Digital recording has forever changed the music industry. Instead of spending big bucks to rent a large recording studio and hire professional studio musicians to record the basic tracks, musicians today can record a song or an entire album in their homes on a shoestring budget. The results can be every bit as professional as what used to be achieved with pro-studio recording—or sound horribly amateurish, if you don’t do everything right.
What do you need to get started with digital recording today? It’s a short list: a personal computer, a couple of monitor speakers or a good set of keyboards, a MIDI keyboard or electric guitar, and a microphone or two. Plus a quality digital recording and mixing application, of course—such as Steinberg’s Cubase 6.
Here’s a summary of what you will learn in this chapter:
What Cubase is and what it does
How Cubase evolved through the years
What’s new in Cubase 6
Cubase 6 is a digital audio workstation (DAW) program that enables you to create your own professional audio recordings. But what does that mean—and how can you use Cubase for your recording projects?
You use Cubase to perform all the discrete steps involved in a typical recording project:
Recording. This is the actual recording of musicians singing and playing their instruments—whether those instruments are acoustic (acoustic guitars, piano, trumpet, violin, voice), electric (electric piano, electric guitar, electric bass), or electronic (synthesizers and samplers). Cubase enables you to record digital audio or MIDI performances.
Editing. This is the changing of recorded tracks to make them more appropriate for the final music release. You can cut sections of music, splice together multiple takes, remove or fix wrong notes, fix errant pitch and erratic tempo, and so forth.
Mixing. This is the process of blending all your recorded tracks together into a single recording. You’ll need to adjust volume levels between tracks, add effects (such as reverb), and generally work to make all the tracks work together as a whole.
Mastering. This final process readies your final mix into a form suitable for physical or digital distribution.
You can think of Cubase, then, as a musician’s toolbox with all the tools necessary to record, edit, mix, and master audio and MIDI information. But the Cubase we know today is much changed from the initial version of the program; from its beginnings as a simple MIDI sequencer, Cubase has undergone many transformations.
The history of Cubase goes all the way back to 1984 and a sequencing program called Steinberg Pro 16. Created by German programmers Karl Steinberg and Manfred Rürup, Pro 16 was available on floppy diskette for the popular Commodore 64 and Apple II computers of the day. A newer version, Pro 24, was released a year later with more advanced features.
By 1989, Pro 16/24 evolved into the program called Cubase and gained more advanced groove quantizing, sound editing, and scoring features. Interestingly, Steinberg intended to call the program Cubit, but changed the name due to copyright reasons.
With the 1996 release of Cubase VST, Steinberg’s program expanded beyond MIDI sequencing to add traditional audio recording and editing so that regular musical instruments and microphones could be recorded. With this major addition, Cubase became a full audio production tool, contributing in many ways to the development and democratization of the creative process that lies inside every musician. Cubase VST also introduced Virtual Studio Technology (VST) instruments, which made it possible to replace hardware devices with their software equivalents; you could now play a musical pattern on a keyboard synthesizer, for example, and have that pattern assigned the sound of a flute or violin or some other virtual instrument.
The third major version of the Cubase program was introduced in 2002. Cubase SX was based on Nuendo, Steinberg’s professional post-production software. This version of Cubase dramatically changed the way the program operated, but brought with it more sophisticated audio and MIDI editing. It also added real-time audio stretching and the ability to adjust a track’s tempo.
Further small upgrades to the program have been released since Cubase SX on pretty much an every-other-year basis. The latest version of the program, Cubase 6, was introduced in 2010, adding a number of new and useful features to the application. It’s this latest version that I discuss in this book.
Cubase is a robust recording, mixing, and mastering environment for use by both professional and hobbyist recordists. In formal terms, that means Cubase is a digital audio workstation, or DAW application, offering a variety of tools for the following recording and editing tasks:
Audio and MIDI recording environments. Cubase records and plays back both digital audio and MIDI. It also records and plays back any automation (called parameter automation events) you use while recording a performance. The program also includes a studio control room-type of interface, which makes recording live musicians and performing overdubs easier than ever.
Audio and MIDI editing environments. Once audio or MIDI is recorded, you can edit these events using one of many editing windows.
Virtual instruments. If you don’t own external sound modules, Cubase provides the technology necessary to transform your computer into a “virtual instrument” through VST instruments. VST instruments are software synthesizers installed on your computer that use your audio interface to generate their sounds. You no longer need to purchase expensive synthesizer modules, because they are part of your virtual studio environment. Cubase 6 includes eight of these virtual instruments.
