The Steinberg LOLpad

[ASUNDER]

So I was browsing some presets in my synth. Liked one, made a pattern. Wanted to move on to other presets but wanted to keep (bookmark) what I made. So I thought instead of another plugin instance, I’ll just jot down a note of the name of this preset. Ok, so where’s the cubase note taker?

Oh boy was I in for a surprise.

Here it is. It’s a … frikkin white rectangle.

OH MY GOD

It’s not even a dark rectangle (despite my cubase in dark mode). It’s a white rectangle

Here’s Microsoft’s first notepad from 1985:

More sophistication and features than the cubase 15 pro notepad in 2026.

And here is Notepad++, price: free

Cubase Pro 15’s notepad, price: $840

Obsidian, price: free

Cubase Pro 15’s notepad, price: $840

I could go on but wow this is funny. These kids want AI songs while things like this are still stuck in the bronze age. Steinberg who literally invented vst plugins has a drop down menu side utility white rectangle thing for note taking in their daw in 2026.

So what’s missing for making music?
About a hundred things, but mostly tabs (pages), link pages to song sections (Even FL Studio has hat). Dark mode, basic word processing, auto-capture things that are frozen or bookmarked, project info, metadata of all items in the project, etc.

Come and get your cubase LOLpad you can type words in it n stuff

[mlib]

There are several threads already talking about notepad in Cubase. Why don’t you add your voice to one of those?

PS. If you paid $850 USD for Cubase Pro, someone ripped you off.

[ASUNDER]

I could but if windows 95 issues are still issues in 2026, that means they will never get improved. In cases like this we have no other recourse than memes.

I’ll just have to have a separate notepad app running on a second monitor or something. Haven’t figured out my plan yet.

I got it on sale but I checked the current price before posting so that I didn’t get it wrong:

[Reco29]

It’s probably Canadian Dollars. 840€ is actually less than what you’d pay in Europe according to the current exchange rate.

@ASUNDER Leaving a vote on an existing topic like @mlib suggested is good advice. Requests with a high count of votes tend to be heard.

[SF_Green]

I use this. It’s free

MNotepad | MeldaProduction

Then there’s this little goodie for adding snapshots of hardware configs as a pic

Snapshot 2

[Psychlist1972]

To be fair, that’s not actually white #FFFFFF; it’s Ice Blue #E4EBF3

Pete
Microsoft

[awesomeaudio]

Ice blue is how we feel using it to

(still love you Steiny)

[Greg_Purkey]

This for notes on specific tracks.

Cubase Notepad for notes about the entire project.

And yes, I agree, both Track Notepad and Project Notepad could use substantial attention. Until then, your options are limited. Use the free but slightly crippled Melda Notepad for tracks, or pay money to uncripple it, and Project Notepad for Project notes. And Snapshot2, however it seems very limited when you take pics…no re-sizing or anything to my knowledge.

There are other note tools that have come and gone over the years such as one that combined pdf’s and text but no longer supported.

And users want different objectives. Some even want a format for lyrics on tracks.

As most know, as a work-around, markers can be used as very short notes, with the limitation of iirc 9 marker tracks.

@Reco29

@ASUNDER Leaving a vote on an existing topic like @mlib suggested is good advice. Requests with a high count of votes tend to be heard.

Absolutely. More attention to notes would not seem to be too involved as an improvement. But in reality, you never know…

[ASUNDER]

@Reco29

@ASUNDER Leaving a vote on an existing topic like @mlib suggested is good advice. Requests with a high count of votes tend to be heard.

Ok, I’ll go look.

@SF_Green

(MNotepad) Then there’s this little goodie for adding snapshots of hardware configs as a pic

Decent.
Except the onscreen keyboard kind of trips me out. Looks like a blackberry or something. At least it’s dark mode though.

@Psychlist1972

To be fair, that’s not actually white #FFFFFF; it’s Ice Blue #E4EBF3

Pete
Microsoft

Is that the same ice blue on the win 10 system apps, even when the os is supposed to be in dark mode?

Looks like Dave vibe coded a legacy win xp notepad. Someone should make a fully featured notepad vst. To be really useful it would need to have timeline integration though. (“go to page x when the playheader touches marker y”. “go to page x when window y or plugin y is focused”).

