Importing Audio and MIDI files in Cubase

today we talk about

Importing Audio and MIDI files in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigital audiom manual.com let's talkabout importing audio and midi into ourprojects in qbase but before we start Iwant to remind you that there's a linkbelow to the content navigation guidewhich is an easy to navigate web pagewith links to all the content on thischannel and besides that in the nearfuture I'm going to begin adding tipsand other bits of information that willonly be available there if you'reworking with programs like wavelab orqbas plugins or the cable guide shaperbox and many many other projects thatare in the works then I know you'regoing to find just like I have that thisis an invaluable study Aid and the otherthing I want to make sure you understandis that this is not a simple PDF this isa constantly updated page that has anyinformation that is new or anytimevideos are changed really anythingupdated and once you have it you willalways have the latest informationconstantly updated so if you haven'tgotten it already go to the link belowclick on it and save it to yourfavorites it's my gift to you okay solet's get started you can import audioand midi in various ways in qase let'stalk about audio first the firstdecision you want to make is how do youwant your files imported do you want itto be automatic or do you want to beprompted every time you bring somethingin let me show you what I mean if I goup to file and I come down to import thefirst option I have is to import anaudio file it will open up a spot on mycomputer I can change that to any otherspot I want to go to but once I find anaudio file and I click on it down hereit's imported the audio file it didn'task me anything about conversion of thefile or bit depth or anything like thatbut if I go up to this preference fromedit preferences and come down toediting audio I can see right here Ihave an option that says on import audiofiles use the settings I have this dropdown list and when it says use settingsI have these choices to make here copyall the files convert the projectsettings split the channels if I changethis drop-down list to open the optionsdialogue box all these options becomegray out down here to apply okay so nowanytime I come back and say I want toimport some audio go through the samesteps of finding it on my hard drive andopen it up now I'm given this dialoguebox where I can make choices aboutcopying the file the bit depth splittingthe channels so that's your first choicedo you want to be prompted every time ordo you know what you want and you justset it up one time at the bottom of thisdialogue you have do not ask again whichautomatically puts it back into thestate where it uses the settings themain option on this audio import that Ithink is important is the option whereit says copy the file to the projectfolder qbase always has its own audiofolder for each project and when youback up your projects you back up thataudio folder if you leave this uncheckedand your audio file is in your documentsor someplace like that when you back upyour project those audio files are stillin your documents or any other harddrive you may have them on which meansyou don't really have your projectbacked up so the option for copy file toproject folder unless you have aspecific reason not to do that you'lldefinitely want to have that optionchecked again it's only a copy theoriginal is still wherever you left itso that's an important optionoccasionally you may try to bring a fileinto qbase that's not supported thefiles that are supported are things likeyour wave aif files EG files Windowsmedia if you're on a Windows flag filesthis Aug vorus file but if somethingdoesn't show up or you can't import itinto qbase it could be some kind ofincompatible audio file you have otheroptions on the file import if you comedown you have one that says audio CDthese days most of us may have troublefinding an audio CD to actually importbut if you have one you can actuallycheck off the individual tracks that youwant and then hit okay and it'll importall those tracks you have another optiondown here where you can bring in justthe audio from a video file click onthis navigate to where the video file isand then it will import the audio as itsown track all right so let's talk aboutimporting midi in order to import midiyou have to have MIDI files to import solet's go searching for some there's allkinds of places to find some there'sactually I'm included in qbase but let'sgo out to the internet and grab somethere's a site here called free.orgeverything's free I have a category heresay is the top midi so let's go to thatwe have all kinds of great options hereplay one that we won't get into somekind of copyright issue with but I'll gofor happy birthday typically this sitegives you a little player where you canpreview thesong if you want to go further you canhit the button that says download themidi let's go ahead and do that pick afolder on your hard drive have todownload it to and now we're back inqbase we're going to go to file importand come down to MIDI file the firstthing it asked me is do I want to createa new project if I say no it's going totry to import it into my existingproject but for Simplicity let's do anew project at this point it's askingyou to actually click on the midi filethat you downloaded so we're going to goto happy birthday and now it's asking usto create a folder because qbas actuallyasked to create a project we'll go tonew folder and create a folder calledhappy birthday hit select folder andthen just like that qbas creates aproject opens up these MIDI files and wehave[Music]this so there you go you have a wholeworld of exploring importing MIDI filesso what has it done exactly for onething it's created a series of tracksall going to Helen and it used Helen toopen up all these different patches sowhy did it do that and the answer tothat question lies in our preferences ifwe go down here and we look at our listof preferences and we come down to theoption that says midi and then we go tothe one says midi file click on that wehave a series of different options herethe volume in the pan controllersimporting markers one thing at thebottom here we have a drop down list andin my drop- down list it shows Helen andthat's checked you could choose aninstrument track or midi tracks but inthis case it's going to Helen so we makethat choice some of the other options wehave here one of the options here saysimport the drop file as a single part ifI check that hit apply and okay you cansee now that it already created a bunchof separate tracks S I go back to myoriginal file that I downloaded and Iclick on that and I drag it into thisproject with that option took everytrack and kept it on one track so nowit'll play the whole song but just onone[Music]track whereas if I go back to the editand preferences and I uncheck this oneas a single part hit apply okay do thesame thing and drag my midi file in nowit creates everything as separate tracksand the only other thing to talk abouttoday is midi Loops qbas comes with somemidi Loops if we open up the media Baywe go up to these media types make surethe one from midi Loops is checked thenyou can just kind of browse to heardifferent midi Loops when you click onit you'll hear asound if you get something you like youcan either drag it in or just doubleclick it and then you'll get a loop likethis if we go to this track and checkout what instrument we have again we cansee it assigned it to Helen and thefirst slot is assigned to an analog kityou can open up these patterns changethe sounds around if you want so there'slots of fun to be had with midi Loops aswell and that's going to wrap it up fortoday as always if you haven't alreadybe sure to grab your copy of the digitalaudio manual content navigation guidefrom the link below this video yourfaster better way to learn and reviewpick it up look it over all thedifferent topics that are gathered thereand then you can get started on yourpath through a better way to learn allthis stuff like today when we talkedabout importing audio and MIDI files wegot into some of the import options wetalked about compressed files an audioCD audio from video we imported someMIDI files from the internet and then wetalked about midi Loops to wrap it uplots of great options to experiment withas we continue to move through all thesevarious topics in cuase as always it'sgreat to have you guys here and I'll seeyou on the next