I made the jump from Pro Tools to Cubase 14 Pro because of the songwriting features Cubase offers. They are awesome. What isn’t awesome? The navigation/editing learning curve. Even with the Pro Tools Key Command preset (which isn’t very Pro Tools’y imho), I’m stumbling around, tripping on my own feet. I can even get the dang playhead to move by clicking on a track. I have to get my cursor just right on the top timeline. I expected a learning curve, but Cubase is completely different than any DAW I’m used to (Pro Tools, Logic, etc…) Does anyone know of any good crash courses on editing workflows using mostly key commands? I’m about to pull my hair out…
I switched from Logic about 10 years ago and will never go back. I know there is a steep learning curve, but it’s worth it.
I’m out of town at the moment, but if you ping me later in the week I can send you some of my favorite key commands for navigation which are very efficient and allow me to navigate very quickly.
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Also interested, @rockdude9k 
A practical tipp for this particular issue:
There is a preference that lets you do that. But you’ll need to hold down on or more modifier keys when you click. You can set up whihc modifiers to use in the Preferences dialog:
By default in C14 it is unassigned. It used to be Alt+Shift / Opt+Shift before. Don’t worry about the optics of my screenshot, the PC version looks a bit different than the Mac version.
You can also click into empty space in order to place the play cursor with this option enabled:
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I don’t know about courses specifically on editing workflows with key commands, but a Google search on the topic turns up a number of videos and other links that might be relevant:
The key courses I found useful in my transition from SONAR to Cubase were the ones on Groove3.com. I’ve had an all-access pass there (basically gives you the ability to take any of their courses, and access other online features such as music books – they’re owned by Hal Leonard – for a year for something like $99) for a number of years now, and they cover lots of music software, including having a new Cubase 14 course:
Cubase definitely can be unintuitive coming from other DAWs, and going through the Groove3 courses, including on much older versions of Cubase than I was using (I started with 9.5 and made it my main DAW for new projects at 10.5), really helped me get oriented, including finding features I sorely missed from SONAR that were actually in Cubase but hidden in what was visible by default.
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Maybe try this
Mixdown Online
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Same dude. Chris Selim also made a couple of YT videos on Key Commands, just search Youtube. His tutorials are excellent if you want to learn more about Cubase and get into the flow.
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Thanks to everyone for replying! I really appreciate it and will be checking out the resources, as well as applying the cursor locator fix. I hope the product manager for Cubase is ready for a slew of feature enhancement requests. I apologize to him or her in advance. LOL
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I jumped from Logic when the dropped PCs. Very glad I did.
One big conceptual difference is that in most DAWs the central element is a Track - folks edit Tracks. While in Cubase the objects that are sitting on a Track, mostly MIDI Parts & Audio Events are central. Tracks are containers which hold these elements. We Edit MIDI Parts and not MIDI Tracks. It’s an almost trivial difference once recognized - but it can cause confusion.
Cubase jargon can also cause confusion. In part this is because Cubase was one of the earliest sequencers developed. So they created new names for new stuff which ended up not always being the name used by competitors products. But even beyond that some things have misleading names, or two different things have similar-ish names.
Yeah I’m a fan too and have had a pass for years. But even if that’s too big a commit, getting a pass for a month or two can be an effective approach - then binge watch. Paying for individual titles is definitely not the way to go. While there are lots of great videos out there, they tend to be self contained about a single topic or task. Where Groove3 will have 20+ arranged in a course outline which helps put all the individual bits into a broader context. Also since Hal Leonard bought them, they seem to have all their titles online.
Finally I’d encourage you just use the standard Cubase Key Commands and customize them as you go along. Two reasons 1) with pretty different workflows trying to use PT commands to control Cubase is a poor fit, and 2) it will discourage you from learning to think from a Cubase perspective.
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I’m only new to Cubase by around a year, having spent time on both Pro Tools and Logic. It’s been totally worth it and now that I’m flying, I won’t go back. But yes I remember the first few weeks were pretty rough just trying to understand where everything is and what it’s called. I feel like all the DAWs are built on a similar methodology, but like arriving in a foreign country they just use different words and a few different locations for the same things. Once you start to get used to the local lingo it becomes a lot easier to figure out the rest, I found.
I would also recommend the tutorials on Groove3, they’re excellent and extremely thorough. Also the official Cubase YouTube channel, as well as Dom Sigalas’ YouTube channel, are a wealth of fantastic information – concise, focused, and well-produced. I’ve learned so much from those two channels for free.
There were some things which I learned were actually simpler in Cubase, but my brain was trained to overthink them. For example setting up a group bus, in PT you first had to go into I/O setup and create your bus and label it something (or just deal with “bus 31/32”) and then create the aux track and manually route all the signal paths etc etc. When I started with Cubase I was going crazy for a full day trying to figure out how to set up a bus and signal path. Turns out you just… create a group track, label it, and point whatever you want to it. And you can find it in a search box every time. No bus menus, no I/O path menus, no trying to remember later what the heck is on “bus 63”. I couldn’t believe how it was actually simpler than I’d been used to all those years haha.
I’ve discovered a handful of things like that which turn out to be simpler, and others which are definitely overly complex. Happy learning!
