Recording V3 in Cubase

today we talk about

Recording V3 in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today we move onto our third video as we discussrecording 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 wave lab 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 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 and it'sabsolutely free Okay so let's getstarted so we're on the third video onthe subject of recording in Cubaseprevious videos and all videos for thischannel are in the navigation guide andthe link below but at this point in therecording we want to talk about actuallysetting up the track and as you can seein my project I have a bunch of tracksthat's all this stuff is on the lefthere but tracks don't just magicallyappear automatically you have to putthem into your project so if I'mstarting from square one I want to goover here into this left Zone I want toright click someplace and I'm going topick some kind of trackand for our discussion it's going to besome kind of audio or midi track and bymidi I mean the VST instrument tracks solet's go up and start with an audiotrack if I go to the top of the list andI hit audio track I'm given a wholebunch of choices which I'm not going toworry about too much right now I'm justgoing to take these defaults but I'mgoing to give it a name I'll call it thetrack one thing to notice though if youwant more than one track at it and youwant to keep adding these you can godown here and spin this up to whateveryou want I've got just one here but Ican put 10 tracks if I want and then Ihit add track now the first thing toconsider when you're adding tracks isunderstand that each track actually doestake some Ram even though it's an emptytrack it's taking space up in the rambecause when you open up a track and youopen a track by hitting the little e onthe track each track has a number ofstuff that's being created in the mixconsole and when you have the EQ hereand if I hit the channel strip I haveall these different options fordifferent stuff gate and compression andall this stuff and even if I close thisdown and open up the mixer down here inthe lower Zone same thing all this stuffhere even if you're not using it it'staking up some kind of ram space on yourcomputer so if you have a large amountof ram no big deal but if you have alimited amount you want to put a littlethought into how many tracks you'readding and using as you build yourproject you definitely don't want tojust create a hundred empty tracks justbecause you want them there if you'reworking on a smaller system because youmay be chewing up all your RAM just on abunch of empty tracks that you're notusing it and as a side note to that downhere in the transport area you canactually right click and show this meterthat shows the input output activitywhich down here will give you some ideaof how much activity is being used onyour computer and how much hard drivespace and that kind of thing so forexample if you haven't even started yourproject yet you just have 30 emptytracks but you looked out your meter andit's already pegged and you haven'tstarted recording yet that gives you theidea that there's obviously somethingchewing up all your space and youhaven't even begun recording all rightso every time you select a track you'regoing to record on you have to have aninput bus selected as well what doesthat mean basically it's whatever yoursound card is going to be recording onlet me do the best I can to kind of giveyou some tips in this area number onelet's say I go down to this track I haveset for guitar here every time I clickon a track over here in the left I cansee this thing called the inspectorwhich gives me all kinds of informationon my track and one of the things thatwe're looking at the important thing uphere shows the input and the output ofthis trackthe input is what I've got plugged intomy sound card or any other thing I'vegot going into my sound card that I'mactually going to hopefully record fromthe output is whatever it's going to besent to what speakers or however it'sgoing to be sent through the you knowbus chain out to the speakers forexample when I hit this input I'm givena couple of options shows my guitarinput or my mic input or some otherthings I've set up here and let'sbacktrack for a minute just to see wherethis stuff comes from we've done allkinds of videos on setting up the busesand the Audio Connections in Cubase butlet me just do a quick review here whenyou go up to the studio tab up on top orthe studio menu and you come down whereit says Audio Connections you're giventhese tabs here to say input output andall this kind of stuff on this input tabis basically where you're going to setup how you're using your sound card nowI've got most of my stuff set up but thesteps for setting it up is you rightclick in this area where it says thename and you would add a bus you want amono you want a stereo you want asurround sound whatever you're going tobe using from your sound card you goover into this device area make sureyour sound card is selected and then youactually pick over here in the devicePort you actually pick where you'replugged into on the device and onceyou've got all that stuff set up the wayyou want it then whenever you come tothis track that you're going to berecording on that stuff that you set upis going to be available right here ifyou need to choose it now again if youset up your tracks ahead of time like Ihave in a template you really don't haveto set this stuff up or pick it oranything because it's already beenpre-set up in the template that's what Ialways do so I basically do it one timein the template and then when I'm readyto go this stuff is already here but ifI needed to I could change it I couldclick and pick other buses and that kindof a thing all right so when you recordsomething where do the files go againthis is something I keep hearing from alot of people that seem to get confusedby it for whatever reason in case youwant to back up your files or you knowfind your audio files and that kind ofthing so let's take a quick look and seeexactly what happens here first of alllet me draw your attention to a coupleplaces if I go to the poolagain the audio pool always shows everypiece of audio that's in your projectand of course we've done the wholeseries of videos on the pool in caseyou're interested in knowing all thedetails of this and they're in thenavigation guide but every time yourecord something it always puts it inthe pool so you can always if youhaven't deleted it you can always go inthe pool and find whatever you'verecorded at some point the other placeis every time you create a projectCubase creates an audio folder for thatproject and there's many ways tonavigate to that but the easiest way isjust go to the hub open the Hub up andif you've saved your project it'llusually be here in the recent file listand you can actually just right click onthat file and go down to where it saysshow