Pro-Tip: Cycle Markers to Arranger Track

Cubase
#1

I posted a “feature request” for this and was happy to learn Cubase does almost exactly what I was asking for.

:bulb: If you use Cycle Markers and Arranger Track, this may make your life a lot simpler. It did mine. Easy to learn, easy to use.

  1. Create Project with Cycle Markers
  2. Create Arranger Track
  3. Double Click on a Cycle Marker (active Marker Track)
  4. Double Click on the Arranger Track
  5. An Arranger Track segment is created that exactly matches the cycle!

For greatest ease when doing this, I suggest you put the Arranger Track directly above or below the Marker Track which contains the Cycles you wish to assign as Arranger Segments.

(Original feature request: https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=252&t=122697)
Thanks, again, to Steve for cluing me in to this.

#2

This is brilliant!!! Thank you very much! :slight_smile:

BTW, is it possible to use a key command macro that contains this?

#3

Great tip!

I had an idea about this, and tried it out, and it also worked. There’s actually no need to have a marker track to use this functionality, if you don’t want to.

Here’s what I did

selected a part
pressed ‘p’ to create a loop around it
double clicked the arrange track

This also created an arranger part that matches the loop.

best

Rich

#4

Well how about that! Thanks very much for that tip, RichardTownsend. I use a lot of cycles, so matching Arranger Segments to the cycles is what I like about the double click feature our good moderator Steve clued me on to – after my “feature request.” Even better that the program generates arranger segments to match a selected part – “excellent.” (Wicked Witch of the East Voice). :slight_smile:

This must be in the OM. I’ve looked and can’t find it. I’ve never seen this demonstrated in a video I can recall. Perhaps somewhere in the Club Cubase videos this was covered. If not, I’d suggest this is an important topic for a Quick Tip Video. Cheers.

PS. Here’s an example arrangement for one of the band’s Rock Tunes. It was so much easier for me to build this with the techniques we’re discussing here – as opposed to drawing with the pencil. Funny how a little thing can be so helpful. Anyway, this is the song before its “first flattening.”

Runnin Down A Dream (Arrangment).png
Runnin Down A Dream (Arrangment).png1461×777 102 KB

#5

Good question and I don’t know. For me, the cool thing is being able to double click rather than draw – for the meta-grid iPad, or the auto hot-key set-ups and the like, it could be a great button or command to build a macro around, for sure.

#6

Yes, I can see it would save some time! Now, if there was a command ‘generate arrange track from marker track’ that would even better :wink:

#7

That, in fact, was my original “feature request.” Frankly, I’m fine with what we’ve now found. Doing a whole set of cycle markers with one command would be great, but this is definitely one of those times when a feature request already more or less exists. :slight_smile: I don’t need a macro on this right now, but someone might – may already have it now. For me, doing it part by part is perfect.

#8

Can we do the opposite? I have been using the arranger track for ages, but now I need cycle markers in order to export loops. (Exporting loops from arranger events would be heaven, no idea why they didn’t think of that)

#9

So it looks like it can be done - highlight the arranger block, press P and then click on the add cycle marker button on the marker track. I also found out that the time based of the arrangement track is somehow linked to the time base of a (the first, or the active?) marker track, even though you cannot toggle the time base of the arrangement track itself, you can make it time-based (instead of “Musical”) by making all your marker tracks time based.

This became important when I got a mix project of a live gig with 24 tracks and 18 songs in one project and had to reimport wave files to “get to the latest mix” with the earlier tracks. Working with big tracks like that is still a major headache due to automation and performance problems - I guess I will throw hardware at it and get a new i9 before Christmas - the old i7 from 2016 is just too slow to handle all my plugins and big sessions.

#10

Great tip! Thank you.

#11

Hi RealRaven2000

Yes, it’s done on a macro but not completely elegant though it does save a lot of hey presses! The macro then creates one cycle marker per arranger segment, then moves to the next arranger segment with one key press - so you have to press the key you bind to the macro multiple times (once for each arranger segment), but it’s better than the alternative (select arranger block, press p, press “insert cycle marker” and repeat).

I often mark out a song using the arranger track (as it’s easier to see from across the studio whilst I’m playing an instrument) but I use the Marker track window when I’m mixing, so I can navigate quickly between sections.

So, the macro looks like this:
arranger to cycle markers screenshot.JPG
Make sure you are on the Arranger track or it will just create cycle markers for the events of the track you’re on!
There’s probably some elegant way of integrating the macro into the Project Logical editor to make it more robust but this works for me for now.

There isn’t a way to do this in reverse (ie create the arranger track from markers) within a macro as there is no “create arranger block” in the command list, unfortunately!

Hope that helps!

Cheers
Stootz