Effects. Cubase allows you to use its built-in audio and MIDI effects, add third-party effects, and even connect external effect devices. Effects allow you to process audio in a number of ways, such as controlling the dynamic and harmonic content of audio through compressors, filters, or other types of signal processing. Cubase integrates this potential within its Virtual Studio Technology and gives you the necessary tools to control every aspect effects can provide. Cubase 6 includes 60 of these real-time audio effects, including the new VST Amp Rack guitar tone suite.
Mixing environment. While you’re recording, editing, and manipulating MIDI and audio events, you can mix every track by using a virtual mixer not unlike its hardware counterpart. This virtual mixer accommodates as many inputs, output busses, effects, MIDI tracks, virtual instrument tracks, groups, and audio tracks as your project needs. Then, you can automate your mix easily and create complex mixes without leaving your computer. You can also connect third-party hardware controllers to get a more interesting tactile experience during your mixing process.
Multimedia production environment. You can synchronize your Cubase audio project for use in multimedia and video productions, making it a great postproduction environment for today’s producers. Cubase now supports more import and export formats than ever, making it easy to prepare content for the Web, as well as for high-quality surround sound audio and video productions—including TV, movie, and video game soundtracks.
Cubase 6 is an evolution, not a revolution, from previous versions of the program. There are several new and evolved features in this version of Cubase, including the following:
Improved audio editing. Perhaps the most important development in Cubase 6 is in the way it enables you to edit your digital audio files. Cubase 6 features intelligent transient detection, which provides for easier editing of drum tracks. In addition, you get advanced tempo detection, multi-track audio quantization, and more.
Redesigned graphical user interface. The Cubase 6 workspace is cleaner and more intuitive, which makes it easier to work with. Color and contrast optimization help to minimize eyestrain and viewing fatigue, while also helping you distinguish between what’s important and what’s less so in a project. The main toolbar has also been reorganized, with several options and controls renamed, all with an eye toward making the program easier to understand and use.
Lane Tracks. The new Lane Track concept allows for ultrafast multi-take recording. Cubase records a separate Lane Track for each take; you can then swipe across the best parts of each take to automatically create a master take.
Track Edit Groups. The new Track Edit Groups tool allows multi-track editing with a single click. Related tracks are tied together so they can be edited at the same time.
VST Expression 2. The revised Note Expression tool takes MIDI editing to the next level, making it easier to assign, create, and edit multiple controller values on a single-note level.
VST Amp Rack. This new VST effect is a suite of guitar amplifiers and effects, delivering a comprehensive collection of guitar tones at the press of a button.
HALion Sonic SE. This is a streamlined version of HALion Sonic, Steinberg’s premiere VST workstation, with more than 900 production-ready virtual instruments and sounds.
LoopMash 2. This is a revised version of the popular VST instrument used for creating and remixing loop-based recordings, with more than 20 new MIDI-controllable live and slice-based effects.
As noted, Cubase 6 is the latest version of Steinberg’s digital audio workstation application. But there are actually three different versions of Cubase 6, with slightly different feature sets:
Cubase 6 is the flagship member of the Cubase family. This is the fully featured version of Cubase, with the largest number of included plug-ins, virtual instruments, inputs and outputs, and the like. Cubase 6 is priced at $499.99.
Cubase Artist 6 is a slightly less fully featured version of the basic Cubase program. It does everything that Cubase 6 does, but with fewer plug-ins, virtual instruments, available tracks, and such. It also lacks the Control Room feature found in the main Cubase 6 program, but otherwise functions almost identically to the higher-priced Cubase 6, which makes it ideal for musicians to use in their project studios. Cubase Artist 6 is priced at $249.99.
Cubase Elements 6 is a “lite” or entry-level version of the Cubase program. This version of Cubase is limited to just 48 audio tracks per project, whereas Cubase Artist 6 has 64 available tracks, and Cubase 6 offers an unlimited number of tracks. The number of available inputs and outputs, VST instrument slots, FX return channels, and the like is also limited; this version also has less recording functionality and flexibility, and it includes fewer plug-ins and virtual instruments. At the time of this writing, the price for Cubase Elements 6 is $99.99.
You use most of the same techniques for recording, mixing, and mastering across all three versions of Cubase—knowing, of course, that the lower-priced versions of the program lack some of the features found in the higher-priced versions. So, although this book covers the full-featured Cubase 6 version, most of the advice and instructions offered here will also work with Cubase Artist 6 and Cubase Elements 6.