Pencil to draw in Meter Hits on the musical positions that the Time Hits refer to.

P Since the tempo is completely wrong at this point, the Meter ruler and the Time ruler will not match up at all. This might lead to some confusion at first. What you are supposed to do is to tell the program what meter positions the Pasted Time Hits refer to. If the bass for example played on straight quarter notes only, draw in one Meter Hit on each quarter note.

10.When you are done and have one Meter Hit for each Time Hit, use Link One By One on the Do Pop-up menu to link all the Hitpoints together.
11.Select Straighten Up, and when the dialog box appears, verify that it is OK to insert new Tempo Events.
12.Play back the Track and examine it in Key or Score Edit to check that everything actually has wound up as you intended.

When examining the recording in one of the editors, you will note that the Events have been moved to the correct musical (meter) positions. This allows you to use Cubase VST’s different tools (such as quantizing) in a predictable way and to format the recording for printout in Score Edit. But, since a number of tempo changes have been created, the piece still plays back as it originally did.

If you are happy with the piece as it is now, you should possibly turn off Time Lock for the Track before you proceed with further editing (maybe you should make a copy first?).

If you want to hear how the piece plays back at a fixed tempo, simply turn off the Master Track. And if you like, you can continue to use the Master Track editor to edit the tempo further.