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  4. New to Cubase with VSL please help

  • New to Cubase with VSL please help

    R
    R

    Hello everyone.

    My Cubase studio 4 just arrived in the mail today and I have been spending most of the day reading all the documentation. I have read through most of the supplied physical manual and am now reading as much of the pertinent info as possible in the large PDF manual.

    I have a few questions I hope you guys can answer. I have been up to now using Sibelius 5.2 with VSL as I have been intimidated by the technical know-how required to make the leap to a DAW/sequencer (I'm not really good with all the technical stuff, I'm new to this whole world of audio/music production, I used to compose just on paper/pencil, etc).

    So, now that I have Cubase Studio 4, my question is about the best and most efficient ways to compose. I know there are 2 chief methods of making music with Cubase/VSL.

    1. You notate your music in a notation software like finale/sibelius then import it as midi into Cubase and 'tweak' it.

    2. You play the music live straight into Cubase using a midi keyboard.

    I am hoping, at least for now to utilize method #1 and am wondering if anyone can help me out on that particular method. For example, what is the best way to 'tweak' the midi. Is it in score editor or Key editor on the piano roll, what do you guys use?

    Furthermore, is it best to manually insert velocity changes or use the midi record and redo all the notes by playing them one by one with your own velocity from a midi keyboard?

    And lastly and most importantly, how do I insert patch changes with Cubase..I have not been able to find documentation on this as of yet. For example, I have composed a piece in sibelius and imported it as a midi into cubase, how do I at certain intervals in the score insert patch changes so that violins for instance can go from detache to sustain to pizzicato to whatever else I might need?

    Thanks in advance.
  • R
    R
    Someone on the Cubase forums just told me that the only way to insert patches and such is to make a separate midi track with that patch. So in Cubase to work with the equivalent of a matrix one needs about 5-10 different tracks per instrument just to cover all the different patches that one needs such as staccato, sustain, etc. Please say it ain't so! As that seems highly unintuitive and down right harmful to workflow. Not to mention the fact that this would easily blow through Cubase Studio 4's 32 track limit with even the smallest ensembles.
  • D
    D
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    @requiem_aeternam7 said:

    Someone on the Cubase forums just told me that the only way to insert patches and such is to make a separate midi track with that patch. So in Cubase to work with the equivalent of a matrix one needs about 5-10 different tracks per instrument just to cover all the different patches that one needs such as staccato, sustain, etc. Please say it ain't so! As that seems highly unintuitive and down right harmful to workflow. Not to mention the fact that this would easily blow through Cubase Studio 4's 32 track limit with even the smallest ensembles.

    No, that' just someone who is still doing things the old fashioned way. There is plenty of information in this forum, but if you can't find it you will have to wait for me to post in more detail tomorrow. I'm off to bed now.

    DG
  • R
    R
    THANK YOU DG, believe me I have tried and am still trying to find this information, I have  used the search function here for cubase/vsl but haven't found the answer on top of which I'm currently posting in numerous other forums for help including cubase.net and steinbergusers.com/forums on top of which have finished reading the physical paper manual that came with cubase and have read most of the pertinent info in their giant PDF manual. But alot of it is very dense for me to still take in because I'm VERY new to this whole thing, I'm not very computer/software literate at all and I'm not even sure what some words like 'velocity' really mean so if you could explain how to do this to me I would be highly appreciative and grateful. Thanks!
  • V
    V

     Ok Just to get you started:

    Load Vienna Ensemble in Cubase (F11)

    Create a midi track

    asign that track to the loaded vienna ensemble

    take care of the midi channel , it should match

    load or create a matrix in vienna

    define thre key switch for switching the articulations (it defaults to c1 going up chromatically)

    input the key switches either live or in the key editor

    arrange ther key editor so that you can see velocity and main volume. Those two are needed to fine tune your arrangement.
  • D
    D

    OK, here are my preliminary suggestions, assuming that you've read the Getting Started Cubase manual.

