Cubase's cool built-in scales and transposing features

I decided to dive into learning about Cubase’s transposition capabilities and after just a little time working with it, I’m delighted.

To get started, I did a simple experiment to learn about Cubase’s built-in scales. I know most of Scales on the list, but wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.

I decided to construct a set of parallel transpositions of a Major Scale, taking the next scale on the list with no semi-tone moves. I used a root note of D, so it was D Major, D Minor, D Blues 1, D Mixolydian, etc. for the entire list of scales. Most of the scales I knew, but not all, yet, for some reason I didn’t have high expectations about this really working. How wrong I was. It works like a dream. The Program got all the scales exactly right! :nerd: :smiley:

Cubase offers a very well-crafted and useful set of scales, lending an interesting set of colors and tonalities to work with. I have real confidence in the transposing capabilities of the program now.

I transposed some diatonic triads in a similar parallel fashion and in stepwise progression, along with a few other harmonic sequences: Cubase nailed them all. I found no errors or oddities in the notes resulting from the various transpositions. In other words, Transposition set-up seems a very clean, accurate, bug free, error free part of the program.

I have to get more deeply into all this, but I have no questions at the moment, only some praise for the program’s offerings and capabilities in terms of transposition. (Now if only it would display flat notes/keys in the key editor, root key and elsewhere :imp: Then we’d really be rock’in.)

I assigned “T” as a Key Command to “Transpose Setup” since I don’t need to switch from Int. to ext. synch, but find it really useful for invoking the Transpose set-up dialogue.

Finally, I’d like to hear any tips or suggestions or other feedback you have on using Transpose Setup or the scale set.

Take care.

Hi Stephen57 and welcome to the wonderful world of Cubase! It is refreshing to see such positive feedback highlighting one of the many aspects of Cubase that have kept so many of us faithful over the years, despite the growing competition and changing fashions. I don’t have any specific tips for you at the moment, but you can rest assured you will get plenty of varied input from fellow users.

Greetings MrSoundMan and thanks for your reply. I’ve gotten some great tips and ideas from the Forum and also from Youtube. I’m migrating form cabled MIDI to the VST world and learning Cubase at the same time – many simultaneous learning curves, :mrgreen: but it’s going well and in no small measure due to the Forum. I previously used Sonar and before that Cakewalk and Voyetra Seq. Plus. I’m really happy with my decision to upgrade to Cubase Pro 8.

If I do have a specific question and you happen to see it, perhaps you’ll give me a tip or reference on it. It’s good to hear about methods for using the strengths of the program in creative ways.

Take care :slight_smile:

Life is so much easier without a mess of cables (both midi & audio) to deal with. :laughing:

It is and I like the USB system. However, once all the MIDI, Audio, AC was in place, it was so easy to just pick your midi port and channel and go. I had 8 ports with 16 channels per port, 128 midi channels ready to be assigned as needed. I need a better interface, I just have a little Scarlet 2i4 starter IO – this will be one of my next upgrades.

Yeah, investing in a good audio interface is a smart move.

If you use Instrument Tracks you often don’t need to even take midi channels into account. If you tend to use a lot of VSTi’s there are a couple of things you should look at.

One is Track Archives where you can select several Tracks (of any type) and export/import them as an archive. So if you have a 5 piece VSTi horn section (i.e. 5 solo horns not a section preset that is a single instrument) you like to use, you could load it in one go all set with your preferred EQ, compression, reverb etc. You can also do the same with audio tracks or a mix of different types.

Second you can create templates that have disabled Tracks. This is useful if you have say 20 go-to instruments you use a lot. But maybe of those 20 only the drums, bass, and piano are used on pretty much everything. Build a template with all 20 instruments, but disable everything except the drums, bass, and piano. Then when you create a new project form that template you’ll have your always needed instruments ready to go and as you need the other instruments just enable those tracks.

:bulb: +1 Brilliant, thank you.

I’ve developed just two templates I use to new projects, but, after reading this. I see where I can go back and save some set-ups as archives to bring in to new projects as needed. Great tip.

:bulb: +1

Very helpful. As I mentioned, I’ve built just two templates so far, but I’ve looked at and played around with most of the examples Cubase supplied. I like my routing better than the examples provided, but that’s cool, those was a good starting points. I’m getting the hang of templates, but didn’t think about possibility or the value of having the tracks loaded in a disabled state!

Thanks for both excellent tips, Raino, it’s very much appreciated.

I will get back on that. Thank you