What’s the best way to replace an instrument in the track list with a different instrument?
Say you write some music with one instrument and now you want to play it with a different instrument. So you don’t want to delete the whole track with all your notes; you just want to play them with a new Instrument. Some DAWs have a “Replace” option if you right-click on the instrument, but I don’t see one for Cubase.
If you edit the Instrument field in the Inspector, as shown here, it lets you change the instrument but then it keeps the old name, so in this example I started with Halion, and replaced it in the Inspector with Retrologue but it still says Halion in the track list. I know I can manually edit it to say anything I want but since it assigned it originally when I selected that instrument how do I get it to change it when I change the instrument?
There is no way around it keeping the name. Personally it doesn’t impact me because I’m going to change the Track Name to reflect its musical purpose (e.g. Sax Sect, Pad, etc.) so I don’t care if it has the wrong VSTi name on it for awhile - or worse if I’ve already named a Track “Pad” I’d be really pissed if Track got renamed to Halion because I changed the VSTi.
But if you want the Track Names to match the VSTi you are stuck with renaming it. An alternative would be to add an additional Instrument Track for each VSTi you are auditioning and put Shared Copies of the MIDI Parts on them and use the Mutes to switch what you hear. The Track Names would then match the VSTi Name and you could delete the Tracks you don’t want. Or maybe create create a Template with all your go-to VSTi’s and drag Parts around to audition.
