Record midi slowly then increase tempo?

Cubase
1

Cubase newbie, longtime Dorico user. Sorry if this is a stupid question but I can’t find the answer in the forums or documentation.

In the Cubase Welcome tutorial, I can easily change the playback tempo using the bpm control next to the transport at the bottom. But if I record my own midi in a new project, say, 60 bpm in 3/4, and then change the playback to 80 bpm, all of my midi notes stay the same speed. The grid changes, but all of my notes stay put.

Why can’t I change the speed of what I just recorded?

2

I guess your VST Instrument is set to linear timebase instead of musical timebase.
Try to click on the clock symbol in the inspector of your track and it will turn into a note symbol like this.

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Result: The start of your midievents is locked to beats and bars and not to seconds on the timeline.

1 Like
3

That works, thanks so much! I would never have thought to search for “musical timebase” in the documentation. If the documentation editors have any ideas on how to make this easier to find, people like me would be grateful.

4

You´re welcome :slight_smile:
And yes, sometimes it´s quite challenging to find answers in the documenation if you don´t know what you´re looking for. I´m with you!

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5

Out of the box that should default to being set to Musical Timebase. There is a Preference to determine if new Tracks are set to Musical or Linear Timebase. You might want to take a look at Preferences>Editing>Default Track Timing Type

EDIT

Description from MS Copilot

To set the default timebase for new tracks in Cubase, follow these steps:

  1. Open Preferences: Go to Cubase > Preferences (or press Ctrl+Alt+P on Windows, Cmd+Comma on Mac).
  2. Navigate to Editing: In the Preferences window, select the Editing category.
  3. Set Default Track Time Type: Look for the option called Default Track Time Type. Here, you can choose the default timebase for new tracks. Options include Musical (Bars+Beats), Linear (Samples, Seconds, Timecode, etc.).

By setting this preference, all new tracks you create will follow the selected timebase.

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6

Thanks for this, very helpful. FWIW in both the Stereo Mastering template and a new empty project, whenever I add a new instrument it defaults to Linear, not Musical timebase.

I’ve changed my preferences now, but if it’s supposed to work this way out of the box, something is weird. The same thing happened to me in Cubase 13 as well (now I’m on 14).

7

When updating Cubase it copies (or at least tries to) your Preferences from the old to the new version. So if the Preference wasn’t set how you wanted it in C13, that would get carried over to C14.

Preferences are independent from Projects & Templates.

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