Is it accurate that tracks do not record keyswitches as played? Works great when playing live but my key switches are not recording. Can key switches only be input after the fact? How is that useful if true? I’m using the trial version of Cubase 5.5 right now (currently a logic user) and was getting super excited about this feature, but this has rained on my parade considerably. Thanks for any advice.
Could you possibly paraphrase your question? It’s a little unclear what it is you’re trying to achieve and have little success at.
The way that the keyswitches actually get recorded into Cubase is a little particular (I, too, wish that they would simply get recorded as they were played)…
There are two things to bear in mind…
- When using Attribute-type articulations, the articulation is “tied” to the note for which it is intended, so, even if you (deliberately) play the keyswitch early, it gets moved to coincide with the next “real” note (you could say “quantized” to that note).
Unfortunately, for Direction-type attributes (which are not tied to any particular note), the above-mentioned displacement is still applied… making it impractical to record, say, keyswitch-triggered brass falls at the end of a note/chord (it will get moved to the start of the next note/chord when recorded). I can merely hope that this will be improved in Cubase 6
. - If the very first articulation in the intended recording is the “default” articulation, it doesn’t actually get recorded… it is merely “presumed”.
Also, (most noticeable if “Latch” mode is on), if you have played (and latched) any articulation other than the default, before you actually start recording, the latched state is not taken into account, so it will presume the default articulation once you start recording (so you really have to hit that keyswitch again as soon as you start recording).
But, as someone who has used VST Expression quite a lot ( ), it is, IMHO, worth the effort, even with its quirks (and which will eventually get ironed out… but for that to happen, enough users have to complain about the same thing, but some of the current difficulties make it less likely for there to be “enough” users 
).
Thanks much for the reply. It seems this feature is very close to being super awesome, just not quite there yet… Hopefully they will fix the “direction” VST expression recording in the next version like you say. My problem wasn’t necessarily that it put the keyswitch in the wrong place, but that it wasn’t recording at all. If I play in some keyswitches while recording my part, and then open the key editor and switched to articulations, there was nothing there. I could then of course input the switches manually, but that seems like some redundant work if one is nimble with the keyswitches… And like you say if they are intent on auto placing keyswitches to notes, it needs to place the “direction” keyswitch a tick or two before the note that will play the new articulation.
I will keep an eye on the development of this feature!