Cubase 5 – Loop & Remix Bonanza

Steinberg recently released Cubase 5, and we have now added a new training course for Cubase 5 as well as updating our DAW Shootout. Although Cubase has always ranked at or near the top as a heavy-duty Digital Audio Workstation, it has never gotten much attention from the loop and remix crowd. Steinberg appears to be on a mission to change that. Cubase 4.1 added integration with Sequel, Steinberg’s recent attempt to compete with Apple GarageBand. Cubase 5 features several plug-ins aimed squarely at the loop and remix market.

Taking on Akai MPC

Although the Akai MPC has been the main tool for a generation of hip-hop artists and remixers, a bunch of companies are now taking aim at the MPC with less expensive alternatives that use a computer as the drum sampler (see my blog, Move Over Akai MPC, for more on the subject). On the hardware side you have products like the M-Audio Trigger Finger which mimic the 4×4 drum pad design of the MPC but which are basically a MIDI controller rather than a hardware sampler. Groove Agent ONE takes a place in the growing line-up of software drum samplers based on a 4×4 pad design. Despite the similarity in name to Groove Agent 3, a virtual drum machine that Steinberg markets separately, the two have very little in common. Groove Agent ONE is basically a separate animal.

The design is pretty straightforward. There are 8 groups of 4×4 pads which are mapped to 128 MIDI notes. Each pad can have up to 8 layers mapped for velocity switching. Unfortunately layers cannot be layered in the same velocity range. Tuning, EQ filtering, and amplitude envelope shaping can be applied separately to each pad. You can also route pads to separate audio outputs for additional FX manipulation such as compression. Groove Agent ONE comes with a fairly generous assortment of factory drum kits, and you can create your own drum kits by dragging and dropping samples.

Pattern Recognition

Cubase 5 also adds a Beat Designer, a drum pattern sequencer which makes an excellent companion to Groove Agent ONE. While many people make beats by tapping them out on pads, some of us prefer using the interactive approach of pattern sequencers which allow you to enter beats on a grid and listen to the results in real time. You can define your own drum kits in Beat Designer, but the drum note names are locked to the General MIDI Standard for drum note names. As with most pattern sequencers, you have a lot of flexibility in defining pattern grids and controlling the velocity of individual drum notes. There are also functions for creating swing beats and flams. You can store up to 48 patterns in each preset and trigger the patterns using MIDI notes in a track or from an external MIDI keyboard or pad controller. While Beat Designer and Groove Agent ONE can be used independently of one another, they work very well together. Thus we have added a new tutorial, Drum Tools, which demonstrates how to use the two plug-ins together.

Melodyne Clone For Free

Cubase 5 also includes VariAudio, a new pitch shifting algorithm which could be described as a Melodyne clone. The quality of audio pitch shifting has always been problematic. Changing the pitch of vocals in particular is difficult to do without the results sounding like chipmunks or frogs. As we discuss more fully in our Digital Producer course, there are several different approaches to transposing audio, and the one that has been most successful for vocals is individual note identification using techniques popularized by Antares Autotune and Celemony Melodyne.

VariAudio is integrated into the Cubase Sample Editor as well as with the other pitch and time functions in Cubase. So, for example, audio events for which VariAudio has been enabled can have root keys and be transposed using a transpose track just like other audio and MIDI events and parts in Cubase. VariAudio also has functions such as pitch correction and expression control. We demonstrate how to use VariAudio in this YouTube video which is a reformatted excerpt from our new tutorial on pitch and time. A head-to-head listening comparison with Melodyne is also included, so you can judge the quality of VariAudio pitch shifting for yourself.

Making Music by Twisting Knobs

Another new toy for remixers is LoopMash, a unique tool which allows you to slice audio files in such a way that you can replace the sounds in one audio file with content from other files while at the same time maintaining the rhythmic character of the original file. It provides a novel way for remixers to create new content. Personally I tend to put LoopMash in the “making music by twisting knobs” category. But if that’s your thing, go for it.

Some More Traditional Goodies

Cubase 5 does include a couple of major features oriented towards more traditional music making, the REVerence Reverb and VST Expression Maps. REVerence joins the rapidly growing list of convolution reverbs that have become available in recent years. As we explain more fully in our Mixing & Mastering course, conventional reverbs simulate reflections of sound based on mathematical models of a particular space. Convolution reverbs, on the other hand, use Impulse Response files which are profiles of actual or artificial physical spaces. Typically convolution reverbs are high quality reverbs that can be used for mastering, and we demonstrate how to use REVerence in our new tutorial on mastering.

Express Yourself

Finally, we come to my favorite enhancement in Cubase 5, VST Expression Maps. As we explain in some detail in our Digital Producer course, one of the key ways of producing realistic sounds from virtual instruments is using articulations. Most high quality virtual instruments include different samples for each articulation. For example, guitars and basses will have articulations like pick, slide, and hammer-on, and orchestral instruments include articulations such as tremolo, staccato, and sforzando. Several different methods are used to change from one articulation to another, but the most common is keyswitches – notes outside of the sounding range of the instrument that will invoke a particular articulation. Although you can simply enter keyswitches as notes in a MIDI track, having to keep track of which articulation is triggered by which note can be a real pain.

VST Expression Maps provide an easy way to define the articulations available for a particular instrument. Once defined, articulations can be invoked from any of the MIDI editors in Cubase – the Key Editor, Score Editor, and the List Editor – or from an external keyboard. For example as shown below, in the Key Editor articulations are handled as an Automation Lane. Many of the instruments in the HALion One sample player supplied with Cubase use articulations. A few track presets that include VST Expression Maps for HALion One instruments have been created for Cubase 5. Hopefully, Steinberg will continue to expand this library. We show how to create and use VST Expression Maps in our new tutorial on MIDI editing.

Architecture and Warts

In general the enhancements in Cubase 5 are part of a trend that I see in the Digital Audio Workstations that we track. The top-ranked DAW’s are mature pieces of software, and there aren’t too many ways left to compete by improving the core recording, editing, and mixing functions. Thus the competitive battlefield has shifted to including fancy plug-ins and other such enhancements. Some DAW’s just tack these functions on to the base product, and the result is a hodgepodge that seems like a bunch of warts.

On the other hand, the amount of effort that Steinberg puts into integrating new functions into the core Cubase architecture has always impressed me, and these enhancements are no exception. For example, as I pointed out earlier, VariAudio is fully integrated with the other time, pitch and sample editing functions in Cubase. Beat Designer also does not require any special handling. It is simply another MIDI plug-in. VST Expression Maps are fully integrated into the MIDI editors and MIDI track functions. This attention to integration ultimately makes for a much more robust architecture which in turn results in a product that is consistent and easy to use.