Wondering what Cubase offers for guitar practice?

[Stephen57]

@JCB75

I’ve been surviving on the minor pentatonic scale for a long time as a guitar player. I had a theory session with a friend last night and he blew my mind with the CAGED system. In a nutshell, the bar chord shapes of C,A,G,E,D can be used in succession up the neck to find every similar chord on the neck. All of the C’s, for instance. Then, those shapes are movable to find all the chords on a different root note such as D. You just have to remember to bar with your first finger as you go up. Once you know all of the major chords then you can change the necessary intervals to learn the other chord types such as minor, augmented, diminished, suspended, sevenths, etc. I thought it was cool. lol

That all sounds great.

Yes, there’s truth about not getting locked in, but you’ll find that Cubase will help you in many ways. Take a Major Scale, say all quarter notes, two octaves. Copy it and then use Midi > Transpose Setup to do a parallel Transposition. Select the measures containing the scale, then transpose the copy to one of the other scale types, say, from C Major to C Blue 1. Notice that “no scale” can be used if you just want to move everything up or down.

Cubase is very strong in the harmonic vocabulary stuff. It will assist, but it mostly won’t get in the way of your creativity. One thing I recommend is this. Under “Preferences” go to Event Display > Chords and Pitches and, there check the box that says “Enharmonics from Chord Track.” Then, if you’re in the key of F and you put an F Major Chord on the Chord Track, Cubase will show you “Bb” rather than “A#” in the midi editor.

One of the books I used to study Jazz is called the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization by George Russell. It took a few years to get though that one and I still review it today. Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization - Wikipedia.

Have fun.