you could avoid topics that look too simple for you
If this topic was too simple, I may have avoided it, but then you would still be looking for an answer.
Cubase is large and complex, that’s why it comes with over 1300 pages of documentation in various manuals. After looking at the Operation Manual again, I understand how you could be confused. Parts are really not explained very clearly in one place. Searching can often be of more help than the contents or index.
There is a large learning curve, but it’s worth the effort.
This is one of the flaws of ANY manual: On things you would need “feature list”, you only get “how to” instructions scattered all around … and vice versa. I think it’s because manuals are always written by people too familiar with software/hardware.
You can’t and it’s very annoying that you can’t. I would like to see parts behaving like events, i.e. with fades, tuning, - particularly fade. They are great for collating fiddly edits, comped takes, and can of course be ghost copied. But Oh how I wish you could fade them…
Say you have a passage that you’ve comped together and want to repeat at various points. The simple way of doing this is to put them all in a Part and then make ghost copies. I prefer ghost copies in these situations so that any tweaks to the contents only have to be done once. Now, it may well be the case that I want to truncate one of these copied parts but in doing so, it can be hard to find a satisfactory point where the audio doesn’t click or stop too abruptly. The ideal solution would be to have a fade handle available but there isn’t. I could dissolve the part and trim the final event but then I lose my tweakability, which is most of the reason the parts exist in the first place.
A Part is a group of Events. Suppose you’ve meticulously lined up two audio clips and want to move or repeat them? Making them a Part lets you treat them as a single object.
There does need to be a third option. Parts are too limited in terms of processing, transposing, etc. Bouncing is often too permanent a solution, especially if you’ve used pitch correction, bounced and then want to go back and tweak the correction. I never use parts and end up bouncing audio a lot. Seems strange that Steinberg can’t implement something better.
You can also simply double click (or command e) to open the part into the part editor where you can easily fade the last event. Then close the part and continue working.
Obviously it would have to be a self contained part rather than a ghost. The point of ghosts is that each one is EXACTLY the same as the others.
And don’t forget you can always use the mixer automation on ghost tracks to accomplish what you describe.
The thing I love most about parts is when I need to edit two items on different tracks relative to each other.
They can be miles apart on the arrange page but if I highlight both parts and open the part editor I have a wonderful huge editor showing me only the items I’m concerned with. Tweak away, then “command W” and the part editor goes away and I’m looking at the arrange page again.
Glorious.
One of the main reasons I’ve stayed with cubase for so many years is the functionality of parts (among other things).
Maybe I didn’t explain myself properly. (This quite possible!) I am a huge fan of parts, couldn’t live without them, but wish they had more functionality.
One of the strengths of ghost parts is that you can shorten them without affecting the others. The way I work, this is a common occurence. With MIDI this rarely presents a problem, it is a simple matter to truncate the part at a point between two notes. However, with audio being more constant data, finding a trim point can be a little tricky.
As a concrete example, say you have a guitar part ghost copied at various points in the arrangement. Now imagine that you want to suddenly chop the final chord to make a tight stop at the end of the song (or indeed at any point). When you do do so, the stop can be so abrupt that it sounds unnatural. When a guitar chops like this there is a slight tail (albeit of the order of milliseconds) and this is what you need to work in somehow.
Now, I could dissolve the part, edit the final event to my satisfaction and put it all into a new part. Or I could make a real copy of the part and do the same. But in both cases I lose the functionality of ghost parts, which is why I was using them in the first place. Counterproductive.
Automating the mixer is also for me a no-no, this isn’t what the mixer is for. Besides, once you have automated the mixer, you lose the ability to make rapid tweaks to the channel level. It is a workflow-breaker to have to go for the automation panel.
The ideal solution is to be able to apply the fade to the part itself and this you cannot do. Without losing the existing functionality of parts, I propose that that functionality needs enhancing to include most if not all of the functionality of events. After all, functionly speaking, a part is an event. So it should behave so.
If you now feel so inclined, please come and add you voice to this feature request: Steinberg Forums
Back in the days of Cubase 24 and VST 32, parts were great. ANY audio was recorded automatically to a part. Open the part and you could view the lanes there. Each take was automatically added to a lane inside the part. Close the part, done, all was good.
All stayed organized together inside this part. Oh, how I long for those days again. I really don’t like all these scattered events (the way it has been since SX). While converting everything to a part is still possible, you can’t edit anything or add anything to the part without dissolving the part.
In my mind this makes no sense. Everything should be in a part.
It’s faster to ghost copy and duplicate sections without being afraid you have left something out. It handles this for you by being inside this part automatically. And, if you needed to, you could record INSIDE the part, with the part window open. It made it great for changing a bit of audio and then grabbing the entire container and moving it left or right across the lanes.
Why the ‘group events to part and dissolve part’ was ever introduced makes no sense to me. It just added extra steps to do the exact same work. It is constantly a Cubase “THORN IN MY SIDE.” I understand wanting to have edit in place, but God forbid that I am working on a commercial, punching several takes and needing to move all of that “package” further down the timeline. I gotta make sure I have everything selected before I merge into a part, and then if I missed something, It is a real chore to dissolve and add what got left behind to the part, then convert to a part again.
Can you see what I’m saying here? All of this would not be necessary if it were the way it was before, ALL AUDIO AUTOMATICALLY RECORDED TO PARTS, LIKE VST 32.
I long for those days of functionality with the automation system of today’s versions.
Shortening a ghost part is a bi-product of the arrange page and not an intended functionality of Ghost Parts.
And No, a Part is NOT an Event. A Part is a Part and an Event is an Event.
Making one ghost part different from the rest defies the purpose of ghost parts.
As I said before - ghost parts were intended to be exact clones for the purpose of mindless looping.
At some point you have to take some responsibility for the creative engineering of your music.
I come from the days of tape recorders and actually plugging real wires into a patch bay to get e reverb or compressor. Having to manually tweak a part here and there is such a non issue for me. As a matter of fact I manually tweak tons of stuff for the sake of adding life to the track.
At some point you need to accept the functions as they were intended rather than attempting to redefine them.
So I agree with Steve Helstrip - There are soooo many more important things to talk about.
I agree 100% and when SX came out some 10 years ago I begged for a preference that would allow us to choose: “NEW AUDIO AS PARTS” or “NEW AUDIO AS EVENTS”
I understand why they introduced the audio as events post SX. They wanted to make Cubase accessible to people who were used to every other program.
It was smart in that it removed a functionality obstacle that might have frightened ProTools users who couldn’t comprehend the benefits of Recording directly to a part.
BUT! I think they should include a preference that allows Long time Cubase users to choose Parts for new recordings and imports.
I think fonz is right, Nate. Bounce will flatten any editing and replace the original events with one, continuous event. Dissolve is what the OP is looking for.
Sorry, OP, there seem to be two conversations going on here, which I have unintentionally started. There’s plenty to discuss on this whole parts business but for the sake of the OP it might be better if we switched to this thread: Steinberg Forums
I’m happy to answer the points raised but I’d prefer to do so there. It doesn’t feel right to be on this one. Thanks, C
PS: Perhaps, once everything is copied over, we can remove our tracks here.
