VST Instruments V1 in Cubase

today we talk about

VST Instruments V1 in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today let's talkabout VST Instruments in Cubase butbefore we start I want to remind youthat there's a link below to the freecontent navigation guide which is aneasy to navigate webpage with links toall the content on this channel andbesides 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 being 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 so as we beginthis discussion of VST Instrumentsthere's two concepts I want to focus onthat's the idea of what's called thevsti instrument or the vsti or just VSTrack the VST instrument is kind of thenewer way of doing it and the VSTinstrument rack is kind of the older wayof doing it does that mean there's onebetter than the other not necessarilythere's pros and cons to both approachand again it's one of those things thatyou just want to be clear on so you'renot confused by it when you're workingin the program let me give you somedemonstrations of both and what's goingto happen when you start working withthem before I do anything there's twothings I want to draw your attention toright now we're looking at What's calledthe VST instrument rack and this showsall the open VST Instruments that I havein my project I can move up and down andthis rack if I go over to my media areaover in the right Zone I also have a tabthat says vsti and I can see this aswell I'm going to close this window downin the middle if I go up to my studioTab and I come down there's an optionthat says VST Instruments and if I clickon that that brings up that rack if youhaven't changed your shortcuts you canhit f11 on your keyboard and that'llbring that into view or take it out whenyou right click over here on this cornerin the left hand corner you will see twooptions one says add a track instrumentand one says add the rack instrumentthis is what I'm referring to we go tothe one that says add a track instrumentwe get a menu like this and when we goto the instrument drop down area we'regoing to see all the vsts on our systemthat are active and that we can use inCubase you can see what this menu lookslike close this and do the same thingbut I go add a rack instrument I getsomething that looks very similar it's adifferent kind of interface but again itshows all the different kind of vststhat are available on my system thedifference is what's going to happenwhen you go further and actually installit or loaded up or whatever you want tocall it let me back out of this for aminute let me simplify my project areain case you have no idea what I'mtalking about by a VST instrument Cubasecomes with a few built-in instrumentsGroove agent retro log Halligan let's goahead and put retro log in here probablyfor most of the examples I'll use retrolog but you get something like this it'sbasically a synthesizer that you canplay on your computerso these are what are known as vsts nowwhen you load up the VST instrumenttrack the one that's the newer option inCubase and by newer I mean like manymany years back already what you get isone track we're looking at right here itsays retro log on it it's one track andwhen you click on the little instrumentbutton you get to see the instrumentthat's on the track you can play theinstrument if you're going to do thingswith automation you can expand thosekind of tracks on this particular trackeverything is built right into this onetrack when we look over on our rack onthe right it's kind of lit up right nowbecause whether it's the instrumenttrack or the instrument rack you alwaysget the same kind of interface thatshows up in this area but you'll alwayssee this no matter what but let me closeout of this for a minute and I'm goingto delete this track I'm going to goback to that BSD instrument rack andthis time I'm going to right click onthis button I'm going to say add a rackinstrument I'm going to come down findthe same thing retro log I'm going toclick on it and in my case I also get awarning here that says do you want tocreate a midi track that's assigned 2retro log and I'm going to say yeah goahead and create that once again I getretro log down here on the bottom and ifI look over here on the right it's downhere as well I'm going to close thisinterface out but look at what I'vegotten over here on the left now I gotthis whole list of different things Ihave an initial midi track I have afolder for my VST Instruments anotherfolder that says retro log and then Ihave two tracks that say retro log itemand why do I have all of this and beforeI break all this down and show you whatyou are getting here the first thing youmay notice is that there's no easybutton anymore to just bring theinterface back up for retro log if Iclick on any one of these tracks there'snothing here that allows me to open upthe instrument if I wind up going backto this very first midi track there is abutton over here on the left if I hit itthat brings up the instrument trackagain where I can play retro log but inmany ways this instrument rackconfiguration can be very confusing to anew QBs user in terms of like whatyou're getting here and how to operateit and before I even go any further withthis let me show you what's in involvedwhen you want to get rid of thistypically on any other track that youcreate in Cubase if I come up and rightclick on this piano track here Iimmediately have an option that saysremove the selected tracks and if Iclick on this it'll delete this trackand you'll usually see something likethat on any track that you click onCubase whether it's a folder or any kindof thing like that but if I come downinto this new set of tracks that Icreated with retro log and thisinstrument rack and I right click on itthere is no option to remove this trackit's like you're stuck with it foreverthere's other options for changing theremote control or saving presets allthese kind of things there's no way tojust get rid of this thing if I go tothis next option and I right click on itsame thing there's no remove the trackoption even if I come up to the folderitself that says retro log there'snothing to remove it if I go back andcreate an instrument track again and Igo back to Retro log and I say yeah adda track and then I get retro log and Ican immediately open up the interface aswell I can immediately also right clickon this track and I can say remove theselect the tracks and just like