OK, here’s the project I promised.
Live Gig 4 Cubase.zip (1.4 MB)
Sorry it took me some time to get around to checking it, refreshing my memory about it, and posting it.
It’s a reusable template. As many songs as you want in a project. Toggle all kinds of stuff from a MIDI track when you don’t want to do it live with your fingers (Monitor/Record states, and some other things). Call up any Song in your list with a single Key Combo or a remote Program Change.
It uses many of the concepts raino and oqion mentioned. It’s all in there for you to study, try, and shoot questions about.
Walking through it.
First thing you’ll want to do is make a Virtual MIDI port. Since you’ve already installed loopMIDI, just create one there named “loop1”.
The archive contains the following:
Project Logical Editor presets (Goes in your Windows home directory)
A Key Commands Preset (Goes in your Windows home directory)
A custom Generic Remote (Will be imported as a Generic Remote Device from inside Cubase).
After unzipping the project to a place you want to run the project from, see the readme files in each sub directory. They tell you where the presets need to go on your system.
Once you’ve got those presets in place, launch Cubase and load the GigSetExample-01.cpr project.
At launch it’s probably going to complain about missing devices and such. Simply supplement them with your own. It’s not imperative to have all your controllers hooked up just to check out this demo and study how it’s working under the hood.
The project as it is uses up to 3 controllers (I built in support for a 4th, but this project doesn’t use it), and a loop-back port that have ports named.
KB1
KB2
KB3
loop1
You can redirect them to whatever controllers you happen to have connected. If you only have one controller up right now that’s fine, just connect all three to it.
If some others pop up for ports A or B, I simply forgot to clear them out so you can just change them to ‘Not Connected’ to disconnect them. Point is, the project demonstrates connecting up to 4 keyboards to tracks that include these substrings ~a, through ~d in their track names.
If you only have one or two keyboards/controllers connected at the moment that’s not a problem. You can change the inputs for the tracks to use your one keyboard.
First we’ll back up your own key commands and activate these.
Go to Edit/Key Commands…
Click the little floppy drive icon to save your current setup and give it a name.
Then enact the Presets pop up to choose my “Live Set Key Commands” preset.
Next, you’ll go to Studio/Studio Setup…
Create a new Generic Remote and import the SetListGenRemote.xml file that is included in my archive.
Once it’s imported, if it’s not already, set the MIDI Input to the loop1 virtual port you made earlier with loopMIDI.
I’ve loaded 5 songs in the project, but to start with this is all you see.
Pay close attention to the special characters in track names:
→ (This arrow means the track is active. It’s used so macros/logic-editors can easily find the tracks)
~ (~a, ~b, ~c, ~d: Tracks with these strings anywhere in their name are those I wish to toggle/edit in real time.
(1) A number inside parenthesis tags the track as part of a song number. It’s important to put the song number somewhere in the name field of every track in a given song. Again, macros and logic-editors use the string to find things more easily.
You can see that I’ve got 3 empty tracks there (red, green, yellow) that just point to some HSSE instances. Empty track intended to play live.
Next is a Grey MIDI track with a long yellow part and a note for ya. It should be directed to that loop1 port you made earlier. This is optional for building your own sets, but I threw it in to demonstrate how it’s possible to automate darn near anything in Cubase this way! Many things that don’t have automation lanes or tracks of their own.
There’s a grey marker track next, with some purple markers (1 at the start of the song, 2 at the end). These make it easier to move the cursor around in our macros. As mentioned earlier in the thread, you could also get creative with the ‘cycle points’ these provide.
Last, the blue Track is just a an HSSE instance playing a GM arrangement of these old Jazz Standards.
If you have space to show your mixing console (multiple monitors?) Go for it. Sync it to your Project View which ever out of the 3 Cubase console(s) you want:
Go ahead and tap space to play the project (It uses all HSSE Basic stuff, so it should play for ya).
Just watch it go (doddle with it on your keyboard(s) if you want…the Grey track with the yellow part on it is going to toggle things around. Monitors to bounce which track(s) are armed. It’s also going to enable record at some point (the parts it makes will just go away when recording disarms unless you doodle something into it to be recorded while it’s playing), and even pop up some HALion Instances into view and then close them a few bars later.
It’s all just for show in this case to demonstrate possibilities…not trying to be practical.
When it gets to the end of the song it should ‘stop the transport’ by itself. That instruction is also in GenericRemote track (CC117 I think. And the CC119 is for transport record). All it’s doing is talking to the Generic Remote you imported, which is in turn launching DAW commands. Simple key-switches in that track trigger stuff in the Generic Remote.
