After a hiatus from the creative side, myself whilst building out my studio im back in the driver seat and excited about Cubase 12, last one i used was 10 but barely it was really 9.5 and on PC.
Now im on mac, fresh install fresh system, intel though not M1. I’m wondering in terms of preferences etc what do you guys make sure to do first before getting stuck in and any tips for mac set up to make sure all goes smoothly ? Any template tips also welcome, all the years as a Cubase user i wasn’t in a good habit of making templates i always went from scratch, but that changes today!
I don’t think there really are any do’s & dont’s regarding Templates (although there certainly are can’s & can’t’s)
What’s more important is what you want & don’t want - so it’s worthwhile to think about your typical workflow(s) and how you might facilitate it with your Template(s). The flip side is that it is easy to overbuild your Template, including things that seem like they will be useful to you, but end up not. I’d recommend starting off with a limited first attempt that just has what you consider your ‘basics’. Then over time you can add on and modify it as needed. I keep a running list in a notebook of things I want to tweak and every so often I’ll go in a make those changes.
I do recommend saving your Templates as regular Cubase Projects. On my Project disk I have a Templates Folder with Sub-Folders for each Template. Each of those has a regular .cpr file that’s the Template I actually edit. Then when it is to my liking I use File>Save As Template… to update the Template in Cubase. That way you have a safety copy.
Here is what I considered important. If you look at my current main Template you’d see only 5 VSTi Tracks (drums, bass, piano,Halion & Kontakt) basically a minimal set of instruments that are suitable for building a sketch. In contrast folks doing scoring will often have hundreds of different VSTi Tracks with most of them Disabled which they Enable as needed. I used to have more VSTi’s in the template but I found these 2nd tier instruments more often than not didn’t get used & just added clutter. So I either use the built-in Add Track or more often I use File>Import Tracks from Project… to bring in my go to instruments on pre-configured Tracks from a Project I use only for doing this.
There’s also only 5 Audio Tracks - 2 optimized for guitar and 3 for Vocals. Enough to get started but almost always more Audio Tracks will need to be added. Again, for me, I’d rather add Tracks as needed than end up with junk Tracks lying about.
But for Group Channels there are 20. Which shows you what I really value - an extensive and flexible routing structure. This is also why I used Import Tracks from Project… above instead of using Track Presets because the presets don’t retain their routing, while Importing does. So when I Import the Tracks they basically plug directly into my bussing structure.
Other items that I wanted to include or customize include
Standardized Track colors and pictures
Chord Track pre-populated with X Chords
Three Marker Tracks - one for Location Markers, a second that acts as a library of Markers I can drag onto the actual Marker Track and a third used for notes about stuff on the timeline
thank you sir, now im remebering my previous set up you the man! yes like to get the interface looking slick too. is there a way to make tracks and channels and parts all mathcing color and quickly? i cant remeber? thank you
Sure. I don’t know the Mac conventions for this, so this is for a PC and hopefully you can convert.
First make sure no Parts or Events are Selected in the Project Window. If any are Selected Cubase assumes those are the only Colors you want to set. Then Select the top Track and Shift+click (or Mac equivalent) on the last Track to select it and all the ones in between. Finally Select a Color for them.
So is there a better way to save your preferences somewhere else, i recently had a crash and i for sure saved my settings but the crash caused my preferences to. be lost.
Im super annoyed and confused i just spent a long time setting preferences again, saved it, made a new profile, now i open one of my existing templates, and the settings are not there?? What is up with this cubase.
EDIT i guess the new profile i made didnt have the preferences i saved, this time thats what that was, but how do you inport settings to new profiles?
