Nowiamone,
Thank you for your interest in the Template I built. Most everything you would need to know would be in the User Manual PDF. I thought about making some vids but… , it is quite an effort, and I don’t really have the video equipment or video editing tools. I have considered making a YouTube channel and talking about this sort of thing as well, and that would be a whole production and a camera etc. I’m not quite there. If enough people were into it, you know.
If you don’t feel comfortable with configuring and trouble shooting, then it would be more of something I would be willing to help you with if you run into trouble. Message me, get on a Zoom call, that sort of thing.
The thing to ask yourself is not if you want a “Live” clip launcher. It can function that way poorly, It requires a bit of manual work, moving the audio clip into the Sampler Tracks. It’s the one step that is completely manual, and it isn’t like using Logic or Bitwig.
I do NOT use this for Live Looping. I use it for grooving/jamming/song writing. For live looping I wouldn’t use a DAW!!! Seriously I hate doing that. I have tried Logic, Bitwig, and Live, and I find the BOSS RC600 a much more convenient tool. So, as you might guess, my idea of looping in that context is not DJ, “producer”, sorts of workflows!
I want loops so I can try things out, and arrange clips independently of a song’s segments . The Arranger wont do that. And I want to be able to create music spontaneously, and not be thinking through it like computer programming, which I do as well. I want the parts to be improvised, and the arrangement to be improvised as well.
To do that, doesn’t require just a looper, but also the ability to control how the information (audio, midi, and “automation”) flows into a track. Cubase doesn’t do that!!! But it does a better job than any, save for perhaps Bitwig, which is getting there. The solution to this -for me- is “Channels”, and a Tape Deck metaphor. And I have no need for MIDI looping/clip launching! Once the “performance” is recorded, the audio is all the clip I would want. MIDI in this context is primarily a performance mechanism, not a composing mechanism. (Though it’s still set up to allow for MIDI editing… because fixing mistakes in an otherwise good performance is less time consuming. But still, I personally, usually, leave mistakes in!)
Look at the part of the manual called Deck Modes, and the Looper Modes and ask yourself if it fits a workflow that you would want. If it isn’t then the Looper via sampler tracks part is a much smaller subset. You don’t need to install the scripts, you just need the Kontakt and MIDI routing tracks. Though, if that is your aim, then I doubt 7 or 8 “Channels” is going to cut it, and you will miss all of the staging from Bitwig or Logic.
If you don’t mind having a limited number of Channels, and your workflow goes something like:
- Turn on a Channel
- Record a performance to that Channel
- Play the performance, (the MIDI or DI), maybe try out different effects.
- Burn/Dub/Write, as if to Tape, the performance with existing effects.
- Overdub in real time (the audio, the MIDI, the CC/Automation INDEPENDENTLY) directly to the final “Tape”… without destroying the already existing “Tape”.
- Play the result of either the Dub or the Overdub (whichever was last)
- Version the Channel (Save what you did on the Channel as a version of the Channel’s tracks, and clear it out for a new take.)
And to do each of these with only ONE BUTTON PRESS!!! If that doesn’t sound like your workflow, then the bulk of this template is not going to be for you.
That is my workflow! That and the occasional manual edit, which is why the Play Performance mode is there. I almost always use this workflow, (parts of this possible workflow) and I always forget something. Every time, there is some little extra mouse click or something tiny that I forget to do, and the whole groove is lost. An engineer isn’t going to be there doing it, you know? I’m thinking, “make music”, not “engineer”, and these two ways of thinking require a completely different mindset for me.
I want to be able to do the music when I feel musical, and so I put all of the engineering up front to cover all the “modes” I am ever in. That way it is one button press, and presto, I don’t need an engineer, and I don’t have to think like and engineer while I am enjoying NOT thinking like an engineer.
But then, I also don’t want to be forced to think about arranging all of that groovy goodness linearly. If I think, "what if that one melody on the guitar came in while the synth is doing that other thing. It only takes a second to drag it over to an already set up Sampler track and play it that way to see. And do that by pressing the clip’s button. And if I want, I can play clips directly on to the looper track where it records the MIDI that triggers the clip… and also some FX if you want to add those in. That’s what the Arrange/Looper modes are for. It’s still about being immediate and improvising, and not being perfect, and constructed.
It’s about not having to think like an engineer while thinking musically. It’s not about thinking in little tinny 2-8 bars phrases and then playing around with their order to try and make something that isn’t completely monotonous…
If that sounds compelling, then know, it is a hack that is using Cubase in a rather unique way. Especially the scripts (LEs). It does require some frustrating sessions to get it set up to work smoothly. (When I moved machines it took a few hours to get it working right again.) But I would rather do the engineering for a session, and then not have to worry so much about it when I am trying to Jam.
I wanted features that Cubase doesn’t have, and instead of continuing to complain and ask for them, and have few (maybe 1) people/person understand what I meant, I just made something as close to what I was asking for, as I could make.
“See? See Steinberg? Something like this!” Maybe? See how the MIDI and CC and Audio are all on one Channel, because that is how amp modelers and vocal synths work? You need all of that independently recordable and editable, but still on the same “channel” er, track, where the mode of that channel represents what you actually want to be doing, See how putting all this on separate tracks makes using those kinds of tools a terrible pain?!?! See how it could be?
And gee, while we are at it, see how the building blocks for an audio clip based tool is practically already there?
No? Just me?