    1. Forget transferring from Sibelius, until you've go the basics sorted out.
    2. Create a couple of MIDI tracks
    3. Open the VST Instruments rack (F11)
    4. Insert and instance of Vienna Ensemble
    5. Load a Preset into the Instrument that you are given.
    6. Click on Perform in the VI GUI and you will see wheat keyswitches are using for changing matrices. Please note that Cubase thinks that Middle C is C3, whereas Sibelius and VE think it is C4 (which is actually the International Standard), therefore, be careful what octave you play in.
    7. Now click somewhere on your Cubase project page. the VE GUI will minimise itself.
    8. In the Inspector (left hand side of your MIDI track) set the input to be that of your keyboard
    9. Set the output to be Vienna Ensemble
    10. Now you can play the instrument that you loaded and use the keyswitches to change patch.

    When you have done all this then post back, and I'll take you through the next stage.

    DG
  • R
    R

    Thanks for the responses.

    DG, I understand what you are saying and I was able to do all those steps the only problem is that I don't have my midi keyboard hooked up yet because I found out my old midi cable isn't compatible with my new computer so I'm going to buy a USB cable or something like that soon, however like I said I was at least able to follow your steps and understand that so far (at least I think I do).

    But either way, I don't expect to really make music in Cubase, what I plan to do is compose in Sibelius and then import the music via midi into Cubase for EDITING. So that is why I am asking how to assign the vienna ensemble to the Imported midi tracks rather than creating the new tracks.

    The problem is I can't seem to figure out how to route a track to a vienna ensemble instrument and I'm not sure how to explain it but here's my best explanation.

    1. I open a new project

    2. I click import midi and import my orchestral midi file

    3. all the tracks are now imported, I hit f11 to bring up the VST instruments control window.

    4. this VST instruments window has numbering from 1-32. At the top on numer 1 I click it and click on Vienna Ensemble.

    5. It asks me do you want to create a midi track assigned to vienna ensemble? I click NO because I don't want to create a new track I just want to assign the tracks I already imported to it so that I can begin editing them with the Vienna Ensemble instrument sounds/patches.

    6. Now I click on any random instrument midi track to see if I can get it to route to a Vienna instrument. Let's say I click on track #3 which is my flutes. I click on that to highlight it and then I go to the left to the Inspector and in the input it says "All Midi Inputs". I leave that as it is.

    In the output it says "HalionOne" I click "HalionOne" and change it to "Vienna Ensemble".

    7. As soon as I do this suddenly a new Vienna Ensemble instance opens up. I now have 2 instances of Vienna Ensemble open. One opened up from when I chose Vienna Ensemble in the f11 VST instruments list and the second opened up when I changed it from HalionOne in the Inspector for the 3rd track (flutes). Now I have no idea where to load the actual instruments because I have 2 vienna ensembles open. If I go to all 20 of my midi tracks and change the midi output from "HalionOne" to "Vienna Ensemble" I will now have 20 instances of Vienna Ensemble open.

    How am I supposed to work with that?? How do I make all of them route to just ONE INSTANCE of Vienna Ensemble rather than 20 individual ones?

    8. Either way, I add an instrument in BOTH INSTANCES of Vienna Ensemble and route it to "Channel 3" because in the Cubase track list the flutes are the 3rd track. When I hit play in Cubase I don't hear any sound at all (when I have track 3 as solo). When I play the whole thing every track except this 3rd track of flutes which I attempted to route to V.E. plays. So I am somehow routing it wrong.

    Please help, it is so frustrating. Ugh.
  • D
    D

    As I said on the Cubase forum, stop using Instrument tracks. Look these up in the manual, digest what it says and use MIDI tracks instead. If on MIDI file import you automatically get Instrument tracks, then this is a Preference that needs to be changed.

    Not meaning to chastise you, but this is why I told you what to do in my previous post. Had you done that, you would have noticed that the MIDI tracks are brown, where the Instrument tracks are green (if I remember correctly). That would have rung some warning bell.

    DG
  • R
    R

    well praise the lord above..DG you are my hero. I apologize for upsetting you with my hard headedness but I guess you guys just don't understand how new I am to all this. I didn't even know what a sample library was til a couple months ago.