thatit's gone but these instrument racktracks you can't get rid of them so letme show you first how to do that andthen I'll break down what you'reactually seeing here if I go back overon the right into the area where we'vecreated this new instrument rack go downto the bottom one you'll have to take myword for it because if you're new youprobably won't know exactly what I'mreferring to but this bottom rack is thenew retro log interface that got createdif I find the name retro log and I clickon it I now get my list of VSTInstruments again and at the very top Ihave an option that says no VSTinstrument now again it doesn't saydelete the VST instrument or remove theVST instrument it just says no vsdinstrument so I'm going to click on thisoption and the minute I do that all ofthe stuff on the left disappearssuddenly I can now right click on thefolder again and I can remove the trackcouldn't do it before that and this newtrack above it which is a midi trackwe're going to talk about that I can nowright click on this and say remove theselected tracks when you're firstgetting into Cube case and if youaccidentally create an instrument Rackor sometimes you'll find Cubase actuallycreating these racks depending on if youdrag something in from the media Bay orother things that are going to happenand you get that whole list of extrathings over on the left it is very easyto find yourself totally frustrated notknowing how to get rid of it or reverseyour way out of it so that's what youhave to do is you have to find the nameon the actual rack and go to the optionthat says no VST instrument and once youdo that then you can get it out of thereso as we said when we choose this optionthat says add the rack instrument againif I choose retro log we get this optionthat says do you want to create a miditrack when you're using the rack optionyou have to have a midi track that'swhat triggers the sound unless you'recreating this for some other reasonbecause of that you want to be aware ofthe certain preferences if we go back upto edit down to our preferences we lookat the bottom at the option it says VSTand the plugins we have a little dropdown here as far as creating the miditrack when loading the VST and we havethe option to always ask which is whatit's doing right now or we can have itdo not meaning it'll just create theseadditional tracks and not ask me about amidi or I can set it to always so italways puts a midi track in there thiswill be aware if you do this option youhave these choices in your preferencesI'm going to leave it with the alwaysask so again when you do this rack youwind up with a midi track you wind upwith a folder containing these othertracks and these other tracks arebasically two different automationtracks one is for the plug-in parametersit's unmarked on the track itself butyou can change whatever parameter youwant to automate here the other one isfor the synth channel right on the mixerif I open up the mixer in my lower ZoneI now see that I have a mixer channelhere for retro log and that's what thislast channel is that it puts in here itgives me an option in the mixer tochange things as well when you open yourVST instrument whether it's on theserack channels or an instrument track youtypically have a control panel along thevery top and this is kind of sharedamong any kind of BST that you get rightnow this one is active and I can play itbut if I go to this first option I candeactivate this so I can't play itanymoreI have the read and write options if Iwant to start putting automation on thisand most of them allow you to have thisA and B setting which again is one ofthose things we probably never take muchadvantage of but the idea is here we canmake some settings and then I can hitthe B option and I can make somedifferent settings and then I cancompare between the two if I likesomething on my b settings and I want tocopy it to a all I have to do is changethis from A to B or whichever way I wantto go and then whatever I have on theinterface I can hit this copy button andit will change that to the new settingafter that you have the side chainactivation and the option to set upwhatever you're going to use to triggerthe side chain you have a little lightthat shows up anytime information isbeing received you have the option toopen up the mediabate browser to pick updifferent presetsyou have different ways of loading theprevious program or the next program youhave the drop down to load a preset savea preset or save as the default preseton the end you have an option to take apicture in case you want it to show upover in your media Bay when you'relooking at the various effects as youcan see we have pictures here you get amenu to bring up most of these optionsloading a preset pushing to the a bsetting activating outputs and then areal important one I want to point outto you this is where your quick controlsare most the time you have the option tohave quick controls on all your VSTInstruments but unless you hit thislittle button they don't become activewhere you can see them once you bringthem down to where you can see them nowyou can assign them to whatever you wantwhen you're using quick controls youhave the option to make them the focuswhen you select the window as opposed towhen you hit the project and then otherthings are the focus if you hit thisarea where the quick controls are andset the focus as little light turns onand you can set this lock so that itkeeps the focus all the time even if yougo out and click on the project againall right it's going to wrap it up fortoday as always we haven't grabbed yournavigation guide be sure to grab thatfrom the link below it gives you quickeasy access to all the content on thechannel ever growing free to use contentis in order being continually updatedplus you get to see anything that'shappening any news that's coming doyourself a favor click on the link belowthe video download it save it to yourfavorites and then use it whenever youneed it so we begin discussing VSTInstruments we started discussing withthe differences between the VST racksand the VST tracks we saw some of thepreferences for the vsts we saw how toadd the VST Instruments and then we tooka quick look at the control panel andespecially the quick controls andthere's lots of other things like thatthat we're going to uncover as we go asalways it's great to have you guys hereand I'll see you on the next video