Hi everyone,
as a band, we have been using one big Cubase project over the years which includes all our songs and an arranger track for live-playback, MIDI-controllable guitar boards, personalized click tracks, etc.
Having found out about VST Live, this seemed like the obvious “better” solution for this, as this software seems to focus on live use rather than recording, which is the focus of Cubase.
However, after several hours of trying, I am struggeling to understand what would be the best practice on how to quickly get set up coming from our existing architecture:
- Exporting the whole project to VST Live (via File → VST Live in Cubase) and then importing with the “create songs” option for handling the arrange track results in the songs starting somewhere in the middle, some gaps in the click track and part of the next song included. I am not sure if this is an issue of the software or if our arranger track is set up “wrong”, but this obvious approach does not seem to work at all.
- Ignoring the arrange track on import obviously leads to one gigantic song. I have not found a way to split this up between songs.
- Splitting into parts and moving parts over to a new song does not seem to work.
- Duplicating the song and cutting every track might work, but is obviously a lot of work and duplicating this giant song is not something the software likes.
Therefore, before wasting any more time, I wanted to check if one of these approaches would be the recommended one or if I am missing a better way?:
- The abovementioned duplicating and cutting songs approach after importing the whole project as one song.
- Creating multiple, song-based cubase projects by deleting everything that is not needed and ex-/importing those.
- Exporting audio mixdowns of all tracks on a per-song basis and creating the songs from scratch in VST Live.
Thanks for your help!
I would go for your second approach (multiple songs in cubase). At the moment, Cubase is the software you are used to work with. So it is advisable doing most of the work within Cubase instead of VSTL.
This is what I did because only then I know what and where isn’t working as expected. I mean I didn’t use export/import of project. I had individual song projects in Cubase.
I have one backing track per song (some 35 songs of mine), recorded backvocals in VST Live 2, some songs have one backvocal, others have 4 and more. Some songs have additional virtual instrument tracks (piano, leads) also recorded in VST Live as an addition and wasn’t included in Cubase project, therefore already published songs differ a bit from those I prepared for live performance and performed.
The one big thing I would tell you is to ensure all of your audio tracks have a unique name. For instance, I put the name of the song followed by the part being played. Example: I Ran - Drums, I Ran - Perc, I Ran - GTR etc. If you have generic names like Piano, Guitar, Click Track, whenever you import a new song the track with the first generic name in the audio database will be used instead of the one from the import. I found this out when all my click tracks were just named Click and after I imported three songs they all had the audio click from the first song I imported. The file structure is completey different from Cubase (where each audio file is stored in a Song audio folder or Mixdown folder), as all the audio files for a Project containing multiple songs are in one folder in VST Live.
It is important to understand that once a project is converted to VL, the ability to work with midi and audio will be severely limited, as it is not a DAW. I have come to the conclusion that I initially create all my songs in Cubase, import all midi tracks into audio, and export them only in audio format. The hours and minutes spent editing midi in Cubase turn into weeks in VL. Currently, VL is very convenient for live performances as a show control system, but it is not suitable for editing tracks.
However, this is my personal experience.
Hi! Basically - what I do - creating STEMS and pulling into VL. If there is no need (and usually thats the situation) to increase the load of CPU for virtual instruments that are used for backing tracks. Keep cpu for important tasks:
- live played VST instruments
- realtime fx’s
- Video
- DMX
- Etc etc