    DG you have solved the problem, it is in fact because the instrumental tracks are being imported automatically when I import midi not the midi tracks so what I had to do is, if there are let's say 10 tracks in my midi when I import it, I create 10 midi tracks manually and copy and paste each of those 10 instrumental tracks onto the new blank midi tracks then I delete the original instrumental tracks and rename and route these new midi tracks to Vienna Ensemble, of which there is now thankfully only one instance opening up. Now the problem is how the heck do I change settings to make it so that when I import a midi into Cubase it automatically creates all the midi tracks in MIDI tracks not instrumental tracks... I have tried looking all over the Cubase but can't seem to find any option for that. I'm going to check the index of the big manual now.
  • D
    D
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    @requiem_aeternam7 said:

    well praise the lord above..DG you are my hero. I apologize for upsetting you with my hard headedness but I guess you guys just don't understand how new I am to all this. I didn't even know what a sample library was til a couple months ago.

    DG you have solved the problem, it is in fact because the instrumental tracks are being imported automatically when I import midi not the midi tracks so what I had to do is, if there are let's say 10 tracks in my midi when I import it, I create 10 midi tracks manually and copy and paste each of those 10 instrumental tracks onto the new blank midi tracks then I delete the original instrumental tracks and rename and route these new midi tracks to Vienna Ensemble, of which there is now thankfully only one instance opening up. Now the problem is how the heck do I change settings to make it so that when I import a midi into Cubase it automatically creates all the midi tracks in MIDI tracks not instrumental tracks... I have tried looking all over the Cubase but can't seem to find any option for that. I'm going to check the index of the big manual now.

    Don't worry, you didn't upset me.

    Now, please do the following in Cubase. Click:

    1. File/Preferences/MIDI/MIDI File
    2. Uncheck the "Import to Instrument Tracks" option at the bottom.

    Save this as part of your Preferences.

    DG
  • R
    R

    Thanks a lot, I have done just that and now it works fine...finally I can begin attempting to edit my very first pieces in Cubase. DG they should pay you a vsl salary for all the help you do ;-)
  • R
    R

    Ah CRAP! I celebrated too early. No it still doesn't work. Though I must be right on the verge of getting it to work. I thought I heard sounds playing the first time I tried it but now it doesn't seem to be working.

    Now I am able to get the imported midi into midi tracks rather than instrument tracks. However when I open vienna ensemble from the F11 console, the vienna ensemble instance that opens up is strange in that when I load a patch into it, I cannot play the patch on the screen by clicking on the white keys with my mouse as I normally could if it was loaded with Sibelius or stand alone. Then when I try to route it to a channel in Cubase and choose VE in the inspector in Cubase for one of the instruments and try to route it to the V.E. channel, nothing plays. I see in Cubase the volume graph going up and down as if something is playing but there is no sound coming out.

    [IMG]http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b101/theheresy/Cubase7.jpg[/IMG]

    Here you can see a screenshot of flute, oboe, and clarinet in cubase I've hit "solo" and played them, you can see the volume graph is spiking but no sound is coming out as it plays. Meanwhile vienna ensemble is open and has several instruments loaded.
  • DietzD
    VSL Team
    DietzD
    1. Look what hardware you have selected to be used by Cubase (... that has to be done in "Devices > VST").

    2. Assign Cubase's own outputs to "real" hardware outputs (... that can be done in the "Connections"-window. You get there by pressing F4 by default).

    3. Make sure that some kind of monitoring is assigned to these outputs.



    HTH,
    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
  • D
    D

    Answered on Cubase forum.

    DG
  • R
    R

    You guys have both mentioned (DG and Dietz) about going into F4 (devices>vst connections and checking the outputs and setting a "monitoring" hardware device of some sort. I have no idea what you mean by this as I have no idea what possible "hardware monitoring" device it could possibly require.

    Here is a screenshot of my F4 screen as you can see it does not allow me to 'set' or add anything because it says 'no connections' there.

    [IMG]http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b101/theheresy/Cubase8.jpg[/IMG]

    And DG to answer your question I tried to do what you said and imported an mp3 track and hit play and it didn't play and there was no wave graphic action visible either so somehow it's not playing at all. However if I import a midi, those do play, just not when I route them to VSL.

