Rename Midi CC lanes?

Hi All!!

Often when working with different hardware synths the midi CC numbers will vary with respects to the synth parameters.

Is there a way to rename or customize the names of midi CC automation lanes?

Thanks for your help!!

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Not that I know of.

Sometimes it might be helpful to isolate a CC to a track of its own where it’s easy to find/see/edit/process.

Are you keeping the CC events on VST Automation lanes, as MIDI Automation events inside the parts, or as note-expression events? MIDI Controller Automation Setup Dialog (steinberg.help)

Personally I like to keep it in the MIDI parts…it’s just easier for me to edit, plus it’s a breeze to swap back and forth between note-expression and channel lane formats. Logical Editors also work on this, and that’s not the case for VST automation lanes! In this format it’s much easier to move things around from track to track/part to part and take advantage of the different formats I think. In fact…you can do things like…use a Logical Editor to ‘select all CC11 events in all selected parts’, then do a ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ them onto a VST Automation lane elsewhere. Power options galore if you have at least one copy of your CC stuff in a MIDI part somewhere.

If you have your CC automation in VST lane format, you can make a new MIDI track, Name it something that’s easy to find/see, connect it to the same instrument, and ‘cut/paste’ the automation lane you want over.

  1. Right click the track controls area of the lane you wish to cut and chose ‘select all events’:

  2. Edit/Cut [ctrl x].

  3. Make a new empty MIDI track. Connect it to the same instrument as the source track. Name it something easy to spot. Color it how you want, etc. It won’t have any parts in it unless you want to create some there to color/slice/dice up for visual purposes.

  4. Fold down and select the CC lane you are moving.

  5. Make sure the cursor is at the very beginning of the project.

  6. Edit/Paste [ctrl v].

  7. Click the original source track. Hold ctrl and click your new CC track. Right click either one and choose “Move selected tracks to new folder”. Name your folder. Now you can easily mute/solo/arm/disarm everything that lives in the folder with a single click as required.

Note: if it’s something you do often you could build Macros that take advantage of the ‘project logical editor’ to somewhat automate the process.

If they are MIDI events living in the MIDI parts, then you can use a Logical Editor to extract a given CC to a fresh new MIDI track. Again, stash all your extracted CC tracks in a folder with the original source track.

If you want to ‘convert’ the way Cubase had recorded the CC events back and forth between MIDI and VST automation:

To go from VST Lanes to MIDI Events: Use the MIDI/Merge MIDI In Loop… feature to bounce a new version of the track. The new version will have any CC’s from the source part(s) as MIDI automation.

To go from MIDI CCs in parts to automation lanes use MIDI/Functions/Extract MIDI Automation.

There is also an option to keep CC data as note-expression events that are bound to individual notes. An interesting thing about keeping CC data in this format is that it will quantize and move around with notes rather than just float on channel lane. It’s not difficult at all to move it back and forth between Note-Expression and MIDI Channel CC format when you wish to see how everything aligns, or perhaps have easier access to it for edits.

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Hi Brian! Thank you very, very much for such a generous reply. Definitely a lot of useful tips here!

Really, though, I find the inability to just name cc lanes for external hardware synths a real pain in the neck as I often have mistakenly edited cc lanes only to realise it was the wrong parameter - as someone who works a lot with hardware this really does make editing more time consuming.

Like you and most of us posting here, we want to make MORE music, not LOSE time with nonsense like this - STEINBERG!!! People have been asking for this feature for at least 7 years that I have been able to find posts on this topic! What are you waiting for???

Is it just me, or can Cubase do a boatload of stuff most people will never need and yet skip obvious things like this?

I really love Cubase - been working with it for 20 years…But please, function over fashion would be nice, too!!

I hear ya. Sometimes it’s the little things that make a big difference, and those little things keep getting ignored.

I didn’t think of this, and can’t try it right now, but there ‘might’ be a way to set unique colors for the lanes?

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I would be very happy to give that a go! Thanks!

I would also like to join in and request this feature (I use Nuendo personally). My flow is essentially Nuendo-Vienna Symphonic Library-Dorico. In Vienna (SYNCHRON Player) there is heavy use of MIDI CCs to effect crossfades between articulations. So there are actually two needs for custom naming of MIDI CC lanes in case: 1) to keep track in Nuendo of the articulations in the Expression Maps that are being crossfaded, and 2) translating these crossfades in Dorico while Engraving. In large scale, long orchestral pieces, this naming function would be highly useful for accuracy and effieciency. Thank you.

I was just looking for this functionality. If Steinberg is going to add it at some point, it would be nice to have it configurable per track or at least as a controller lane preset to allow for different instrument midi cc mappings.
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