Chord Progressions in Cubase - FAST and EASY

let me show you how i create the chord progressions in cubase it's fast and it's easy hey what's going on chris tillem here from mcdonald online very excited to announce you that this video is sponsored by skillshare i'm going to talk to you more about skillshare during the video but now let's jump right in and talk about chord progressions now if you're like me and you're not dumb si galas hey bro and your music theory is not that great you're gonna love this tool that we have in cubase now on my side i grew up as a drummer you know you call someone who hangs out with musicians hey drummer okay so let's jump in cubase and check this out i'm gonna show you my process when it comes to create the chord progressions in cubase so the tool that i love the most to start with is the chord pads this is an amazing tool that we have in cubase and the thing that this is going to do it's going to allow you to play some chords straight on your controller or if you don't have any controllers you can use your keyboard your computer keyboard by activating the virtual keyboard you just click on alt and k and that will activate this little guy which is going to be your virtual keyboard and those keys will trigger those chords that we have here at the bottom in the chord pad section in the lower zone now if you don't see that chord pad section just make sure that the lower zone is open and at the bottom you just select the chord pads tab and that's it once this is done the only thing you need to do is to just select one virtual instrument and i'm usually going to work with a piano sound just to begin with and then i'm going to work with other sounds to get more inspiration so let's open this piano i'm going to close my virtual keyboard because i already have my controller right here so if i click on c1 it's going to play a c chord so this is very easy if you just want to create some chord progressions working on some different chords you can do that in a very fast way now what i like to do to start with is to choose the tonality i want to work in and to do so you just need to click on the chord pad presets and click on load chord pad presets and then you have access to a bunch of different keys to work with so let's for example select d minor okay i love the key of d minor and there you go now i have all of the chords loaded straight into the chord pads section um you know and ready to go [Music] super easy next what i do i create myself a drum groove very cool 80s sound and this one comes from helion sonic in cubase but this is the modern 80s drum kit you know created by dom c galas very cool drum samples uh so i'm gonna work with this drum groove and i'm gonna try to create a chord progression around it so what i'm gonna do is just to jam a bit i'm gonna say you know and try a few different things to see what works best [Music] okay that's pretty cool okay let's do something else now [Music] okay so there you go so it didn't take me a lot of time to just to come up with those two different chord progressions just a matter of experimenting a bit and that's it you know so very easy i don't know if you notice but the voices were were changing um you know the further i i played the the progression and that is a very cool thing that we have here in the chord paths you can change the voicing uh of each course that you have and the only thing you need to do is to click on that small arrow and this will create different types of voicings for all the chords or one individual chord pad if you want to you can also play with the tensions and you also have access to the chord editor which is going to allow you to change the chord or to modify the existing one what i like to do is to click on the small arrow and to lock all pads when i start to work on a chord progression and the reason i do so it's because when you uh you play a chord progression with the chord pads cubase will modify the voicing as you go to add a bit more excitement and color to the progression which is great and awesome but when i'm writing like the basic chords of a song i just tend to lock them up so the voicing doesn't change as i go when you're ready with your chord progression you can actually just drag and drop them on top so let's go with this one to start with the b flat then let's go with the c so that is one way to work but what i like to do is to play those chords directly on the uh my controller so this way i can play a bit more with the rhythmic you know so let's try this one out [Music] okay so there you go i'm gonna keep that as is so super easy super fast and very cool to experiment with now you don't like the key that you work in let's change it you go back there and you can try different keys just select one of them and start playing and that's it you know let's go in b minor [Music] you know how easy that is before we move on this is the perfect time to talk to you about the sponsor of this video skillshare skillshare is an online learning community that offers thousands of inspiring classes for creatives and curious people you will find the topics such as animation creative writing photography illustration graphic design web development marketing lifestyle fine art and also music so if you're looking into learning piano guitar bass synthesis and even music theory which is in topic for today's video skillshare is an amazing option on my side i joined skillshare like three years ago when i switched from mac to pc so i also had to switch video editing software from final cut pro to adobe premiere so this is when i decided to join skillshare and took a class from jordy from cinecom which was an introduction to adobe premiere that class was amazing and i learned everything to be able to edit my youtube videos with adobe premiere and i've been a member since then what i also like about skillshare is that they focus a lot on learning so that means no ads whatsoever and they're always launching new premium classes so you can stay focused and follow wherever your creativity leads you and the best part it's less than ten dollars a month with an annual subscription now the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description below will get the free trial of the premium membership so you can get a chance to explore your creativity thank you skillshare for sponsoring this video now back to cubase now i have my chord progression recording right here i'm going to right click and select to create chord symbols and that will create the chord track right on top okay so i'm going to just change the color of the track and there you go okay so those are all the chords that i have within my chord progression that i just recorded so very practical now i can change things around tweak on the uh the tensions of the chords or even change the full chord if i want to what i'm gonna do first is to mute my performance and make sure that the chord track triggers my piano sound by having the monitor on