ayone here use cubasis vst?

Sliotar

i just got my hands on this program, but i'm a bit clueless as to how to use it. it does'nt seem to come with a decent tutorial, anyone know where i can find one??

mike65

I'm tempted to say just play round and learn, but I think its got an on-line tutorial so just log-on...and make sure you're on UTV flat-rate.

what do you want to know, to get you started? I use
sequencers to a degree.

Mike.

Sliotar

yeh i just want to start off putting together a basic song, nothin fancy

DadaKopf

Why don't you look for info on Cubase VST? I don't use it though.

mike65

Originally posted by Sliotar
yeh i just want to start off putting together a basic song, nothin fancy

ah, I don't do songs....do you know how to use select drivers for midi and audio for your soundcard, how to
access sounds and select a track to play/record the sounds into?

What gear do you use, Midi keyboard?
softsynth? hardware synth? GM card sounds?
Give me a list and a brief history of your musical knowledge,with respect of PCs. And we'll take it from there.

Mike.

Sliotar

thanks man, sound,
right, i'm a complete beginner when it comes to pc recording, (altho i did manage to put together a simple little song on a cool edit 4 track once)
basically i want to use my pc to record my guitar, which i have plugged directly into my soundcards line in port. the card is a soundblaster audigy, and cubasis came with it, although it's a creative version so it might be somewhat different from the usual tretail version.
as far as my musical knowledge goes, i understand the basic principal behind it but as far as using the software goes i'm pretty much clueless, don't understand a lot of the terminology and all that.
i'm not too concerned with sound quality, i just want to get some of my musical ideas onto paper if you know what i mean
is that what you want to know?
oh and the help in cubasis is kinda confusing, and doesn't have any step by step guide

mike65

Okay in truth you need not worry about arcane language
and strange letters.
What is below if very basic stuff, but a start, as I've never used a
real-life instrument with a soundcard I'm not certain how well my
advise will work but hey we'll give it a go!


If you've done a tune before, you know about line-in and stuff like that, so its pretty strightfoward I'd say, the signal from your guitar will be carried by the soundblaster driver which is you need to select in Cubase.

Click Options and click Audio set-up then System then click Audio i/o and selct ASIO DIRECT X FULL DUPLEX.

As you'll be recording to audio, you need to select an audio track in the main track/arrange window and then click the little icon which should be on the left edge of that window when you do you'll see a list of inputs (in Cubase 5 which I have a demo of, its an arrow shape) click enable and the mono/stereo button (if its stereo click it to be mono I'd suggest.) when enable is clicked you will be asked to select a folder which is where the audio file will be kept so you can play it back in winamp!). Press record in the transport bar which is the red dot, at this point try playing in and remember to monitor the sound levels. You might want to click the volume window in Cubase which is beneath the enable button, set it to -12db and if thats too quite when you play back try -6db.

If this recording works and you want to keep it, select Audio export in the FILE menu.

IMPORTANT! You'll notice a "ruler" along the top of the window with two markers one marked [L] the other [R] move the [R] by clicking it with the Right mouse button, drag it past the end of the recorded material. If you dont the audio will not be exported
to file.

Phew, this is hard work!

Try that for size, we'll go from there.

BTW There is a much simpler way to record guitar input, which is to use an audio editor, something like Soundforge or CoolEdit or GoldWave do you have any of them? Using an audio editor is very straightfoward.

Mike.

Sliotar

nice one! my cubasis set up was a little different, but using your advice i was able to get the guitar input working. i just recorded a few riffs. i have a couple of basic wave editors like wavelab lite, which are grand but i want to do multi track recording and they don't seem to have that.
now that i've got some sound coming from my guitar, i guess its just a matter of working out the fine details.
i'm guessing i'll be using wavelab for the fine editing of these audio files?
thanks for takin your time out to show me this stuff mike, it really is bloody helpful

mike65

Glad it worked (I'm slighly amazed myself! ) Wavelab
will do perfectly good job, when I bought my SB Live it came with Soundforge 4 XP which I would'nt be without.

You mentioned multi-track recording, for this there are two
progs only worth considering - Cool Edit 2000 or Samplitude
Producer. Both are exellent, they'll set you back something like €450-500 each but thats life! I use Samplitude Basic 5 which I got free off ComputerMusic cover CD, and I heartily reccomend you start buying this if only to make the software seem less threatening. They give great stuff away too.

Oh there is a cheaper multi track audio package called n-tracks
but its got no real editing abiity, it "associates" with an external programme like Wavelab. That said its only about $60.

http://forum.midiaddict.com/ for ComputerMusic chat and help.

Mike.

Sliotar

yeh i tried a 30 day trial of cool edit before and it was exactly what i'm looking for but i just dont have E500, and seeing as i got cubasis free i thought i might try and use that. but i'll check my local newsagent for ComputerMusic, anything with free software sounds good to me.
i've managed to get a multitrack thing goin in cubasis but there's just 1 problem really. i go and record a riff onto track 1. then i try to record a riff onto track 2 but track 2 records the new riff and the old riff plus any other backround sounds that happen to be coming from the comp. i try to record onto track 3 but it records my new 3rd riff and the previous other 2. this is not good. any idea how i get around it?

mike65

You have just hit the problem we all hit at some point!

How to record one track of audio while playing back the origional but not wanting to record that too! As far as I can see there is no way of "sidelining" an existing track of audio, what you hear is what you record. The only way round this would be too either
a memorise the first peice of audio (sounds silly but I've done that!) or b transfere the audio to an external source for playback, ie run a signal-out to a tape deck and then play the audio back and play along with that while muting the audio in Cubase. A pain I know but it can be done, you'll need a standard stereo 3.5mm mini-jack to two RCA type jacks line. See picture in link below- http://www.acekaraoke.com/ha2kca2110.html

(I'm assuming you have a hi-fi system with some decent connections round the back).

Mike.

Sliotar

well at least uyou know what i'm talking about, i don't actually have a decent hi-fi so i'm gonna have to come up with some other clever way of doin it

mike65

Improvise! Hum the first part as you play the second!

Mike.