I bought Cubase yesterday because I knew it had both MIDI and sheet music notation capabilities and I’m trying to figure out how to creating working slurs. The slur tool seems to be totally aesthetic, and just for exporting sheet music (Which isn’t what I want, at the moment.) Is there a way to make it so that a slur, say, extends the note a little bit so that I can use the legato in LASS and Cinesamples libraries without it looking really messy (I screen capped a picture below)? Or would I have to sacrifice one thing for the other? I could do composition in MIDI, but I strongly prefer sheet music for most instruments.
There is no way to tie a slur to any specific MIDI function, like assigning a legato patch to a few specific notes. And unfortunately there is no way to just write orchestral music on a computer and expect that the software understands all the subtleties that come with writing for an orchestra. Note expression can help, but it’s still very primitive when dealing with orchestral mockups. I’m afraid the current way of working still involves trying to recreate articulations and attack modes note-by-note, and yeah, it’s a painstakingly slow manual job. At least if you expect the highest degree of realism.
A DAW’s notation page is either meant to edit notes in a traditional pentagram environment (as opposed to piano roll display and other editing methods) or to prepare parts for musicians to play (and for that Cubase is no match for Sibelius and Finale.) Yeah, I know, it would be great to just write orchestral music for a sort of “digital concert master” who perfectly understands what we want and translates it into the most appropriate patches with the most appropriate articulations that can ultimately be refined with simple vocal commands (“no, Cortana, these cellos are a tad too brittle and the attack is slightly too fast. Do you have anything a little more mellow with a slower attack? Oh, and I want up-bowing crescendo from ppp to mf on the first long note and down-bowing sfz on the following ostinato chords. Please show me all the possible alternatives in your library.”) Maybe in 20 years…
The great thing about Cubase, is its “integrated” quality… lots of different areas of the program that can be used together, or separately, to give the desired end result.
(purely my own opinion, of course )…
So, if one area of Cubase (in this case, the Score Editor) is not getting you there all by itself, don’t be afraid to call in the Key Editor to assist you, then go back to the Score Editor, to “tidy it up” afterwards .
And, as Steve said, your greatest friend here is the user manual
O.K., so looking at your screenshot, I am presuming that you really just want quarter-notes of F4 and G4 alternating, but playing legato? And, even though it currently looks a mess, those Sample Libraries are actually playing it back ok?
Yes, Slurs are purely graphic, and have no bearing on the MIDI itself.
How did you actually create the note-lengths that we see in the screenshot? (it doesn’t really matter, so long as it plays back the desired MIDI )
But, getting it to look right is a different matter . There are different ways to get there, but please check out the manual for the topic on “Display Quantize” (pg.726 et seq… and, importantly, the reference to the “Display Quantize Tool”)
In this particular example, very briefly, you’ll get those quarter-notes looking correct if you set Display Quantize>Notes to “4”, for that section. Then just add the graphic slur.
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