    [IMG]http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b101/theheresy/Cubase9.jpg[/IMG]

    It seems perhaps the problem is something in that F4 Devices>VST Connections window because both of you have now mentioned something needs to go there but the question is what? As you can see I cannot select anything in there, it simply says "Audio Device: Not connected".

  • D
    D

    OK, this is all covered in the Cubase "Getting started". this has nothing to do with VSL. It is that you haven't set up Cubase properly. I suggest that you get your soundcard installed/enabled, make sure that you play audio files back and then come back here for VSL help. There is no point in doing anything MIDI related until you can actually get some sort of sound out of your soundcard.

    Actually, my best suggestion would be to get someone round to your place to show you how all this stuff works.

    DG
  • DietzD
    VSL Team
    DietzD
    Brian,

    just click on "Not Connected" below the "Devices"-headline, and choose the proper device. Now select the appropriate outputs from the next column at the right. This should do the trick. Don't forget to connect the Vienna Instruments to this Bus.

    .. and Daryl is right: While it is no actual problem (neither for the VSL nor regarding the forum rules) to ask DAW-related questions here, you will get more precise and faster help from the Cubase forum, or from a Real Human coming to your place to sort all the basic things out.

    All the best,
    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
  • R
    R

    Well thanks for to help guys. But just to clarify, I do have sound out of my sound card, I purchased this new computer several months ago and have been happily composing with it just fine using VSL + Sibelius. I can listen to sound in any way I want, even Cubase plays back sound when I import a midi and play it back just with the General Midi sound samples. The only time it stops playing sounds is when I try to route it to VSL or when I import a .wav/.mp3 and try to play that for whatever strange reason that's why I thought it was more VSL related. Obviously if my computer had zero sound at all for months even I wouldn't be that dense enough to realize there was something far more seriously wrong with my sound card LOL...

    Dietz as for clicking on "Not connected" and choosing a device, well as you can see from my screenshot, when I click not connected I am not given any choice for any device. At the least it seems that perhaps you guys have helped narrow the problem down to a possible driver problem, i.e. maybe I don't have an updated device driver for my sound card installed so I am going that route right now trying to install all the updated drivers so we'll see what happens with that. As for getting someone to come over to 'set it all up' believe me if I knew such an expert, I wouldn't have been on this forum for literally a week already. You see Cubase arrived on Monday and it's already Sunday and I still haven't been able to use it so I've been wrangling with it all week and been on about 3-4 other forums including steinbergusers.com/forums, cubase.net, kvraudio.com etc and it seems at the least that you guys have narrowed it down so I am optimistic that I should soon be able to solve this.

    Thanks
  • R
    R
    Well guys I think we did it! You're geniuses!   I went back to the manual as suggested by DG and I guess I was speed reading through both manuals too fast cus I missed this one set up part so I went into devices>setup and it showed no hardware device..upon contemplating what you've said and others have said on other forums it seemed to me that my card was missing a driver that was preventing it from being recognized by Cubase as such I downloaded the ASIO driver which apparently I didn't have and now Cubase recognizes my hardware...awaiting testing to see if the sound actually works now though. Will report back soon.
  • R
    R

    Ok well it still doesn't work BUT I think I'm right on the verge of getting it to work. As I said I downloaded the ASIO4ALL universal ASIO driver as evidently my computer didn't have one. And now I am playing with the different configurations and for once my VSL instance is responding to the midi being played in Cubase, i.e. the actual Vienna Ensemble instance has its keyboard playing and the wave graph jumping up and down indicating that sound is being processed in it, I just don't hear any sound. Same goes for the Cubase: 1. when I import a wav or mp3 file into Cubase it now plays it and I can hear it. And when I route a midi track to VSL from Cubase, the wave graph jumps up and down indicating that sound is being processed, I just can't hear any sound so something is just being set up wrong by me but I feel I'm on the verge of figuring it out.

    I just don't see why in the settings in Cubase my sound is coming up as SB Live! when I have SB Audigy