Warp Markers in Cubase 12

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Warp Markers in Cubase 12

hello everybody andrew blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today we continue on to our second video as we talk about tempo matching audio in cubase 12. but before we start i want to remind you that there's a link below to the free content navigation guide which is an easy to navigate webpage with links to all the content on this channel and besides that in the near future i'm going to begin adding tips and other bits of information that will only be available there you know things like simple steps that will get you started and up and running quick things that are in the videos but are written down in simple steps that serve as quick reminders when you need information down the road if you're working with programs like wavelab or cubase plug-ins or the cable guys shaperbox2 and many many other projects that are in the works then i know you're going to find just like i have that this is an invaluable study aid and the other thing i want to make sure you understand is that this is not a simple pdf this is a constantly updated page that has any information that is new or anytime videos are changed really anything updated and once you have it you will always have the latest information constantly updated so if you haven't gotten it already go to the link below click on it and save it to your favorites it's my gift to you and it's absolutely free okay so let's get started so let's talk about warp markers and why do we want to talk about warp markers probably because in cubase there's not a quicker way to get yourself into complete trouble and totally destroy your audio in a very short period of time when you don't know what you're doing with this stuff and it's very intimidating when you first mess with it if you've never messed with it even when you're a little bit seasoned and you've messed with it because if you don't really understand how it operates you'll just see all kinds of strange behaviors going on and you'll wonder what is going on so let's break this down and make us all experts at this so just one more thing what is a warp marker and what does it do um the where i'm going to come from with it is i'm going to tell you it does basically one of two tasks it either stretches or compresses audio or it anchors audio okay let me demonstrate so i have this a couple of percussion hits here and we're going to start putting in a couple of warp markers and show you how they behave so if i go over to the tabs on the left we're in the sample editor here on the left there are various tabs and the last video we kind of focused in on the definition tab right now we're looking at this audio warp tab and if i click on this button that says free warp from that point on my mouse turns into this little like clock with a couple of arrows on it and if i click someplace it produces a warp marker all right so there you go that's what a warp marker is now what the heck does it do when i start moving this warp marker around watch the wave shape and listen to the effect on the waves it allows us to basically take audio and stretch it around when you start messing with this stuff and you draw some things you don't know what you drew or you didn't mean to draw over here on the left we have a reset button so i hit reset and i'm right back to square one let me give you the basic rules of operation with this stuff and we're going to go from there when you click a warp marker in place like i just did there if i start moving this warp marker around it's going to affect all the audio surrounding it that's why there's not a quicker way to get into trouble because maybe you're just trying to move one particular thing and why would you want to move one particular thing maybe that one particular thing is slightly out of time that's really one of the biggest benefits or reasons for using this is that you can move something audio that's out of time and move it into time but if i just start clicking an um warp marker like i did here and move it all of these hits are going to start moving in fact i'm just going to go ahead and do it one more time i'm going to move this and see all of them start to move and this is on a visible set of four hits like this many times you'll click something like this and you're looking at maybe a little four bar part of a huge long piece of your track and if you just start clicking like this and dragging you've just taken the whole track and moved it out of time and you have no idea really what to do with it or what's happening as i said before warp markers allow you to kind of stretch and compress the sound they also serve as an anchor so what i mean by that is the minute you put down one warp marker you pretty much typically not always but pretty much typically are going to want to hit another warp marker is some in some area that sets the boundaries of this warp marker so for example i'm going to go over here on this side i'm going to click one so i put a warp marker on the left i put a warp marker on the right now when i move the warp marker in the middle it only affects those that are within the boundaries of the other two warp markers that's the most important thing you can understand when you're dealing with this is that you want to keep an eye on what it is you're working on and you basically want to enclose it in another set of warp markers and if you understand that concept you will then be able to use this in many many places they've now put it into cubase without totally destroying your audio what i want to get across to you is when you use a warp marker get it in your head that you want to use the warp marker and you want to immediately enclose that warp marker in other warp markers so that you've isolated it now that doesn't mean that every time you work with warp markers that you're always going to use and work in a very finite small area like this one drum hit maybe i want to work with all four of these drum hits at the same time that's fine i would definitely recommend though before you start put a marker at the beginning of your area and a marker at the end of your area at that point it's fine to just go ahead and start dragging around because now i can take this drum hit and i can click on this drum hit and i can decide i want it there and i can hit this drum hit and i can decide i want it here and finally this drum hit wherever i want it but nothing on the other side of these left or right warp markers is being affected on the other hand something like this a vocal part this is where you would want to be a little more cautious and kind of figure out exactly where you want to work because maybe on this vocal part maybe it's one little vowel or one little consonant that the singer hit and that's the only thing you want to move so if that's the case you'd want to make sure that you put a warp marker let's say i'm going to do it here i'm going to hit one here and i'll put one over here and then i know i'm going to work on this one part of the consonant right here so if i click right there then i can comfortably and confidently move that one little vowel or constant or whatever it is and not affect anything else on the vocal so let me give you a few tips and get your ability to navigate these things comfortably as we said pretty much you can just click anywhere and you draw them in all right you either draw it in and start moving it right away if that's something you want to do or after the fact you've drawn it you would move close to it and as you approach the left edge it'll change color and at that point you can then click it and drag it so that's kind of how you move them around now how do you get rid of them hit your alt key and your mouse will turn into an eraser and you can just click on it that's all you gotta do is drag it over the ones you want and they're gone you know so if i've clicked in you know five of these i can just hold alt and i can just drag over them and they're gone the next thing you want to be very clear on and aware of is that if you're going to be doing things in the musical mode and we talked about musical mode in the last video and you enact musical mode with this little note up here on the top or over here on the left there's a little check box for musical mode which means that it's going to follow you know the tempo of your project and if you start putting in these warp markers that's the whole point it's going to be able to follow the project but if you put these warp markers in first and then hit the musical mode it'll basically just wipe them out and all your work will be gone so if you just spent you know a half hour putting in warp markers to your perfection and then you decide to hit musical mode you've basically just erased them all and i would advise that same thing if you're going to use one of these algorithms we talked about the different algorithms in this case we're looking at drum hits i would definitely go and hit the standard and the drums and make that algorithm you know in there before i start even putting in any warp markers so what i would do is i'd go up here to where my quantize it i turned on the grid markers at that point and then i would decide where do i want to actually put these hits so first of all i got to make sure i enact the free warp then i would go over and i'm going to click on this guy i'll take this guy over here move him to a grid all right so that's that's really it now i've lined those up in nice equal spaces on quarter notes if i go back into my project now when i hit this loop it's in tempo and i can change let's say that let's take this temple way up is that 100 let me bump it all the way up to 200. there you go the loop is now matched to the audio all right so there you go give you a whole set of tools for stretching your audio and messing around with it i would recommend uh getting a handle on your warp markers you know that just is so important cubase 12 has incorporated the ability to use these warp markers in all kinds of places they're in the project window now and they're in the sampler where we were and there's various other places you're going to encounter them in groups and different folders but the concept is always the same and the way you handle them is always the same so if you get used to working with them you'll feel comfortable every time you see them come up all right as usual if you haven't grabbed your navigation guide be sure to grab that before you go links to all this content constantly growing great to have everybody here we'll see you on the next video