Note Expression V1 in Cubase

today we talk about

Note Expression V1 in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com and today we'regoing to start talking about noteexpression in Cubase but before we startI want to remind you that there's a linkbelow to the free content navigationguide which is an easy to navigatewebpage with links to all the content onthis channel and besides that in thenear future I'm going to begin addingtips and other bits of information thatwill only be available there you knowthings like simple steps that will getyou started and up and running quickthings that are in the videos but arewritten down in simple steps that serveas quick reminders when you needinformation down the road if you'reworking with programs like wavelab orCubase plugins or the cable guys 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 anything thingupdated 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 and it'sabsolutely free Okay so let's getstarted note expression here's one ofthose subjects that offered so muchpromise back in the early days when itfirst was announced and it's still Ifind it very intriguing but trying toget information on it well that'sanother story so we're going to kind ofstumble our way through this see if wecan make some sense out of it for thecommon user and at the same time forthose that have never seen it give youan opportunity to see and understandwhat the promise of this note expressiontopic is all about so the long and shortof the idea of note expression is thatyou can actually get inside of the notesand make some changes in terms of likemidi data and that kind of a thing Istarted right off by finding this littlebrass patchand it's in the helion Sonic SC whichhas some patches that have nodeexpression in them and that's aprerequisite is that you actually haveto have a synth that actually offers anold expression to even do this so I'mgoing to show you how to go aboutfinding that in a second but if you'venever seen this before the idea is thatwhere normally we would take controllerdata and change the notes maybe thepitch Bend or that kind of thing whenyou enter into this world of noteexpression you can actually go to a midinote now I'm going to hold Ctrl andright click on this and in the menu itactually says open the node expressioneditor and if I click on that I get thislittle box and this little box allows meto actually draw controller data whichis tied to this area over here in theinspector which says node expression solet me take a quick example out here toshow you what I'm talking about if I godown this list it gives me all kinds ofthings you know the pan the volume allthe kind of stuff we would normallychange in a controller Lane I'm going togo down to the option that says pitchBend and the minute I highlight it overon this little window at the bottom italso brings up or an X the option for apitch band if I was to change this tosay volume this little window would nowbe controlling volume so whatever youchange over here in the node expressionwindow that's what that is being changedin this little controller Lane window solet's stay with the pitch band for aminute I'm going to show you I'm goingto take my line tool and I'm going todraw a simple little line going straightup with a large pitch Bend going in apositive direction now when I play thislisten to what happenssee that it affected that one note andchanged the pitch on it now if I clickout of this the note that I affected hasa little icon on it now that shows thatit has some kind of node expression dataon it and that's the idea and goingdeeper although I'm not going to showyou right now we're going to get intosome other things this allows you toactually take individual notes like anaccord and maybe change the pitch bandon just this one note while these othernotes are not being changed so the ideaof the note expression is a really neatidea we'll have to see once we getthrough our explanations how wellimplemented it really is but let me showyou how to begin so you have some ideaif you want to have some fun yourselfonce you open up hallion Sonic andthat's the first thing you're going towant to do because we're going to usethat for these tutorials we're going togo through I have an option here in thedrop down list that says all theinstrument sets so that's everyinstrument that's in Haley in here sonow how do we find ones that have nodeexpression because not all of these doif I pick a patch out of here thatdoesn't have node expression in it I'mnot going to be able to do any of thestuff I just did over here with thislittle window so what you can do is comedown here into the search area if youhighlight that basically just type inthe word note you will see that a wholebunch of patches come up that after thetitle of the patch says note expressionor note exp and all of these have somekind of node expression enabled in themso you're given some kind of you knowbasic patches to play with to get someidea how this stuff works and in thisbasic patch I found this one that saysaccented brass so I just went for thatfirst when I double clicked on it thenit loaded it up into the first slot andthen I could start using it we're goingto experiment with a lot of these justto kind of see what's available in themlet's go to a different one here I'mgoing to take this note over hereI'm going to go up to the option thatsays pan now again if you don't haveheadphones on you probably won't evenhear this what I'm going to do but I'mgoing to hold Ctrl and right click on itopen up my node expression editor andthe same thing I'm going to take my linetool and I'm going to draw it all theway from the bottom up to the top whichbasically will enable it to pan from oneside to the other I'm gonna click out ofhere now you can audition any note youput this note expression on by justclicking on itand if you had headphones on you justheard that sound go right from your leftear over to your right or depending onwhich way you have your headphones on sothere you goso that one note is now affected withthat node expression data let's play itfrom the beginning[Music]another thing it's doing and we're goingto