This is only partially related to Doggiebox, but it's been quiet here, so I thought I'd post about it anyway.
I had been yearning for audio interface for my iBook, and finally settled on a Tascam US-122 (which, having heard Mike Carlyle's excellent results, seemed likely to give good results without breaking the bank). It came with Cubase LE, and I've been having fun poking around with that. One of the things I've been trying to figure out how to do easily is create a "groove map" for a piece has subtle tempo changes so that Cubase will know where those changes occur and be able to use its MIDI quantize functions correctly if I were then to layer MIDI instrument tracks into the piece.
So, I've created my DB drum track and have a fine two-channel stereo AIFF that I can import into Cubase. In this I guess I have some advantage over a recording of a real drummer, since I know exactly where and how great all the tempo changes are. Cubase has some kind of "find audio hitpoints" function that's supposed to scan my audio file and figure out where the beats are -- I'm just not sure how well that will work, since there are after all different amounts of drumming at different times and I haven't just got a techno kick drum whacking away at 1-2-3-4 throughout.
I was wondering if I might be able to take advantage of DB's clever option to output a MIDI file. If I loaded that MIDI file into Cubase, presumably there's some way for Cubase to pull tempo changes from the MIDI file, and I could use that as a kind of "master" tempo map so that I could later quantize my shaky keyboard playing or whatever. I could just mute the MIDI drum file itself and have audio provided by my AIFF file exported from DB.
Any Cubase wizards here have any ideas about how perhaps to approach this?
Cheers, Carl
Explore the power of Cubase's "tempo track". You can edit your tempo on a grid and make it do whatever you want.
Explore, my friend.
On Sep 22, 2005, at 11:21 AM, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
This is only partially related to Doggiebox, but it's been quiet here, so I thought I'd post about it anyway.
I had been yearning for audio interface for my iBook, and finally settled on a Tascam US-122 (which, having heard Mike Carlyle's excellent results, seemed likely to give good results without breaking the bank). It came with Cubase LE, and I've been having fun poking around with that. One of the things I've been trying to figure out how to do easily is create a "groove map" for a piece has subtle tempo changes so that Cubase will know where those changes occur and be able to use its MIDI quantize functions correctly if I were then to layer MIDI instrument tracks into the piece.
So, I've created my DB drum track and have a fine two-channel stereo AIFF that I can import into Cubase. In this I guess I have some advantage over a recording of a real drummer, since I know exactly where and how great all the tempo changes are. Cubase has some kind of "find audio hitpoints" function that's supposed to scan my audio file and figure out where the beats are -- I'm just not sure how well that will work, since there are after all different amounts of drumming at different times and I haven't just got a techno kick drum whacking away at 1-2-3-4 throughout.
I was wondering if I might be able to take advantage of DB's clever option to output a MIDI file. If I loaded that MIDI file into Cubase, presumably there's some way for Cubase to pull tempo changes from the MIDI file, and I could use that as a kind of "master" tempo map so that I could later quantize my shaky keyboard playing or whatever. I could just mute the MIDI drum file itself and have audio provided by my AIFF file exported from DB.
Any Cubase wizards here have any ideas about how perhaps to approach this?
Cheers, Carl
-- Carl Edlund Anderson mailto:cea@carlaz.com http://www.carlaz.com/
-- Zygoat Doggiebox discussion list - http://www.doggiebox.com To unsubscribe, view archives or change your options: http://lists.zygoat.ca/mailman/listinfo/doggiebox
On 23/09/2005 00:19, Michael Carlyle wrote:
Explore the power of Cubase's "tempo track". You can edit your tempo on a grid and make it do whatever you want.
Ah, yes, I just stumbled across the thing about tempo track. So I guess the sensible thing is to just edit the tempo track in Cubase to match my known tempo changes from DB. Should work!
(I'm still messing about with trying to sort out a dbkit using some ns_kit7full samples. Trickiest thing so far is trying to figure out how to use some of the degrees of high-hat openess at at least a few different velocities without overloading the UI.)
Cheers, Carl
Carl
I'm sure there will be a way to do this as you describe. I use Pro- Tools and do exactly that - Cubase is supposed to be more MIDI friendly than PT, so I'm guessing it's a goer.
FWIW - in Pro Tools, I import the AIFF and the MIDI file and line them up at the same start point. PT imports the tempo (and tempo changes) from the MIDI file - (this is also handy for general navigation). I mute the MIDI track and - hey presto - you have a nice tempo set up. If the kit I'm using doesn't have MIDI notes assigned, I just assign any old thing to each sound as I never actually use the MIDI drums to trigger any sounds - I find the DB set as good ( or indeed better) than any Pro Tools MIDI sounds I have
Lots of luck
Charlie
On 22/09/2005, at 11:21 PM, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
This is only partially related to Doggiebox, but it's been quiet here, so I thought I'd post about it anyway.
I had been yearning for audio interface for my iBook, and finally settled on a Tascam US-122 (which, having heard Mike Carlyle's excellent results, seemed likely to give good results without breaking the bank). It came with Cubase LE, and I've been having fun poking around with that. One of the things I've been trying to figure out how to do easily is create a "groove map" for a piece has subtle tempo changes so that Cubase will know where those changes occur and be able to use its MIDI quantize functions correctly if I were then to layer MIDI instrument tracks into the piece.
So, I've created my DB drum track and have a fine two-channel stereo AIFF that I can import into Cubase. In this I guess I have some advantage over a recording of a real drummer, since I know exactly where and how great all the tempo changes are. Cubase has some kind of "find audio hitpoints" function that's supposed to scan my audio file and figure out where the beats are -- I'm just not sure how well that will work, since there are after all different amounts of drumming at different times and I haven't just got a techno kick drum whacking away at 1-2-3-4 throughout.
I was wondering if I might be able to take advantage of DB's clever option to output a MIDI file. If I loaded that MIDI file into Cubase, presumably there's some way for Cubase to pull tempo changes from the MIDI file, and I could use that as a kind of "master" tempo map so that I could later quantize my shaky keyboard playing or whatever. I could just mute the MIDI drum file itself and have audio provided by my AIFF file exported from DB.
Any Cubase wizards here have any ideas about how perhaps to approach this?
Cheers, Carl
-- Carl Edlund Anderson mailto:cea@carlaz.com http://www.carlaz.com/
Zygoat Doggiebox discussion list - <http://www.doggiebox.com> To unsubscribe, view archives or change your options: <http://lists.zygoat.ca/mailman/listinfo/doggiebox>
On 23/09/2005 11:55, Charlie wrote:
FWIW - in Pro Tools, I import the AIFF and the MIDI file and line them up at the same start point. PT imports the tempo (and tempo changes) from the MIDI file - (this is also handy for general navigation). I mute the MIDI track and - hey presto - you have a nice tempo set up. If the kit I'm using doesn't have MIDI notes assigned, I just assign any old thing to each sound as I never actually use the MIDI drums to trigger any sounds - I find the DB set as good ( or indeed better) than any Pro Tools MIDI sounds I have
Yeah, I have no interest in doing MIDI drums from Cubase -- I just want to use my AIFF from DB :) I still haven't quite figured out whether I can use a DB-produced MIDI track to automatically inform Cubase about tempo changes in the piece, but it looks like it should take long for me to map it out using Cubase's tempo track controls, as Mike C. suggested.
My plan is to try sketching out arrangements in Cubase and then go back to my VS-1680 once I know how the song will go :) It's just faster to hack and slash about on the computer's UI than the old '1680's, but I think I actually get a little bit better sound on the '1680 still.
But I can control the 1680 from either DB or Cubase, so it's all good :)
Cheers, Carl