Finish Your Song

Helping you to get your music made

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Why I’m upgrading to Cubase 8

C8Pro300I posted a while back about how I was locking down my installation whilst I was working on an album, but my good intentions went out of the window when EZDrummer2 launched and I have added to my collection of plugins since then.  That said, I’ve deliberately put back installing the 64-bit version of the Korg Legacy Collection, as I’ve used the Wavestation on several songs and don’t want to mess things up by switching from my current installation of the (jBridged) 32-bit version.

But I’m upgrading to Cubase 8 mid-stream and here’s why.  [Read more…]

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The case of the missing click

One of the most irritating things in Cubase is its propensity for losing some of its settings at the slightest provocation.  One of the things that provokes it most is changing Devices, something I do regularly as I switch between recording and mixing using my audio interface on the one hand and recording these videos using a digital headset on the other.  This can result in my routings in the mix console being wiped out, but can also lead to the click vanishing and it’s the Devil’s job to work out how to restore it.  In this video, I show you how to do it without tears, (or tearing your hair out… or both!).

 

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Reamping with VST AmpRack

It’s easy to overlook the software that comes bundled with your DAW, but sometimes, in the wealth of features that the “full-fat” versions of Cubase and the like are endowed with, there’s a real nugget.  VST AmpRack is one of those nuggets, offering the ability to create your perfect pedal board and amp/cabinet combination, even how you would mike it up and the settings you’d have on the virtual desk.  It’s not necessarily as immediate as EZMix and requires more thought than the Waves plugins I’ve looked at over the last few weeks, but it certainly shouldn’t be ignored.

 

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Faking Acoustic Guitar

This video draws together some techniques I’ve looked at in previous videos to emulate a plucked guitar part on a song, where the arrangement cried out for the Spanish guitar I don’t own.

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Alternatives to Automation

Automation is an invaluable tool for adding colour to a mix, as well as its more mundane use for controlling volume, be it levelling peaks in tracks or adding swells and fades. However, its big drawback is that once you’ve written the automation, you can’t then go back and tweak the levels without editing the automation. In this video, I look at using clip gain and muting to balance parts of a recorded track against the rest of that track, without using automation that would impact on the levels of the recorded sound against the rest of my mix.

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Video Tutorial – Editing Automation

Once you’ve got your automation data recorded in your project, whether you wrote it in on the lane or recorded it in real time, there’s likely to be extraneous automation points that you want to delete or, as your mix progresses, there will be changes that you want to make. This video looks at the options for editing automation in Cubase.

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Video Tutorial – Writing Automation

Sometimes, it’s not possible to record the automation data you need by moving a mouse as the song plays back – for example, a MIDI controller or a parameter that you can’t get a satisfactory degree of control over in real time. However, it can be just as easy, (and sometimes easier), to write the automation data straight into your DAW rather than try to record it. In this video, I look at how that’s done in Cubase.