@Greg_Purkey

Use the free but slightly crippled Melda Notepad for tracks, or pay money to uncripple it

I went to the melda website to see what you meant.
Turns out the MNotepad has really good audio

That reminds me of products that comes with a fifty page user manual because it’s in all the languages. You have to hunt down the one English page, cause somehow it saved them three cents on distribution cost.

I’ll probably use one of the suggested vst notepads for now.

[SF_Green]

I think that’s for real and it’s because you have to stick it in an insert slot to use it so it does pass audio through, though it doesn’t do anything to it.

[ASUNDER]

Ok well I would prefer no on screen keyboard.
I got this basic one going for now.

[Greg_Purkey]

Of course, do what you wish, but it is no longer supported, and VST2 only which most likely will be discontinued so going forward… good luck.

Melda has different backgrounds.

[SF_Green]

The keyboard can be hidden easily with the arrow to the left of it.

[Reco29]

The feature request is legit, no question.

Nonetheless, most of the times I prefer to jot down my most important notes on an actual piece of paper. For some reason, I take these notes more seriously. Having said this, an overhaul of the notepad might change this. Besides, analog notepads come with a lot of limitations.

[Monotremata]

Yep, I have several composition books and a big Trapper Keeper next to my desk that are full of song notes, studio notes, etc.

The Notepad in Cubase isn’t that bad, at least it’s there. They could’ve just left it out like other DAWs and made you go open a text editor. Logic’s isn’t much better if you’re looking for comparison. That one opens in one of the side panels and doesn’t offer anything else. It’s just a big blank space to type into. I never remember to go back and look for stuff I’ve typed in. With my notebooks staring at me however, I’m always reminded that there’s stuff in there to go back to.

[MrSoundman]

If I could add a note of caution (see what I did there? ), keeping documentation inside the project itself assumes it will always be possible to open that project file again to access the documentation.

There are many reasons why project files fail to open – backwards compatibility is not guaranteed, eLicenser issues, or simple file corruption.

If notes etc. are kept separate to the project file itself, at least there is some hope of being able to reconstruct a project from e.g. recorded audio, rendered instrument tracks and effects, exported MIDI files etc.

While the notepad can be useful while working on a project, it is of limited value for longer-term archival purposes. That’s why the ability to export the notes was added (File | Export | Notepad Data).

Personally, I’m quite happy with the “frikkin white rectangle” because it discourages me from putting anything other than basic notes in there. INHO that’s also one of the things that made the original Windows Notepad so popular, and why many were angered by the changes made to it in recent versions of Windows.

I’d be OK with being able to change the background colour though

[Elien]

Well, and for sure the NOTEPAD is not 840$ !

…

[Elien]

Sorry, but I dont agree - it would be extremely simple to have the notes INSIDE the cubase project but at the same time as a normal text-file that can be opened with any other program - no need to store it in the project file itself just because it is part of the project. After all audio is also separate but still part of the project…

[ASUNDER]

The benefit is having notes onboard the daw, right there to use. It’s always quicker.

Steinberg is pretty good with managing things. This white rectangle is really out of place with the rest of the daw.

Look at this. You can do gopro vr stuff in here, and nearby is the most basic commodore 64 notepad?

I could probably vibe code a better notepad vst myself.

[ASUNDER]

@MrSoundman

There are many reasons why project files fail to open – backwards compatibility is not guaranteed, eLicenser issues, or simple file corruption.

If notes etc. are kept separate to the project file itself, at least there is some hope of being able to reconstruct a project from e.g. recorded audio, rendered instrument tracks and effects, exported MIDI files etc.

While the notepad can be useful while working on a project, it is of limited value for longer-term archival purposes. That’s why the ability to export the notes was added (File | Export | Notepad Data).

That’s a good point. The project files are probably monolithic like that. So maybe what would be best is for a notepad vst to use the “one file per note” system like obsidian. The notes stay in their separate folder but still are read/written with the vst (or tool). But I might be overengineering music making at this point.

I also want a place to keep MIDI scores safe and sound, but I haven’t got that far yet. Still working on presets cause I’m OCD like that.