How To Get Started With Cubase

hello in the next thirty minutes I'm going to be showing you how to get started with Cubase you will be learning your way around the software we'll be creating some instruments recording some MIDI recording some audio doing a bit of editing looking at the basics of putting plugins in and mixing and finally exporting the whole thing all in 30 minutes but I do have to warn you if you're of a sensitive disposition and prone to nightmares this is going to happen later together we are 15 but if you have a strong stomach and you can stand that I will cast off the sunglasses without let's get started right what I thought we do is for those of you who are not familiar with the wacky world of making music using a door or may be relatively new to it I just walk you through a really simple piece explaining how the software works at the same time as well as the basic workflow for how you do it um so we're using a program called Cubase elements which is available for a period of time for a free trial actually right now now because of the coded thing they've got an extended free trial on quite a lot of products and so you can have it for 60 days as opposed to the normal what 30 I'm not sure anyway it doesn't matter it's there and you can download it and get started straightaway and when you fire it up this is what you get get a choice of little layouts and things like that I'm going to create an empty one and that becomes now for those who are brand spanking use to this this is where all the musical action is going to go on and what we've got here is time going left to right so that is bar 1 bar 2 bar 3 etc so if we start it playing now you can see the playhead the cursor going across ok so that's how it works down the left hand side we're going to put a whole load of instruments and audio tracks and things like that so this panel here is where you stack up all your various instruments of various disciplines and then there's loads of other bits and pieces there's tools across the top there as a transport control just like you know you're probably used to with loads of other things lots of other bits and pieces but I'm not gonna get bogged down with all this to start with we're just gonna do it okay should I just say before we get going if you're into this kind of thing writing music sample libraries any of that kind of thing remember to subscribe and click the little notifications button because we're doing more and more live things some of the main dirt I know more advanced people some of the main dirt games composers and film composers and songwriters and yeah all that kind of stuff so that's your thing subscribe to the channel and we'd be delighted to have you along for the ride let's create an instrument virtual instrument I want a piano or something to start with two ways of doing it one is in this panel here I can right-click or control-click if you're on a Mac and go add instrument and then up will come my choice of instrument or I can go over here click on VST instruments and go into the sample a bit and drag Hallion over here let's have a Hylian hello Hallion here we go and here's the little window right what you get it's it's all categorized so we're looking at media bay here we go we want keyboards drums percussion I think we're really really an oh it's a piano we want an acoustic piano the subcategory and then we're going to choose that one acoustic grand piano double click and it loads it up in there now if we move this to one side this is the track which contains our piano right here is our instrument this is the record enable button these two that's mute so that will mute it and that will solo it now if we play that we will now hear the piano and you can see the little instrument sort of thing going up and down by the side there now if you did not hear that if when you get it going you don't get any sound coming out click on studio go to studio setup and in here you will see VST audio system make sure your main sound card is is selected up here so if you've got more than one or if you've got a built-in driver or something else so I'm using a focus right so I'm making sure that that's done now I'm going to keep it thanks very much and the other thing to ensure is when you go go to audio connections up here studio audio connections or hit F or that the right inputs and outputs are selected so the main it's defaulting to output one and two if it was for example set incorrectly two three and four or whatever some other weird number and then we played it we wouldn't hear anything so we have to see it's got to be set to the right outputs for you to hear anything that's it that's all there is to him right down the bottom here is the transport bar as you mouse over everything you will notice a helpful little field comes up and tells you what they do so we got stop play and record and then there's some this is the left locator and this is the right locator so if you wanted it just to go round around in circles all day long you set your locators so you can drag them out as well there we go so that gray bit up the top is the is the locator section so it'll now if you it makes it much easier to find your way around if you use the locator thing let me just play something because I think it's going to make life a lot easier and when you understand how all this works um one other thing we should do before we start actually recording and let's go down here