in Explorer if I click on that thisactually opens up the folder on my harddrive that has been created for thisproject and then you can see variousfolders but one folder right here saysaudio and if I click on that this willlist every piece of audio that'sactually in this project so let's makesome changes here right now it showsthree little pieces of audio here hereand over in the pool it's got a list ofsome various things I set my cursor atthe beginning of this record enabledtrack and I hit record as I'm talkingyou can see that it's recording my voiceright here now it's worth noting thatthis takes processing power just initself and I'm sure these days that'snot really a big deal like it used to bebut still be aware that this takesprocessing power and if you ever need tolike you know recoup some of thatprocessing power if you go up to youredit down to your preferences and lookdown the list how you get to record andthere's an actual sub carry says audiowhen you hit that there's a preferencehere that says create the audio imagesduring record if you turn that off thenyou'll just get this block of event herebut you won't actually see the wave onhere I assume for most people that's nota big deal these days but just so youknow now this has been recorded as anevent let's recap what we just learnedso if I go back to the pool again I cansee now I have an extra file in here itsays mic two and every event has alittle name on it so it says mic 2 hereso I know this is what what it is if Igo back up to my Hub and open the Hubback up and I open the folder back up byright clicking and say show and explorethen I also have a new audio file inhere mic 2 as well so if I needed toback this up or do anything with thisaudio file or these files in this audiofile I have access to it right there andthen just to reiterate what we've talkedabout before and every one of thesetracks if you want to specifically set afolder you can right click on any trackgo to the option that says set therecord folder at that point you can pickyour own specific folder and every pieceof audio you create on that track orwhatever tracks you select they will allgo in that specific folder all right solet's finish out today talking aboutwhat's called the audio record modes ifI go down into the transport area rightnow I have my none preset selected I goup to this option that says audio recordmodes now we looked at the common recordmodes and so this is the audio recordmode so if I click that now I get alittle drop down list with three optionssays keep history cycle history andreplace or replace and you can alsoaccess if you go up into your transportmenu and you scroll down the list youcan see there's an option here it saysaudio record modes gives you the sameoptions but let's just stay on thetransport bar if I go to this very firstone that says keep history this appliesto any kind of recording but it reallycomes into play when you're doing cyclerecording so right now if I hit recordin this little area here where I have acycle set up it's now recording a takeand it's going to repeatand every time it repeats it's makinganother take they're kind of stackingone on top of the other and it even sayshere on the event take four take five asit keeps going through it now when Istop the recording processit still looks like I just have this oneevent here but in truth if I go down tothis little arrow below it and I clickon it it now lists all those differenttakes take one take two three and I wentfive different times so I can select anyone of these and I can go back to themand I can listen to them and previewthem these are also visible if you hitthe lane option over here on the trackthen it gives you the actual takes youcan see them right here I'm going toturn the lanes back off now if I startrecording againI have five takes if I start recordingagainit's going to pick up right from takefive and it's going to start making takesix take seven and whatever as manytimes as I want if I stop it same thingif I go back to the arrow I can see Ihave the one through five plus now I'veadded a six and a seven and I could justkeep going on this stuff comes in realHandy if you're doing like vocaloverdubs and stuff but now let's takethe next option if I go to this dropdown in the record modes and I go tocycle history plus replace what this isgoing to do is it's not going to keepanything in the previous takes those aregoing to get wiped out so if I hitrecord now just like before it's goingto look like it's starting to record andit isbut all those previous takes just gotlost they're goneand it's making new takes nine ten it'skind of picking up from the same numbersbut it's making all new takes and if Istop it and I look at the little dropdown arrow I now have take 8 9 10 11 asfar as I go but one through seven hasbeen eliminated and same thing if Istart this over again it's going to comeright up from 11 it's going to go to 1213 14 and these takes are going to geteliminated so it's constantly going toreplace whatever is here but it willcontinue to make new takes if I go to mylast option that now says replace wellif you can figure it out it's now goingto just give one take and everythingelse is constantly going to get wipedover and if I stop it at this pointthere's no little arrows anymore nor isthere any lanes if I hit the lanesthere's nothing else here because everytime it records it completely removeswhat was there and makes a brand newtake so again depending on what you'retrying to do or what your preference isit would make your audio recordpreferences right there for me typicallyI use the first one of keep the historybut there is a time and a place when anyof these could be valuable all rightthat's going to wrap it up for today asusual if you haven't grabbed yournavigation guide be sure to grab thatfrom the link below low gives you accessto all the content on this channel evergrowing and free to use content isconstantly being updated and it's inorder if you don't have it click thelink right below this video download itand save it to your favorites it willmake your learning experience withCubase and any other software that wemess with on this channel much mucheasier so we continue on the subject ofrecording today we kind of talked aboutadding audio or BST tracks to record wekind of touched on how much RAM a tracktakes up when you're using it even ifyou're not recording on it we got intothe audio input buses very important I'mwhere the files in the audio folder goand the files go into the pool how thewaveform shows up on the events and howyou can turn that off in yourpreferences if you want and then wefinished up talking about the audiorecord modes this is the kind of stuffthat if you have it and understand itthen your whole experience in Cubasewill be much much better and we willcontinue through this subjectuncovering all the little secrets as wegoand as usual it's great to have you guyshere and I'll see you on the next video