Hey. I’ve been complaining about some stuff here as I journey to learning Cubase. (Perspective: I’m a professional and value my time more than anything. Not that I’m special, but a speedy workflow is the difference between making a deadline and not. Also mental health So I’m learning Cubase now in a downtime.)
Anyway – I want to thank everyone for their patient and useful replies to my grouchy comments! Super helpful and very kind of you all!
BTW, here are some things I have discovered in the last 2 days that are awesome with Cubase:
Zoom by scrolling in several places. Intuitive and fast!
Ease of manipulating MIDI.
Being able to resize the width of Channels in the Mixer window! For a longtime Logic user, this ability is a giddy thrill! No, I am not exaggerating!
COLOR COLOR COLOR! You have to use a third party app in Logic to get the good colors and it’s a wee bit clunky. Being able to change all the colors to fit my tiny brain is awesome in Cubase!
Custom Key Commands. You can utterly change the default key commands, which you cannot do in Logic completely. Another giddy thrill!
Chord track. I know music theory and do not need to generate chords, but when I found I could generate a chord chart off a MIDI track, I realized how useful that is. I just learned it minutes ago, so I’ve yet to expand on it, but I can see down the road how it would speed things up. The manual says: “Cubase Pro only: You can now open the Chord Assistant to create variations.” BUT IT DOESN’T TELL ME WHERE THE HELL THE CHORD ASSISTANT IS! Sorry… I am who I am
More stable than Logic. So far, it’s more stable than Logic on my Mac. I actually have a browser open at the same time, which always makes Logic fractious.
This is only after 2 days, so I am sure I’ll discover more. Just wanted you all to know that appreciate the cool stuff in Cubase and am not just here grumble!
It’s complicated a.f but when you get used to it it’s a real powerhouse. They keep adding cool new stuff as well. I had sworn to myself I was not going to upgrade from 11.5 but I’m trialling 12 because I needed to grab the chords from some audio and I am pretty much sold.
Be sure to check out “Quick Link” in the Mix Console. It’s one of the beste features in the mixer imho and I wouldn’t want to live without it.
Also, while you’re already at it, the MIDI Logical Editor and the Project Logical Editor can be great time savers!
Great stuff , it’s not all a bed of roses but like Autocad there’s 3 or 4 ways of doing quite a lot of stuff , not all but quite a lot , it’s a very very deep program , once you start playing with the Logical editor you’ll understand .
It’s a love hate with Cubase over the years, be choosey about your updates , don’t go for the latest and greatest OS updates otherwise you could go back to square one very quickly, just find what works for you and stick with it thats all i can say lol
Not trying to teach you to suck eggs just learnt the hardway myself .
Even for folks who are strong on music theory the Chord Track can be pretty useful, if only for documentation purposes.
If you route it to play a piano you’ll get a chord played for each Chord Event. This makes it easy to explore different options for progressions. If you use Track Versions on it you can try out different variations and substitutions flicking back and forth between them. Very helpful when writing.
In the Key Editor the Notes are colored by default based on Velocity. But this can be changed to a bunch of other parameters including the Chord Track. Then it will color code the Notes depending on if they are in the Chord and/or Scale. This is especially useful for Notes on the right side of the editor Window furthest from the keyboard.
One recommendation when using the Chord Track is to disable Automatic Scales 'cause it just goes crazy changing scales at the drop of an accidental. Then you can create Scale Events where you think they belong.
Just wait until you start using tools on an iPad along with it, like the Scaler 2 app or Metagrid Pro as a secondary input device. The productivity boost can be phenomenal. It has taken me a while, but I have my studio set up so that I almost never have to take my hands off my native instruments Komplete Kontrol board except to tap a couple buttons on the iPad. That keeps me going quickly when I’m working on an idea.
So I’m learning Cubase now in a downtime.)