see this button here is for the metronome so it if you turn it on you'll hear that's slightly irritating beepy sound and here is the tempo and you can drag this up and down or you can enter any old number you like so we're going to drag it down to a hundred beats per minute and we're gonna have the that's better and we're gonna have the metronome on now if you're learning software any software one of the most important things is key commands these are for example most people who get used to using a piece of software wouldn't actually go and click on the play button they'd learn that for example hitting the spacebar does the same thing you wouldn't go and earth try and activate the metronome with your mouse you'd learn that just hitting the number C the letter C turns it on and off and so these key commands can save you enough time to learn Mandarin honestly you have no idea and although it seems hard work to start with learning the hard core key commands will save you enough time to have a second career honestly and it's the fastest way of getting into being a becoming more productive with a new piece of software so I won't bang on about it but I just consider me banging on about it because it's really important right now we're going to write a Pete we're going to write a piece of music let's first of all call this what we want to call it we're going to double click on the name and call it piano ok and the way in which if you're not used to writing music in a and a door you're not it's not written down so you have to have a fairly clear idea in your head of how it works and a fairly standard way of doing it a lot of people will start with a chord progression so I'm going to stand with it a hackneyed old favorite of one five six four and we'll see what happens [Music] okay so there is our music and if we double-click on it up comes an editor if you want to guess if you want to find your way around say we want to go left hold down shift and use this scroll wheel on the top of your mouse and then you can go left left and right if you want to squeeze it all up you hit G if you want to spread it all out you hit H these kind of key commands you can see how this could save you time and then you can get in there and if you hit a wrong though you know you can drag them up and down and drag them around you can change the duration all kinds of things we'll get into a bit more of that in a minute first of all we're going to create a second track we're going to do it this way this time add instrument up comes Hallion let's we could put a second instrument into the same Hallion but it's unnecessarily confusing on day one so we're gonna go bass electric bass bright slap bass I'm not feeling bright slappy I'm going to go electric bass finger whatever you say hey so we call this bass and now we're going okay to go now you now you'll see the value of these this loop thing if I want to go straight to the beginning of the loop I just hit one and I'm there so I don't have to start dragging things around learn actually the transport controls are but for me are the most important way of getting into something but when I'm learning a new piece of software knowing those things really helps so I'm now gonna play a bass line in [Music] okay now there was a little mistake in there so let us double click on this shift scroll II wheel where is my little mistake oh here look now to get the cursor back there I can just put my crosshairs there let's hit delete which one do I actually like [Music] now first what is very clear from all this is my timing is as usual all over the shop now there is a way of sorting this out quantize is a way of adjusting the timings so it makes idiots who can't play in time like me sound great because it snaps everything to some notional grid and obviously you have to set the grid so that it's at the right level if we select quarter notes and I'm quantize these two quarter notes they're all going to snap to these quarter notes which are the grid there but look at this little eighth note here it disappears so that's obviously not gonna work so if we select eighth notes instead there we go they will snap to the grid and now it's going to sound a bit mechanical but it will at least be in time now what have I not done I have not saved my work file save as we're gonna call it hue based test there's a number of different ways of saving but this will do fine for the moment right whew nothing disastrous has happened okay so we've now got piano and bass what else are we gonna have we're gonna have some drums let's drag on groove agent and select a drum kit and then we will have some drums going as well let's have a kit what are we going to go with you select okay up comes groove agent you click on this word kit here and up comes the thing we're gonna I'm looking for some basic pop kit really a space will that do indie pop in infect her don't be ridiculous what's that like perfectly perfect septa ball drum sound i infect it sounds like it's gonna eat you but obviously it's not [Music] okay now I didn't like what I played right at the beginning I can hit s here just to hear the drums I'll hit s and then it's so load right now I'm going to quantize this because if I I'm about to start chopping it up and because the timing is a bit on the fluffy side you can see some of these notes start before the bar line if I try to start chopping that up it would all go horribly wrong so we're gonna I