on my piano vst channel and this way the way the chord track is set up at the moment which is use monitored tracks this will allow the chord tracks to trigger all the chords with this piano sound now if you want to work on chords or create new ones you can do so straight from the chord track which is something that i also work with i'm going to double click on the d minor chord that will open the editor the chord editor window and this is going to allow me to change the chords or the uh the chord type major minor diminished okay even the tensions or even the bass note pretty nice so um let me keep it this way so i have a d minor seven and let's uh add that actually sounds pretty cool okay this is actually pretty nice let me just tweak that around and add this change on the second time around okay so there you go something else that i can do to change a course or to get some suggestions is to again double click on my chord and then go to chord assistant which is the tab right here on top now i have three tabs at the bottom the list the proximity and the circle of fifth which is super helpful to get some inspiration or suggestions by cubase for new chords so if i start with the list one i'm going to keep that the mode to common notes you can also choose a cadence but i'm going to keep that to common notes and this is going to give me some suggestions according to the complexity that i have right here and the complexity will just you know give me access to more complex chords as far as suggestion goes now this is going to go according to the previous chord that i have within the chord progression so for example if i want to change that f major chord i can choose c d it's actually pretty cool let's try this out nice like i'm just gonna duplicate this i kind of like that that minor major switch that's pretty cool so let's go back to uh this chord again and let's go with uh circle of fifth which is actually very nice also now i know that my chord progression is in d minor so i'm going to bring this to minor and bring d minor up it's very well done because now i see all the chords part of d minor listed from one to seven which are the same chords that i have on my chord pads and now those are the suggestions that we have to find new chords some will be further away from the root chord but some are going to be closer and can add some very nice tone okay so let's go with g i'm going to keep g this time so let's have a quick listen okay so there you go so that works as well it kind of gets me out of the uh the d minor key because g is not part of d minor and it adds a bit of color to the chord progression but i kind of like the d major uh on this part so i'm going to keep it as it was and if i go back to the court assistant there's also proximity that is going to give you choices you know between a bunch of different chords that are close to the previous chord that you have on your chord progression [Music] okay so that can also work out now if i want to add more chords i can play them again using the chord pads or i can just write them down you know by just selecting my pen tool double click on the next one or just double click again on the last chord go to the chord editor and click on the next one and plus and this is going to create a new chord so we can go back and forth with those arrows so this is a very nice and creative tool when it comes to chord progression creation i don't know if there's any other dw out there that offers that type of feature but in cubase this is quite amazing to be honest this is one of my favorite cubase feature and what i'm going to do next here is to um to just select all of those chords and bring them down to my piano track and now i have those chords in midi notes i'm going to select them all and glue them together and i'm going to mute the chord track then i'm going to double click on my midi event and that will open the midi editor and from this point on if i want to change some you know voicings or tensions i can do so you know even after i recorded those uh those chords so let's say for example um i want to change that c chord uh to minor i can do so by just on the left zone just click on the chord editing window select your chord that you want to work on and there you go you have like a bunch of stuff that you can work with within the chord editing tab okay on the left zone so if you want to change that to minor you can do so sus2 diminished very nice you can change the inversion also also very cool you can drop by two by three and this is actually going to space out the notes of the chords you know so very useful stuff you know you can also create some some chords afterwards straight from the chord editing tab right here so if i select that insert function that i have here that is the uh kind of an arrow icon i can for example let me go with major i can just click anywhere you know on my next bar and this is going to add a major chord according to where i click in my midi editing window i want a sus2 chord okay so very cool very well done so you can create you know all the chords that you want so a super easy way again to tweak things up after you're done recording your uh your chord progressions okay now let's go back to the chord pads what i'm gonna do next is to just bring those different chords that i created on the chord track i'm gonna bring them down on an empty pad by just dragging them on the pad itself and that's it you know i'm gonna do the same for my uh my d major and there you go so let me just bring back the piano so if i want to play around the chords again re-record everything i now have access to those different cores that i created myself i can also add more by just clicking on that arrow that will open up the chord editor and from this window i can you know add the chords that i want within those empty empty pads and to finish this off what i do all the time i start with the piano sound but i do experiment with other types of sound so let's bring that chord progression on another vst instrument and check what we have here so so i have this virtual synth from from arturia okay that's pretty cool so let's bring this one down [Music] and let's add a base on this one [Music] so by experimenting with different sounds different tones even by using the same chords to start with you know you can actually build up a good foundation for a new song so that's gonna be it for today i hope you enjoyed the video if so share like and subscribe to the channel if you're new here until next time take care and see

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 13,102

Keywords: chord track, cubase tutorial, cubase chord track, how to make chords, cubase 10.5, create chords in cubase, chord track in cubase 10.5, chord pads in cubase 11, chord pads, Chord progressions in cubase, Chord Progressions, create chord progressions, Create chords in Cuabse

Id: -Qjm3FrfiYo

Length: 18min 12sec (1092 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021