So, when Birdland is over, tap the key-combo alt-ctrl-2
Bam, now you’re in song 2!
It’s all you see in project view. Locators are set and zoomed in a way where you can see the whole song structure. If you happen to also use track order based remote controls in another Generic Remote for your Mixing Console, they’re all going to work in the same order as normal, Left to right equates to Top down to Bottom of what you see here.
To leave the song mode, just tap ctrl-alt-0
Now everything is disarmed, unhidden, and all the folders opened so you can see the entire project layout (Might have to zoom WAY out to see ALL of it). This is the mode you’ll use to build your set. Replace my stuff with your own.
See how those arrow [→] markers went away (will be of more interested when you start poking into the presets to see how they work)?
The rest of the songs in this demo don’t have an automation lane set up like Birdland, and they won’t stop automatically. I just added them to demonstrate swapping songs. Play around with them though.
Throw an empty MIDI track into one (Make sure it’s at least named (X) [again X being the song number). Set its input to one of your keyboards-controllers and shift your controller down it so it can play the bottom most octave possible starting with MIDI note 0 [C-2 in Yamaha world] (I use MPC pads on the MPK2 myself). Direct that to loop1 port and arm it for monitor or record.
Tap keys C-2 - D#-2 (lowest octave in MIDI, notes 0-4) to toggle Monitor on and off via remote for the ~a, ~b, ~c, ~d tracks.
Can do the same for record with E-2 - G-2.
G#-2 - B-2 will toggle VST Instrument Edit (cause the Plugin UI to pop up/go away).
Take a look at the Generic Map you imported. You can tweak that out, add/remove things, lay it out as you like. Since we’re routing it through a MIDI track, you can draw the stuff in, record it live, or just leave the MIDI track empty and do things in real time with your MIDI controllers.
alt-ctrl-1 - 5. to swap the song, or alt-ctrl-0 to leave the song mode.
Can also use MIDI Program Changes 0 - 5 to swap songs (provided you have a track in the song routed to the Generic Remote and armed). I went ahead and gave you macros for 9 songs already bound from alt-ctrl-6 - 9.
You can also use MIDI program changes into the Generic Remote to change songs. Since I have it set listen on the loopMIDI port…a good way to get the program changes in there is simply route it in there with an empty MIDI Track (or not empty if you want to record or draw in automation like I did in song 1).
Play around with it some…and to figure out how it works, look at the Macros in Edit/Key Commands, the Project/Project Logical Editor presets I’ve added, and the General Remote provided.
When naming tracks, be aware that these strings have a search purpose. If you use them in your names, make sure it’s there for the intended purpose.
→ (You shouldn’t use this at all manually. My macros will inject and remove it. Avoid using it otherwise).
(#) - Where # is the song number. Unless it defines your song number, don’t do something like (2) in your track names.
~a through ~d - These strings are used in order for the macros to find tracks you want to toggle.
To make your own song lists for this template the base rules are:
Group the complete song in a folder.
Tracks you wish to Monitor/Record toggle will need the string ~a, ~b, ~c, or ~d somewhere in the track name.
You can have more sub-folders if you want. You can even have folders with names ~a - ~d if you want to toggle things for ‘sets’ of tracks (edit pop ups won’t work on folders though).
You can also do things like have more than one ~a seeded track in the song. If you have 2 ~a tracks, and do an ~a toggle, then they’ll ‘both’ respond to the command.
Put a bar or two between your songs. You’ll enter them in Cubase across the time line. I.E. Song one might start on bar 1. Song two way over bar 200, etc…
All tracks for a song should have the string “(#)” somewhere in the name (where # is the song number). I recommend making that the first part of the track name like in my example, but it should work anywhere the name field.
Any tracks you with to toggle the monitor or record state for should a string of “~a” through “~d” somewhere in their name.
All songs should have ONE Marker Track in the root of the folder, with marker 1 set at the beginning of the song.
You’ll want to go to Project/Project Logical Editor and tweak the entry for “Song Setup XX” (where XX is the song number). This is where you can do a kind of initialization phase to set the monitors/records you want active at the start of the song.
Yes, you can have more than 10 songs now. Just duplicate and rename some of the Macros in “Key Commands”. Duplicate and tweak Song XX and SongSetUp XX (XX being a song number) presets in the Project Logic Editor.
Also, if you go past 09 with duplicated macros/presets that I’ve provided, you’ll want to make more Select Song logical editors to hunt for (10) etc…and bind them accordingly in the new/duplicated macro.