Recording V1 in Cubase

today we talk about

Recording V1 in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today we're goingto start talking about recording inCubase but before we start I want toremind you that there's a link below tothe free content navigation guide whichis an easy to navigate webpage withlinks to all the content on this channeland besides 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 updated and onceyou have it you will always have thelatest information constantly updated soif you haven't gotten it already go tothe link below click on it and save itto your favorites it's my gift to youand it's absolutely free Okay so let'sget started so we're going to starttalking about recording now thisobviously if you've worked with theprogram is going to be something that ispretty second nature to you on the otherhand I've had a lot of comments andheard from many people that when you'refirst getting into Cubase this isprobably one of the most confusingthings and I would have to agree becauseI remember going through quite a dilemmawhen I first was learning to record inCubase and in many ways I've kind ofdeveloped my own kind of unconventionalways of dealing with it which I freelywill share with you as we go along herebut let's start with a real basicconcept that you're going to recordeither audio or midi when you'rerecording in Cubase audio being thingsthat you would record like through amicrophone or like I have here my guitarplugged in or midi would be things thatare recorded through a midi keyboard ordrum machine or some kind of midi devicein many ways it's the same as theprocess and yet there are some things tounderstand so let's begin right awaywith some of the basic terminology youwant to get a grip on and the firstthing let's focus in on audio for aminute is the concept of this recordenable when you look at a basic audiotrack like I have my guitar tracks setup here where I can play my guitarthere's various ways you can set yourtracks up so that they respondautomatically to setting up recordingthe minute you select them or you canset them up to where you have toactually do something to them but thething to understand is there's a buttonhere on the audio tracks it's the firstlittle button and when you hit it itgoes red or turns off and that's therecord and able button now the thing isjust because something is record enableddoes not mean that it's going to justautomatically record and this is whereit kind of gets confusing if you don'tunderstand this all but for example if Iturn the record enable off and I startplaying the track from the beginninghere like I'm going to record somethingit's clicking and it's going but nothingis recording down here nothing you willactually see something being writtenwhen it's actually recording now if I goover and record enable this by hittingthis record enable button and I do thesame thing I start playing the trackit's still not doing anything it's stillnot recording any information so we havea button here that says record enable weturn it on and off and yet it makes nodifference when we're actually playingwhat it's really doing is it's tellingyou it's ready to record but it won'tactually record until you hit the actualrecord button on the transport barthere's various ways to trigger thisother than hitting the transport bar forexample the little asterisk on thenumber keypad which is what I use mostof time and other ways you can set upshortcuts to actually activate this butif I again start this track from thebeginning and I have my track recordenabled where it shows the red mark hereand then I come down to the actualtransport and I hit the record buttonat that point you can see look it'srecording all right so with the recordenable button on and then hitting theactual record button on the transportthis is how you begin recording if Iturn this record button on the transportoff it is now no longer recording it'sjust playing the same track over andover again so lesson number oneunderstand the difference between atrack that's record enabled and when youactually start recording by hitting thetransport barso everybody has their own way ofworking and what preferences are goingto be the best but me personally I don'twant to have to select a track that Iknow I'm going to be recording on thenhave to hit the record enable button sothat I'm ready to record I want to justhit the track and know I can startrecording and you actually havepreferences to govern that so if you goup to your edit and come down to yourpreferences and you look in the firstcategory that says editing and you godown to where it says project and mixconsole as you scroll down you have twooptions one that says enable to recordon the selected midi track and one thatsays enable record on the selected audiotrack and I have both of these checkedyou can uncheck them that's yourpreference but with those preferenceschecked no matter what I hit whetherit's a midi track or an audio track itautomatically lights up red ready to gothat means if I come down here and I hitthe record button it's going to startrecording on that track so I'll let youdecide which way is best for you but mepersonally I prefer to have that justready to go when I hit a track so youalso have the option to do punch andrecording and punch and recording allowsyou to kind of hear what's happening ona track and then have the recordingstart automatically at a certain pointand then stop at a certain point say forexample I go up here and I set mylocator as I want them at the samemeasure 21 and ending at measure 23 andI bring my cursor way back to Bar 17down on the transport bar you have anoption that actually allows you toactivate the punch in point and thepunch out pointif this little padlock is activated thenthese numbers to the right justautomatically reflect whatever is on thelocators so if I have a track recordenabled down here and I have an area uphere my locators set up from measure 21to 23 and I have these punched in andout Point set and this padlock on and Ihit the space bar it's going to clickalong until it gets to 21 measure 21it's going to turn on it's going tostart recording which is doing right nowthen it's going to turn off as soon asit gets to measure 23. and then I canstop the recording now you can take thiseven a step further maybe you want to goover and over and over again with like aloop recording and have it punch in andout so it's not just one shot what youcan do at that