Hello all from a recent transplant from Digital Performer

Hello all from a recent transplant from Digital Performer. I’m incredibly happy to have made the move to Cubase and I hope you might consider the following requests/susggestions as possible enhancements to an an amazing piece of software.

1 - I would love the ability to assign tempo to note values other than quarter notes. Figuring out tempos for compound meters (where typically the tempo would expressed as a dotted quarter for example) requires a good deal of math, and the problem becomes worse when a piece alternates between compound and simple meters. I hate to say it, but this is pretty basic musical syntax which cubase seems to ignore. I’ve seen other threads addressing this topic and i hope that adding my voice here might help move things forward.

2.- I’d love to see some improved video functionality. I’m aware that Cubase will be getting some video enhancements in the near future. I’m hoping they will include the following:
Bounce to picture - currently I have to export material to DP to make quicktimes to send to directors.
Streamer overlay - I’m using a program called streamers to handle all my picture needs at present because Cubase can’t do streamers/flutters or a big counter overlay. When I’m recording with other musicians, the ability to cue them from my DAW is a huge time saver.

    • This a small one - can you please consider the option to quantize markers! If I add a bunch of markers without grid being switched on and they’re not on the grid but should be, I have to move each one by hand…
  1. This one might be difficult to describe. While the “warp time” feature in Cubase and DP’s “adjust beats” are similar, DP has a few additional bits of functionality which are incredibly useful:
    A) the choice to move individual beats or whole measures
    B) The ability to snap beats or measures to midi events
    C) most importantly, the ability to change the tempo after the beat you’ve moved. Say I have an improvisation that I’ve played without reference to Cubase’s tempo. Let’s say that the music is roughly 92 bpm, and I’ve lined the first note at the sequence start. What I’d love is to be able to move the second barline to my improvisation’s bar 2 and for Cubase to now know that I’m roughly at 92 bpm. My piece will now be looking immediately much more comprehensible. And all I will have to do is adjust subsequent measures and/or beats incrementally to get a perfect tempo map. Right now, Cubase forces me to adjust each beat by hand. (I know there is an auto guess tempo feature, but I’ve not found it to be particularly successful…)

5- a small one. Split notes in DP brings up a search dialogue that allow me to extract multiple notes from a midi part in one move, and put them wherever I need. I highlight a piece of midi, choose split notes and a little interface appears. I have options such as top/bottom notes etc or (and this is what I’d love in Cubase) a little keyboard which lets me choose specific notes (say C3, Ab4 and F#2). I can now cut/copy these notes, put them on their own track etc. This has been SO useful to me!

  1. Lastly - please please please think about updating the score editor. I know that a lot of people are hoping for some kind of integration with Dorico, but I imagine that that is a huge task. In the meantime, the current transcription engine is requires constant massaging to make even basic editing possible. I much prefer to use real notation rather than piano roll if at all possible and it is such a drag to keep having change clefs, or basic note durations to get something legible.

I hope the above thoughts are useful.

Best,

Ed

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2.- I’d love to see some improved video functionality. I’m aware that Cubase will be getting some video enhancements in the near future. I’m hoping they will include the following:
Bounce to picture -

Coming, search the forum

    • This a small one - can you please consider the option to quantize markers! If I add a bunch of markers without grid being switched on and they’re not on the grid but should be, I have to move each one by hand…

Have you tired using Snap Types, like snap to event or cursor to make it a bit less tedious?

  1. This one might be difficult to describe. While the “warp time” feature in Cubase and DP’s “adjust beats” are similar, DP has a few additional bits of functionality which are incredibly useful:
    A) the choice to move individual beats or whole measures

Not sure exactly what you mean, but you can do a lot in regard to moving the grid

B) The ability to snap beats or measures to midi events
C) most importantly, the ability to change the tempo after the beat you’ve moved. Say I have an improvisation that I’ve played without reference to Cubase’s tempo. Let’s say that the music is roughly 92 bpm, and I’ve lined the first note at the sequence start. What I’d love is to be able to move the second barline to my improvisation’s bar 2 and for Cubase to now know that I’m roughly at 92 bpm. My piece will now be looking immediately much more comprehensible. And all I will have to do is adjust subsequent measures and/or beats incrementally to get a perfect tempo map. Right now, Cubase forces me to adjust each beat by hand. (I know there is an auto guess tempo feature, but I’ve not found it to be particularly successful…)

or use a midi track to tap the beats for the length of the passage, then use Tempo Detection on that midi track, this works very well, and is fast.

5- a small one. Split notes in DP brings up a search dialogue that allow me to extract multiple notes from a midi part in one move, and put them wherever I need. I highlight a piece of midi, choose split notes and a little interface appears. I have options such as top/bottom notes etc or (and this is what I’d love in Cubase) a little keyboard which lets me choose specific notes (say C3, Ab4 and F#2). I can now cut/copy these notes, put them on their own track etc. This has been SO useful to me!

This is something I would love to see in Cubase. There are a few other way to get that, but nothing so swift as the DP tool.

  1. Lastly - please please please think about updating the score editor. I know that a lot of people are hoping for some kind of integration with Dorico, but I imagine that that is a huge task. In the meantime, the current transcription engine is requires constant massaging to make even basic editing possible. I much prefer to use real notation rather than piano roll if at all possible and it is such a drag to keep having change clefs, or basic note durations to get something legible.

That is not necessary. Try setting the display quantize as it is in the image below as a starting point

You’re really going to have to change your mindset from the DP one, they are such different animals. I use the Score editor to write, and with the above suggestions things work pretty well.

Thanks for taking the time to reply Steve.

I have a couple of responses…:

Glad to know about this functionality, but it’s a really messy workaround. I really don’t think it’s crazy to want the tempo of the sequence to truly mirror what is happening musically. If I want to maintain a tempo of 90 bpm but go from dotted quarters to regular quarters, the inconvenience in Cubase of the math involved is prohibitive, as opposed to the elegance in DP…
DP Compound tempo adjustments.m4v.zip (1.52 MB)

Here’s A little video example. The improv is very slow and slightly rubato. Notice how after having moved the second barline to the appropriate note, all the music downstream is interpreted in the new tempo and any adjustments after that are minimal and obvious. If I wanted even greater accuracy I could go in a clean up individual beats of course…

DP ADJUST BEATS VID.m4v.zip (172 Bytes)
(Notice also that the transcription engine doesn’t need any instruction regarding quantization or split points. It automatically senses that this needs a grand staff etc…and it intelligently displays note lengths appropriate to the context.

I realize that people coming from a different platform and requesting features seemingly specific to that platform may be annoying, but the above thoughts really aren’t huge asks in my opinion!

E

What I suggested was not an exhaustive report on how to accomplish the tasks, just a couple ways to do it, there are others. Note that a feature request made in 2019 would be granted in what, 2021? It’s a big program. Like DP, but bigger.

There are several users here who, if time is available, will help you get going. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time to do forum write-ups as I used to. I will grant you that there could be more Score Editor and related stuff tutorials.

If I were in your shoes, I would post saying something like– I’m coming from DP, and I do x, y, and z which I love. How can I translate that to a Cubendo workflow with as painlessly as possible? Also, I’d walk funny, so I’ll just wear my own shoes. :wink: :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, I couldn’t resist. :wink:

  1. Record your improv
  2. Set track to Time Linear time domain
  3. Open Key Editor and activate warp grid tool.
  4. drag grid to a couple downbeats. Tempo points will be created on the tempo track. Delete the last one.

Another vote for being able to have markers snap to bars, beats, quantize grid or snap off