Choosing the MIDI instrument in Score, Cubase Artist

Just getting started in Cubase Artist and I’m wanting to use the score function to compose some music, but I can’t find anywhere on it to actually choose the instrument that you hear. It all just sounds like a piano. How do I choose a different MIDI sound?

This can be done in the Inspector for the track, in the Project window.

Thanks Steve, but I can’t find it there. There’s an Edit Instrument there, but when I click on it, it just goes from grey to yellow and nothing happens.

I’m assuming the problem is because Cubase Artist doesn’t provide any General Midi synthesisers. And the UR22 doesn’t provide any GM either. So I’m having to use Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth and there’s no way to open that in Cubase to choose the instrument sounds. I can’t find any other way to open it through Windows 8, either. I presume I need to get a new internal soundcard or something. Very difficult to find advice though.

Watch this excellent tutorial to get you started. - YouTube

Ta Steve, I’ve already found the Instrument tracks (and there’s a HALion GM type one there), it’s just that Scoring setups for orchestra etc are already setup as MIDI tracks, not Instrument tracks. I know I can just open an Instrument track in a recording project as a score and write music in there, but I was hoping to be able to work on full orchestral scores in Scoring, using instrument sounds of my choice. There may yet be ways of doing this, I’ll look into it all again tomorrow. I’m a bit exhausted at this stage :laughing:

The built-in templates are very old, I think they might predate Track Instrument Tracks.

There are many ways to go about this, but generally one would create a template with all your instruments, and you would start your projects from there.

Also, if you import a GM file of an orchestral piece Cubase should create all the tracks according to the setting in Preferences>MIDI>Import Options>Destination. This could be quick way to get started.

Yes, I’ve decided the best thing would be to open one of the built-in orchestral templates and just replace all their MIDI tracks with Instrument tracks, then save that to use whenever I want. Thanks for your help Steve.