point is go to thislittle padlock and click it to turn itoff what you'll see up on top is anotherset of markers in red and these show youwhere the actual punch in actuallyoccurs so I'm going to set them again at21 and 23 but I'm going to make my Loopmarkers which are kind of hidden behindit I'm going to stretch those out from17 all the way up to 25 and then I'mgoing to activate to make sure the loopis on so what's going to happen now isit's going to play through this Loop butwhen it gets to measure 21 it's going tostart recording and I guess 23 it willstop and then when it finishes the loopit'll start over again so it's allautomatic I'm going to go to my recordenabled track I'm going to hit the spacebarand it's moving along right now it'sjust playing with a clickand now it has started recording it'srecording a bar here now it's turned offand in a second it's going to looparound again and now it's looped aroundand when it comes up to this point wherethe recording is it's going to startagainnow it's recording again so it's takinganother take and you can just keep doingthat until you get it the way you wantit okay and a couple of things that arekind of obvious common knowledge thingsbut I want to make sure everybody's onthe same page when you go up to theruler at the very top of your projectand you can see you have numbers up herethat show the bar lines your mousepointer turns into a little pencil atsome point and at that point you candrawWhat's called the locators and this islike the main function in Cubase interms of where you know you're going tobe doing any kind of work you have aleft locator and a right locator onceyou change those you can you know grabone side or the other and change thesize of them on the transport bar on thebottom you have an option to activateWhat's called the cycle if I click onthat you can see the area between mylocators turns to this like bluishpurplish color or whatever your colorscheme is on your system and now thisshows me that you know whatever is goingto happen here is going to recur overand over again as a cycle by the sametoken if I go down and hit this cyclebutton again it leaves the locators inplace which again leaves certain work tobe done but it turns the cycle part offso if you don't understand what it meansto cycle and the locators and that kindof thing that's all that information andyou need to know that going forward theother thing is you can actually click inthe area between the locators and thatwill activate the cycling option as wellso you have an option right there juston the selected area now besides thatdown on the actual transport which is atthe bottom of your project this is thething that actually activates theplaying and the stopping and therecording and the cycling and all kindsof options to create your left and rightlocators all that stuff but this is kindof a common theme throughout Cubase ingeneral that you'll have an info line ofsome kind and you'll have just so manyoptions on it and sometimes it's hard tofind the thing you're looking forbecause there are so many options thefirst option you have is to choose whatbuttons you actually want here or don'twant here and it's important to kind oflearn how to do this if I go to a blankarea on this transport and I right clickI get a menu that shows me all thedifferent things that are available andit shows me what things are visiblebecause it has a little check mark nextto it if I go to any of these and Iuncheck them those buttons start todisappear if I right click and I pickanother option and I actually click onit or select it then those buttonsappear on this transport if you rightclick on this you should see an optionthat says show all and reset all towardsthe bottom when you hit the show all youget every single button that's availableand there's no way to actually use thisbecause you can't find anythingeverything is crammed on here and if youright click again you have an optionthat says reset on if you hit that youkind of get the default of whatever wasset up when you install the system mepersonally I always like to create apreset in these areas that I call nonemeaning I uncheck all of these I juststart unchecking them all and then youcan right click and go to the optionthat says setup or whatever you haveselected as hidden or visible items youcan then check down here for a presetand create a preset which I call noneonce you have that if I right click downhere anywhere I can pick my none presetand now I got a completely blank slatedown here with absolutely nothingfear not because you can right clickhere and immediately go to reset all andit brings you back to your defaultwhatever you had but if I go to my noneoption where there's nothing there thenit's very easy to pick up things like ifI'm looking for the markers or thetransport controls or those punch pointsif I click the punch points here then Iknow exactly where they are and I cansee them right here so as you'relearning buttons especially as you'regoing through the tutorials with me hereI really recommend that you learn how toyou know remove and add your buttons andeven like me set up something where itcan remove all your buttons If you needto just for the sake of fighting whatyou need to easier all right it's goingto wrap it up for today as usual if youhaven't grabbed your navigation guide besure to grab that from the link belowthis video gives you access to all thecontent on this channel easy organizedjust click on the link below this videoand save it to your favorites use ittoday or six months from today wheneveryou think you need help on something youget stuck on so we begin the process oflearning how to record in Cubase asalways it's going to be many things thatthe experienced users will be veryfamiliar with but I'm sure as always wewill uncover some things that none of usare aware of as the fun of doing thesevideos in the first place is we alwaysuncover something that we probablyhaven't used before today we kind oflooked at just setting up some of therecord enabled preferences so you knowhow to do that we looked at the auto andmanual punch in and out points and howto set up the locators and the cyclelocators and then we kind of took abasic look at your transport buttons soyou're not completely confused whenyou're trying to find out what thosebuttons even are and we will continuethis discussion and move deeper into thesubject as always it's great to have youguys here and I'll see you in the nextvideo