Automation V1 in Cubase

today we talk about

Automation V1 in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today let's begintalking about Automation in Cubase butbefore we start I want to remind youthat there's a link below to the freecontent navigation guide which is aneasy to navigate webpage with links toall the content on this channel andbesides that in the near future I'mgoing to begin adding tips and otherbits of information that will only beavailable there you know things likesimple steps that will get you startedand up and running quick things that arein the videos but are written down insimple steps that serve as quickreminders when you need information downthe road if you're working with programslike wavelab or Cubase plugins or thecable guys shaper box and many manyother projects that are in the worksthen I know you're going to find justlike I have that this is an invaluablestudy Aid and the other thing I want tomake sure you understand is that this isnot a simple PDF this is a constantlyupdated page that has any informationthat is new or anytime videos arechanged really anything up dated andonce you have it you will always havethe latest information constantlyupdated so if you haven't gotten italready go to the link below click on itand save it to your favorites it's mygift to you and it's absolutely freeOkay so let's get started so the subjectof Automation in Cubase quite a subjectfairly involved lots of optionsavailable for those that may not knowabout automation let's do a quickexample if I take this piano partand I go to the fader in the mixer and Igrab it and I start to move it downor move it upI'm doing that myself but if I hit thisright button down here do the same thingstart playing my song and move the faderup or downthis creates automationthen if I turn the right button off andby creating automation what this allowsme to do is not have to change thevolume myself anymore in other wordswhen I play the song Now Cubase movesthe fader up and downnow changing the feeder on one track nobig deal but if I had 30 tracks here andI wanted them all to be changing there'sno way I could physically do itobviously and this is where automationcomes in arguably automation is probablyone of the most important parts ofproduction it does things in your musicand brings things to life that youcouldn't do any other way so we're goingto explore what this is all aboutso to begin our discussion today we'regoing to talk about automation modes andto get into that you want to go up toyour toolbar and make sure that thatoption for automation mode is selectedat that point you'll see something thatsays touch you'll have a drop down listthat will also show you Auto latch andcrossover and these are the differentmodes and we're going to talk aboutthese now I've set up a basic Loop hereand I'm going to write some Automationand we're going to look at the firstoption that says touch I'm going to turnon this right automation which is this Wbutton and when touch is being used theminute I grab the control in this casethe fader it begins writing automationand that means even if I hold it steadyit's writing automation now if I raiseI'm just going to write it if I lowerit's going to write itthe minute I let go of it it punches outbasically it stops writing and thenbegins readingwith the touch automation whenever Imove the fader to the minute I let go ofit it jumps back to whatever automationis already here at any time I can rightclick on this track say select allevents delete them now if I go to thisnext option it says Auto latch thedifference is here with auto latch itdoesn't jump back to pre-existing datain other words if I pull this fader downit's going to stay down until the loopstarts over now it's just going to staydown there it's not going to jump up anyplaceand the loop starts over againit goes back to the original datanow a couple of techniques I want tozero in on here a bit just so we haveClarity going forward all three of thesemodes respond to touch I'm going toconcentrate on Mouse clicking right nowand not use my any other controllersthat I have and what I mean by toucheven though this one specifically saystouch but the auto latch the crossoverall three of these modes respondinitially to any kind of touching of thecontroller what that means is I'mplaying my song if I come over to thefaderand I click on it I immediately engageitthe minute I let go of it it basicallydisengages and starts running again theother thing is I don't have to followthe fader or basically Chase it you knowI'm trying to catch it with my mouse Idon't need to do that the minute I clickanywhere the fader responds to whereI've clicked and then I can begin movingit and when I release it it disengagesor punches out all of these disengagewhen the loop ends at least the waywe've set it up so far we're going toget into some options on that as well sofor my example the minute the loopstarts over again if I want to startwriting information I have to clickagain so I'm clicking it now it'sengaged and I can move it foreignso then in our mode option that bringsus to the option that says crossover nowthis is a little tricky for me to try toexplain but let me try to give you theconcept when we're using the crossoverwhat we're saying is any of theseboundaries are actually going to be usedto determine where the automation comesin or gets punched out for example thissong is playing and it's moving along tosay this point where this automation ishigh and I hit the fader to knock it waydown low and then I hit the fader toknock it above this threshold of whereit's at it's not going to go any higherthan this threshold it uses somepredetermined amount or level that'salready here to kind of determine whereit's going to start and stop trying toallow you a point of where you're notgoing to overshoot your automationmeaning if I grab the fader and I try tomove it up really fast it would be veryeasy for me to go over this existinglevel here so I don't want to spike overtop of it and come back down so for myexample what I'm going to do here I'mgoing to let the song play when it getsto this point here I'm going to hit thefader to trigger it to draw a really lowlevel here then I'm to quickly hit alevel that goes way up high even thoughI've hit it way up high it's not goingto go any higher than this existing linehere and that's what the crossover doeslet me try to demonstrate that and WatchWhat Happens here we go I'm going to usethe fader as I do this all right I'mgoing to hit it down lownow I'm going to hit it way up highsee and it won't go up high it'll onlystop right at that level right there nowon the other hand if you grab thecrossover and just start moving thefader it basically responds just likeany of the other ones in other words aslong as you keep your hand on the faderand move it it's going to engage andjust write over anything like this andthe other thing I want to call yourattention to before we go too muchfurther if we go up to our automationtoolbar go to the right there's a littlee here with that e button get thisautomation panel which we're going tospend some time with as we go along butright now I want to bring you to thesettings option here and there's anoption over here called the return timeand it's by default it goes to 33milliseconds if there was one settingthat is kind of like the secret saucefor your automation it's this returntime and I highly recommend the nexttime you mess with your automation toexperiment with this return time rightnow the default of 33 milliseconds I canspin this all the way up to 2000. andyou will see a drastic difference on howyour automation Works depending on howyou have this return time set if youhave it down at the default of 33 oreven below you're going to find yourautomation having like cliffs in otherwords very sharp highs and lows and it'sgoing to respond very quickly and maybeyou want that on the other hand thefarther up you go with this I'll take itall the way up to the 2000 Mark here atthis point everything becomes supersmooth in other words it takes a longtime and everything draws very smoothcurves let me play a little bit andadjust it and watch what happensI'm gonna grab the fader and it justmakes a very smooth slow moving curvewhen we do this the other hand if I goback to the 33 milliseconds do the samething if I move it up or down and let goof it it just like spikes right back upagainor down whatever it's at if you lookright here you have this very sharp dropyou will never have that if you changethat release time to a higher number butmaybe you want that so just know that'show that's going to change the lastthing we're going to talk about today ifyou go back up to your automation panelyou also have an option to activate thistrim control which then allows you totake all of your Automation and scale itup or down and you can move the pointwhere you want to kind of angle it forthe Times where maybe you made a greatautomation curve but it just needs to bereduced a little bit or expanded alittle bit you have this trim option ifat any point you move it and then comeback and turn your trim off you can alsokind of see how the two compare in caseyou want to make changes relative to itall right it's going to wrap it up fortoday as always if you haven't grabbingyour navigation guide be sure to grabthat from the link below this videohere's your free easy access to all thecontent on this channel ever growingcategorized videos are being updated allthe time click on the link belowdownload it save it to your favoritesand then use it when you need it so webegin the discussion of automationthere's a few things to go over on thissubject obviously but it's one of thosethings that if you kind of know ityou're just not taking full advantage ofhow it really works and you'll have alot more fun in your projects once youreally understand all the ins and outsof the automation options so hang inthere we're going to explore them all asalways it's great to have you guys hereand I'll see you on the next video