Cubase Tutorial
Digital Audio Production At Home

Want to setup an Advanced Music Production System?

Want to record Vocals? Looking for Vocal Editing and Pitch Correction?

Looking for capabilities to record Unlimited Audio / MIDI tracks?

Looking for capabilities which can extend to complete Mastered tracks?

So you are all set to use your computer for audio production?

This Cubase tutorial will give you a basic understanding of how to use the various elements like digital audio, loops, and MIDI to create your own songs.

Though this product provides a lot of features, you just need to be aware that it is a sequencer that will help you manage all your tracks, including audio as well as midi tracks.

Ok. Let us start!

Launch the application and open a new file to work on your tracks. You will find that the main window can broadly be classified into 4 areas:

Top - You will find all your menu options

Left - Names/Details of all your tracks, Audio as well as MIDI

Right - Arrangement window containing all information about the musical notes!

Bottom - Transport Bar having options like start, stop, move forward, move backward, repeat/loop and so on.

The topics of your interest in these cubase sx tutorials should be around adding audio and MIDI tracks, using the Left and Right Locators, using the transport Bar, using the mixer and effects, and burning the final wav file to CD.


Let us explore these further!

Repeat/Loop
As you add more and more bars to your song, listening to the entire song every time you make changes to a particular section can be quite time consuming.

This is where you use the Repeat/Loop feature. Using the Left and Right Locators you can repeat just a few bars of your song.

Edit Audio
You have lots of tools available to edit your audio tracks.

Using the Import option in the File menu, click on Import to get your audio file into Cubase. This will make your audio track to start at the position of the left locator.

Now you just need to double click on this block and a popup window will come up showing all the editing features.

Using MIDI Tracks
Once you have connected your electronic keyboard and configured your MIDI track to recognize the keyboard, you can capture the notes you play on the MIDI track. Alternatively, you can also draw the notes using the pen tool in the midi editor.

Once you have your midi track in place, you need to set its channels output to a sound producing device to be able to hear the notes.

This product provides some basic virtual instruments that you can use. Go to Panels -> Virtual Instruments and choose an instrument.

To get a better sound, you can buy additional virtual instruments. There are many that keep on coming out from time to time.

Mix the Tracks
This cubase sx tutorial tells you about Mixing. Once you have all your tracks, you need to mix the tracks.

Mixing basically would mean adjusting the volumes of the tracks vis-à-vis each other and to add effects to the various tracks to produce an enhanced sound.

To have a look at the mixer, go to Panels -> Mixer. You will find channel strips for the various tracks.

Some of the EFFECTS that you can add - reverb, equalizer, compressors, etc. Just notice the difference it makes to the sound. You just can't do without effects!

Note: There are two types of effects, Insert effects and Send effects. Insert effects apply only to the specific channel to which it is applied. Send effects can be applied to multiple channels.

Also note that to be able to use these effects, you need a powerful computer. If you have a low configuration computer, using these effects may cause the program to hang.

So save your work regularly!

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