VCA Faders in Cubase

today we talk about

VCA Faders in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today we're goingto start talking about VCA faders 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 2 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 really anything updatedand once you have it you will alwayshave the 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 VCA fadersvoltage controlled amplifiers that'sjust kind of where they came from backin the day when they were being used inHardwarebut bottom line is they control a bunchof other faders if you look at my mixhere I have this little green fader andwhen I bring this fader up or down youcan see all the faders before it areswitching because they are all connectedto it there's various uses for this butI can tell you just from my own personalexperience what I've always liked aboutthe VCA fader option is it's probablythe truest real fader option meaningthat a lot of times if you take allthese faders for whatever instrumentwhether it's drums or synths or whateveryou're using and you send them into agroup and then you change that groupfader level which is very typical manytimes the signal is altered depending oneffects you're going through and there'sjust various things that will occur whenyou're using it that way on the otherhand when you connect things with a VCAfader and You Begin pulling this faderdown or bringing it up you will findthat your other faders are doing exactlythat they are coming down or moving upand whatever Channel they those areconnected to is going to respond likeyou're actually moving those faders onthat channel so it's just a real goodway to truly move a group of otherfaders and have control over them all atthe same time so first of all let's talkabout how the VCA fader is differentfrom a normal fader it looks like afader it moves like a fader all thatkind of a thing but where you look upwhere the panning usually is instead wehave various dialogues and informationso let's look at this information firstoff we get a number which stands for thelink group and we're going to get intolink groups here as we go along then youhave an option for the actual name ofwhatever that link group is and then youactually have a little drop down contextmenu which gives you a bunch of optionswe're going to look at this stuff in aminute but one thing I find interestingis when we're playing BCA faders weactually still have a meter here butthere's nothing actually coming throughthe BCA fader it's not like it's a groupyou know that's playing music of anykind what it actually does is it takesall the calculations of whatever islinked to the VCA fader and then showsyou a representation of what that is soit still responds like a meter it'llraise up and down in level but it'sactually showing what all these otherchannels are combined coming through theBCA feeder so let's look at this littlecontext menu and see what we have thefirst option here says edit the linkgroup settings let's click on that andwe get this dialog for editing linkgroups and the first thing we can do ischange the name if we want there was adifferent VCA fader we could choose itor actually create a new one here I havesome drum tracks here and they have someautomation volume on them if you look uphere you can see some lines going hereand in the middle one you've got somelines going up and down and up and downwhat's really happening is I have a kickclap and hi-hat and they're dipping atvolume and coming back up and those areall independent automation on thoseparticular tracks if you look down atthe VCA fader which is this kind ofolive green type track down here this isalso volume for the VCA fader if I grabthis fader the VCA fader and again thisis probably going to be hard to see on aYouTube video but if I grab this andstart pulling this VCA fader automationdownif you look up at the other automationlanes that were linked to it they havealso dipped and if we start therecording from that point on you willsee the VCA fader goes down and therelated tracks all go down then if weuse this context menu that's on the VCAand if we go to this third option downhere it says combine the automation fromthe VCA and the linked channels when Ienact this and click on it theautomation comes off of the VCA link andit now becomes a straight line again butall the automation then goes on to theindividual linked tracks alone and sothen you get this kind of an optionthe VCA fader stays in one place but thefaders of the individual channels havenow taken automation onto each Channelwhich now brings us to the second optionin the middle here that says VCAcontrols and it shows the link here andit allows you to go to basicallyunlinking it by going to none and if Ichoose none now it gives me a dialoguesaying it's going to remove the VCA fromthe link of all these channels but do Iwant to keep the combined automation ifI say yes to that the VCA fader has beencompletely removed but the automation tothe individual channels is just like itwas a second ago it still remains on theindividual channels on the other hand ifwe go to this option and say none againand then when it asks do we want it tobe removed from the link group and do wewant to keep the combined Automation andI say no at that point the individualchannels just go back to their oldautomation the VCA fader is stillremoved the automation that was on theVCA fader stays intact so if you're inthe mixer and you want to create a VCAfader right click somewhere in the mixerand you'll get an option that says add aVCA track click on that give you theoption to name it hit add track and youget this blank VCA which has noinformation up here in the info area andit has no fader control to run you willsee these when you unassign a VCA faderas well it just turns into this kind ofa blank thing the other way in the mixconsole is usually select your channelsfirst like here I have a bunch of drumchannels I can just click on them holdshift to the beginning and end and thenI can right click on any one of them andI have an option to add the VCA fader tothe selected channels click on that andthat will put a VCA fader in that'salready linked to all the channels thatyou want to useit will put in the information for youon the BCA fader and set up links allthe other different fadersthe variation to that is to again selectyour channels go up to the top of yourmixer and hit the button that says linkand you have all these options that arechecked herebut you have one at the top that saysuse a VCA fader and if you click on thatand hit OKthen the same thing happens you're givena BCA fader and it's linked up to allthe other faders and all the informationis filled in again there's a few waysfor deactivating and removing these VCAlinks one is to actually select the VCAfader go up to the edit button on thelink groups here and just like youchecked the use the VCA fader uncheck itgo down hit OK it gives you that optionabout combining the automation we'rejust going to say no for now and thatone will completely take the VCA faderout of your mixer so you can also makethese VCA faders control other VCAfaders Let's do an example of that realquick I'm gonna go down and select atrack in my mixer hold shift hit anothertrack right click on these and I'll takethe option to add a VCA fader to theselected channels let's go up and editthis one a little bit instead of justcalling it link two I'm having itcontrol my synth so I'm going to put insynthshit OK and that put the name on all thechannels that it's linked to and on theVCA fader itself so I have some ideawhat it's doing now I'm going to selectthat VCA fader go over to my drum VCAfader and hold Ctrl click on that andthen right click on that add a VCA faderto the selected channels let's go up andrename that as well hit the edit buttonI'll call this master BCAhit okayand then just to make it clear here I'mgoing to select the channels that I'musing go up to my visibility up on topand say show only the selected channelsand now when I pull down the drum VCAover here on the far leftit controls that group of faders andwhen I grab the one on the right for mysynths and grab that and pull it up anddown it controls those faders but if Igrab the master VCAit controls all those faders moving thevcas and the channels up and downif I go to this drum VCA fader whichcontrols these faders on the left hereand then I decided to write someautomation on this particular VCA faderif I hit the right buttonand I play the songand I write some Automation init not only writes the automation on theVCA Channel itself but all the linkedchannels connected to it also get thatsame automation written on themonce some automation is written onto theVCA fader and its Associated linkedchannels if I go back now and rewritesome new automationit kind of makes a combination of theAutomation in other words it'll makechanges with the exact ones that you putin there and yet it retains previousautomation as welland that wraps it up for today with theBCA faders as usual if you haven'tgrabbed your navigation guide be sure tograb that before you go links to all thecontent on the channel ever growing andfree to use there to help you findthings when you want to learn but it'salso great when you need to review sixmonths down the roadso the BCA faders if you don't use themit's time to start using them try themin your mixsee what the advantages are especiallywhen you compare to using in groups insituations where you've probably beenusing groups try the VCA fader option aswell you'll see there's various benefitsto using the VCA faders it's justanother great feature to get control ofso you can utilize it and make the mostof it as usual it's great to have youguys here and I'll see you on the nextvideo