talk about how to get around all thisbut once it enacts some kind ofcontroller that controller kind of staysin place throughout the rest of thesenotes it doesn't re-trigger unless weset that up we got to learn how to dothat for example when this went left toright this next note was still in theright because nothing ever told it tocome back if I on the other hand I holdCtrl and right click on this note godown to my note expression data and justdraw a line right in the center here andthat'll balance it back off in thestereo field and now if we play iteverything's Centerjust like that part of the discussion ofthe note expression goes into thesubject of what's called MPE whichstands for Midi polyphonic expressionand this is a set of features orfunctions that relate to MIDI devicesthat can transmit multiple midi channelsat the same time and or multiple midicontrollers at the same timethe most typical example that comes tomy mind is a midi guitar controllerwhere you may have all your strings setup to transmit on different midichannels where you can hit vibrato onone string or maybe not on the otherstring or pitch Bend or whatever youwant to do we're going to kind of limitour discussion in terms of that subjectbecause what I want to focus on mostlyis how those that don't have any kind ofspecial devices can still use midiexpression in terms of editing it andyou know drawing it in and whatever ittakes to make use of it I'm going togive some basic information on the MPEfor those of you that may have that kindof a situation but going into a realdepth introduction to it or descriptionof it we're going to save that foranother time so let me show you this forthose that may be in that area in someway if you have some kind of MPE deviceif you go up to your studio tab or yourstudio menu and you come down to whereit says Studio setup over here on theleft you're going to see midi and you'regoing to see the different midi devicesthat you have if you have one of theseMPE devices for a midi filing expressionit's going to be listed right here ifyou don't then you want to put one in soif we go up here to the top and we sayadd a device click on that and as I movedown the list the first thing I see heresays node expression input device and ifI click on that now in my midi list Ihave a new entry and it says nodeexpression input device if I click onany of these midi options they showdifferent things over on the right andif I click on this node expressiondevice I now have a series of optionshow I can set up my specific midi deviceone at the top being how to actuallyconnect something if I have it I can hitthe list and add it in here as I go downthe list I can kind of makedeterminations of how my device is goingto you know respond to different thingslike after touch or the pitch Bend orwhatever as I move down the list I canassign the different midi channels andthat kind of thing so if you have thosekind of devices this is where you wouldget into it and this is how you wouldadd it into the system when you're doneyou hit OK and then you can start usingit if you add something like this in andyou want to get rid of it if you go backup to the top this little trash can andthen anything you have highlighted so ifI highlight this expression device and Ihit the trash can then it's goneso before we wrap it up let's just do alittle experimenting with this brasssound see what we can do to it again thebasic sound we have is thisso let's take these three notes becausewe can select multiples if we want holdCtrlright click and go down to openexpression editor I'm going to go backover on the left I'm going to choosemodulation so I click on that which nowallows me to draw in some modulation nowyou can do some basic resizing on thesewindows if I grabbing at the bottom hereI can kind of grow it and expand it I'mgoing to right click and take my drawtool and starting at the bottom I'mgoing to click on itand then draw some modulation in thereand then at the end I'm going to draw itso it stopsnow let's hear what we havepretty cool let's add a pitch band inonce you have this window open you canactually click on other things I'llclick on this other note here and italways goes over the top of the notewhatever it is I'm going to go back overon the left down for pitch Bend I thinkI'll expand my window a little bitand then I'll draw in a little bit ofpitch bend on this noteand then at the end I'm going to draw itso it goes back to normallet's see what that didso that's kind of that's kind of strangebecause it went in the in the stepslet's change it to the line tool and dothe same thingI'll hit this and golet's see what that didthere we go I right click and come outof this so now we have this kind of athingso there you go that gives you some ideawhat the note expression can do allright it's going to wrap it up for todayas usual if you haven't grabbed yournavigation guide be sure to grab thatfrom the link below this video it givesyou a quick easy access to all thecontent on this channel ever growing andfree to use content is in order updatedconstantly it's categorized do yourselfa favor stop working so hard get it saveit to your favorites and then just useit whenever you need it you can join allof us that are using it as a refresherwhich is in my opinion probably one ofthe best uses for it nobody retains thisknowledge at the front of their mind allthe time so six months from now whenyou're ready to do something that you'veforgotten you can turn on a little 10minute video and you're up and runningagain speaking of which that'll probablyhappen with node expression as we begantalking about using Halley and SE as asynth for your note expression we foundsome patches and how to find them andthen we talked a little bit about theMPE devices and then we just had alittle fun adding some node expressiondata onto some basic midi data and we'regoing to continue exploring that andbecoming comfortable with it anduncovering some of this stuff in Cubaseis kind of hidden but I'm sure for manyof us is just a bunch of unknowninformation so we'll leave it there asalways it's great to have you guys hereand I'll see you on the next video