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I really appreciate this well thought out response. You touched on something I was considering…throw my Pro Tools key command knowledge out the window and assimilate to Cubase. I am going to give that a shot.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, @raino
Glad to hear another example of someone who, once they adjusted to the paradigm shift, is happier with Cubase than Pro Tools or Logic. I’m going to get a month trial to Groove3 and see where I get with it. Thanks for taking the time to respond, @wing
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you are a deity
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I used PT for the vast part of my work for 15-20 years and now am 99% Nuendo since Covid. What I would say is that you don’t have to “toss” PT key commands etc., rather I’d say that it’s possible you run into situations where it’s better to ‘give up’ and assimilate there rather than trying to force a thing that can’t work.
For example; I kept many of the left hand key commands from the original PT layout, with trimming heads and tails of clips and fades etc. but then enhanced some of it and created macros for other things. Take zoom in/out horizontally - I took “R” and “T” zooms and just added “Shift” as a modifier and now that zooms in/out vertically. And then I proceeded that way. Any key command that I had memorized that had a “counterpart” got a modifier. Something like Pro Tools’ “Consolidate” (“Bounce” in Nuendo) I remapped to Alt-Shift-3, just as another specific example. No need for my old brain to retrain that muscle memory.
And I can’t stress the use of macros and Project Logical Editor commands enough.
Oh, and lastly - don’t be afraid to ask here how to get something done. Just explain what you want to achieve and how you did it in PT and I’m sure users will help you out.
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Lots of great replies already, so this might be unnecessary, but the below is how I navigate.
First and foremost I’m on a Mac and I have a full size keyboard with the NumPad (numbers on the right that look like an old school calculator) on the right. So the below would not translate to a laptop keyboard.
Also my grid is set to follow Quantize. So if quantize is set to 1/2 notes my nudge command moves the cursor by 1/2 notes. If I’m working with triplet 1/8th then my nudge moves by triplet 1/8ths. I have a touch screen which allows me to change my quantize duration quickly. But you could also setup keyboard commands to do this very easily. Think Command + 1 for whole notes, Command + 2 for 1/2 notes etc. etc. etc.
There were a couple symbols that were hard to see against the other text, so I put those in parenthesis for ease of viewing. Below is my setup!
Command + Left Arrow = Zoom Out
Command + Right Arrow = Zoom In
NumPad 7 = Backward One Bar
NumPad8 = Forward One Bar
Shift+NumPad7 = Back 8 Bars
Shift+NumPad8 = Forward 8 Bars
Option+m = Add Marker
Numpad4 = Locate Previous Marker
Numpad5 = Locate Next Marker
command + Numpad1 = set left locator
command + Numpad2 = set right locator
Numpad1 = jump to left locator
Numpad2 = jump to right locator
(These move the cursor separate from the Grid)
Numpad(-) = Rewind
Numpad(+) = Forward
(Back on the grid)
Shift + NumPad(-) = Nudge cursor backward by Quantize Setting
Shift + NumPad(+) = Nudge cursor forward by Quantize Setting
Command + Numpad(-) = Nudge cursor back one frame
Command + Numpad(+) = Nudge cursor forward one frame
\ = cut at playhead
option + left arrow = move selected region or note back by quantize setting
option + left arrow = move selected region or note forward by quantize setting
NumPad(.) = allows me to type in whatever bar I want, then I hit enter to jump to that bar
I personally find these very useful, so I hope they help other people!
Also keep in mind that one of the best (and worst) things about Cubase is that it is endlessly customizable. I’ve been using it for 10 years and am still learning new ways to customize it to fit my workflow. Part of the flexibly is achieved through Macros and the Logical Editor (keep in mind there are two of these).
The upside is you can do whatever you want, the downside is the learning curve is steeper. Hope this helps!
Actually three. The Input Transformer is a Logical Editor except in name.
True! I forgot about that one!
Three weeks in. Admittedly not very much time dedicated to learning this, but some each night. I still am fumbling around like a fool. I think I might have to go back to something I know (Pro Tools / Logic). This isn’t like landing in a foreign country and just needing to learn the lingo, like @wing eloquently put. For me, it is like landing on a different planet where the laws of physics I’m used to don’t apply at all.
Like I said earlier, don’t be afraid to ask here how to get something done. Just explain what you want to achieve and how you did it in PT and I’m sure users will help you out.
There are of course several different ways of going about something and it’s sometimes hard to figure out what’s best and once you know how to do it it’s, retroactively obvious…
Ask, people will help you. Giving up would be sad.
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Hmm, Cubase to me is still on the same planet. It has all the same conceptual methodologies of other DAWs - a timeline with a grid and playhead, audio, midi, piano roll, inserts, sends, channel routing. There’s nothing radically different about its operation from Pro Tools or Logic in that regard, just tools are in some different places or use different names.
Out of curiosity I recently tried Bitwig. Now that to me is a different planet, if you have a look at any of the demo videos – it has some similarities to a DAW with audio editing and routing, but it uses much more of this programming style modular “grid view” where things are connected almost like a flow chart. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a DAW. Ableton to a lesser extent, which can be quite a lot different from the others with how it organizes “inserts” (as in, it doesn’t really use the insert methodology).
My point being, PT, Logic, and Cubase (from the DAWs I personally know, but I assume also Reaper and Studio One) are all kinda more related to each other, siblings split from the same family tree of how DAWs have been traditionally designed.
I understand your frustration though. I am saying all of this to encourage you to not give up and perhaps try to make a list of things in ProTools that you use frequently and figure out the equivalent name or workflow to achieve that in Cubase – maybe that would help? Feel free to ask any questions, people here are always willing to help.
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