think eighth notes will do for this for the time being as well right now I could go up here and select the scissors tool what I want to get to do is get rid of this first bar and cut and paste this second bar into bar one so I've got two versions of bar one because I think bar I mean this second bar because it's better now either I can select the tool the scissors tool like that or I can hit number three and number three is obviously the quickest way of doing it right so here we have okay there's bar one which we don't like scissors click scissors click now I'm gonna hit number one on my keyboard which takes me back to the selector select that one hit delete get rid of it select that one hit delete now we want to copy this one back so we go hit three again for the scissors click there okay one for the selector now there's two ways of doing this either I can put the cursor at the beginning of bar three and go ctrl C for copy and then ctrl V for paste and do that or I can hold down option and you see how the cursor changes and I can just drag and drop it what snow powder time look you're gonna cut me some slack you know I'm just tryna get through this right okay now save my work again and we're now going to introduce some audio so I go here a right-click and add audio track it becomes yes we're gonna have a mono audio track which goes to a stereo output yep that'll do add and I'm going to call it Vox Oh No why don't I just play the okay really bad Fox okay now the input to this is not correct of what we want to do is we want to you I've got a microphone set up going into input three on my audio interface so where do we go yes we go back to studio hang on so we go back to studio at the top here audio connections add bus for under input so we're gonna add bus don't we want a mono us and we want sort of we want bad box okay add in now and automatically will add the next one so an input three happens to be right so with any luck and when I start singing no this is such a terrible terrible idea it'll go down there hang on if you are interested in writing music and things like that how about this how to write music is my online course that takes you through every step of the process how to get going core progressions tune writing developing and arranging your music six hours exclusive video tutorials a course text packed with tips and a supportive online community get more out of your music and sign up today [Music] okay microphone twos okay two types of headphone in this world open back which are great these are HD 650 s by sennheiser which are fantastic for mixing but we're not mixing we're recording you want closed back headphones which are these ones which seal the sound in so you don't get spill from the backing track going onto your vocal and these are very very old and battered DT one hundreds by Bayer which are really good now let's turn the monitor down and get rid now you may notice no sound is going in we can't hear what we're doing that's because this button the monitor needs to be pressed one two three and something's going in but it's oh no I haven't selected the input here we go so here's the input selector over on the left hand side when you select the track input bad Fox bad Fox okay let's just turn me up a little bit one two three four five okay right hang on now I should have thought this through why didn't I think this through how hard is it guy God made up bad Fox no no no this is just Oh this plums new depths of embarrassing making up lyrics by [Music] okay okay here okay so the idea is we're all on our own but because of lockdown we're all kind of together typing I'm all on my own together sitting at home together okay let's do that and see therefore whoo I am all on my own together we are sitting at home together we are all on our own together life is not that why why why did I decide to do this I am all on my own together we are all sitting at home - yeah wouldn't it be great if I could sing I am all on my own together we are sitting at home together I need something else there okay I'll leave that one a duplicate track I'm gonna mute it so I've got a second track there's another way of doing it but I'm gonna do that I'm gonna set thee I've got a this is software together [Music] together we are living the life in lockdown together I look I'm spacing out Cubase lives now here see you okay here's a useful tip I'm just not gonna sing anymore it's too awful put this away go where he turn make sure the audio is off turn the monitor back up right now useful tip if you select that if you now hit P it sets the locators to the bullets of the thing so but then you can go back to the Looney hit one right now we can cut this now I'm going to turn these snappy thing up here off or hit J and I'm gonna go there snap that hit one for selector get rid of that now I don't know if you can see this if you just grab the end there you can just put a little fate that is a fade okay and if you look at here if you select this next piece do you see there's some cross hat no you can't see that because it's too far down there see the cross-hatching that's a cross play crossfade zone if I now hit X it cross fades and now we put up we are the lightning dog town together okay you can I'm not happy okay let's just for the sake of completeness I'm showing you all the basic functions here now here in the top right hand corner this turns on various panels and you can have one underneath you