by Navron » 22 Nov 2011 17:23
Bumping an old topic, but perhaps I can help out a little bit, as I use Cubase 5, and had plenty of headaches in the process of learning it.
Some people were asking what the 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 meant in the MIDI editor. This is known as your "Quantize," which essentially is how the MIDI notes/piano roll is subdivided into. For example, if you select 1/4, you're basically telling the program that you want your MIDI notes to be a quarter note in length, as in 4 notes per measure. 1/8 gives you 8 notes, 1/16 gives you 16, etc. Quantize can be used for a couple things. One, you can use it to help lay out notes (if you're like me and don't own a keyboard). If I know a segment doesn't contain anything faster than 16th notes, I'll set my quantize to a max. of 1/16. Another way this function helps out with is MIDI quantize:
When you play on a keyboard and record MIDI notes live vs penciling them in, you're going to run into timing issues. Most humans aren't perfect, so their notes will be long in certain sections, and shorter in others. If you're hammering out 16th notes on a keyboard, chances are a few of those will be closer to 8th notes, because you held the key down a little longer. MIDI quantize essentially cleans up your MIDI track, and can shorten/lengthen notes in your section to what's specified. For example, if you record a fast 16th note segment for a full measure, and you set your quantize to 1/16, Cubase will automatically clean up your notes so each one is exactly a 16th note.
Going off another question, you can view the automation editor by right clicking on a track and selecting "Show Automation." To the left of the default volume automation that pops up, you can either click on the top to remove an automation, or at the bottom to add one. I'm not sure if there's a max amount of automation lines you can use, but you can select what you want to automate by clicking on the box and the corresponding drop-down menu.
I'm still trying to get the hang of Cubase, but it really isn't that hard of a program to learn once you establish a workflow in it. I'm sure both these questions you've been able to get answers to and/or found yourself, but if not, I hope this helps.
DAW: Cubase 6.5, Ableton Live 8
Preferred Genre: Industrial/Trance
Hardware: Schecter Diamond Series Bass, Yamaha Acoustic Guitar, BP355 Effects Pedal, Keystudio 49K Keyboard, Akai APC40, Korg nanoKEY2 25k Keyboard