have one on the right we've got one on the right at the moment you see if I click that one to turn it off boom it's gone okay turn it back on and so if we click the bottom panel okay up comes an audio editor to start with but down the bottom here I can choose mixing oil console and that's what I'm after here so and there is really bad vocal where's bad box there's bad box so with this type of mixer that little button there brings up the faders that brings up the inserts and that brings up the sense if I right click in this space underneath here underneath the track I'm going to add an effects track okay we're gonna put no effect in to start with let me think because I want to show you something else while I'm here right what we're gonna put in here discard we're gonna put bitter reverb in there now I've got lots and lots of plugins which I bought and so I'm just gonna use the built-in one which is called what's called room works let's assume it's room I think it's a remote okay because now we're putting this on an insert this is the most efficient way of using reverb you don't want to put reverb on every channel when you can just have one and then send all more towards it but when you're using it as an insert like this you need to here we go you've seen the mix you want to turn it 200% reverb so do that then go back to bad box and select the sends now we're gonna actually let's rename that to reverb now we're going to net a now we're going to hit now we're in the sends bit really bad box reverb if you click that little button there it turns it on and then you can turn it up and together okay let's now go for an insert and insert some compression on the vocal comes [Music] I am together we are together this is a different conversation how this worked [Music] together together make up leave celibate together right let's now mix some of this down we're gonna take the piano down a bit take the bass down a bit to take the drum span of it together we are together we are living the life in lockdown together look and look so you get the gist of how this works if you want to glue these two bits of vocal together we can do that there's other exciting things we can do if we wanted to make this first bit louder if you if you go to this bit you see this little handle at the top drag it up drag it up I am together we are sitting there together you can chop it up look use the scissors if you just want me to say together together and over and over we I am together together together together together okay I can't bear this any longer so now we're gonna mix the whole thing out cuz it's so great so we want to set the locators to the duration of this appalling travesty the idea of this little video was to try and give you something to do and lift your spirits and now I'm inflicting this abysmal piece of tripe on you and I'm really sorry but I hope you will be able to go out and do something rather better than this nonsense so look I'm going to move the starter here until it's just before the start of the piece shift top wheel and then get it through to there now we're going to save our work ctrl s and now we're going to bounce the whole thing out and the way you do that did you get a file export audio mix down and we call it life in lockdown just terrible file path where do we want to stick it I'm gonna stick it on my desktop what is the format we want we're gonna have a WAV file yes please after export do we want to create an all yeah let's let's put it on a track that'll be cool export options anything else file type setting no we don't use any of that okay so you've got a whole load of stuff there you don't really need but you all you need to know is what you're gonna call it we're gonna stick it and what you want to do afterwards okay export audio there go import option yes well of all those thank you and there it is so here it is I am together we are sitting at home together we are living the life in lockdown together I can only apologize from the bottom of my heart sunglasses of doubt should have been on EE throughout most of that Oh Lord how humiliating well now you know why don't sing very look I hope you've found this useful and this is obviously being very much geared to bill to people who are starting out with all this but if you haven't tried this it's really really good fun and I can't you know all I can say to you is just try the trial download it have a go see how it gets let's see how you get on follow me through this if you like and try and find your way through it if you have problems or questions post them in the comments underneath and I'll do my best to answer but anyway thanks very much indeed for your company if you've enjoyed this and you found it useful click the subscribe button and the little bin bell so that we can tell you when we do other staff and we do live things and we do obviously lots more advanced stuff as well but we try and sort of spread the love so to speak but thank you very much Andy for your company and I'll see you again very soon you

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 106,089

Keywords: thinkspace, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, guy, michelmore, thinkspace education, Music Education, Cubase, Cubase 10.5, cubase tutorial, cubase elements, cubase for beginners, steinberg, how to, cubase 10, cubase elements 10

Id: Ad_Hier1K80

Length: 31min 19sec (1879 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020