Original subtitles

hey everybody welcome to this cubase

beginners tutorial

i am john merritt from born to produce

and you guys are going to learn to use

cubase by actually following along

and making a track yourselves from

nothing right through to the final

mixdown and master

you can follow along in cubase elements

artist or pro

and you can use any version of cubase

from cubase 9.5 and upwards

so i'm going to play a quick sample of

the track that you're going to make and

then we're going to get

right into it

[Music]

so this is going to be loads of fun and

the first four lessons are completely

free which is enough to get you started

in cubase so

let's get on with it so this is the

steinberg hub that you see when you load

up cubase

and this is where you can choose what

projects you want to load or if you want

to start with a blank project which is

what we're going to do

and you also have news on the left hand

side which will tell you some useful

info like when a new update for cubase

is available

so we're going to go to prompt for

projects location it should be ticked

automatically and then we're going to go

create empty so we just have to choose

the location for our project i'm going

to stick mine on the desktop just

because it's nice and easy

to get to you can put yours wherever you

want i'm going to create a new folder

call it btp cubase beginners and then go

into it

and just click select folder so we won't

go into sound card or project settings

here the standard settings should be

absolutely fine

so this is the project window and this

is where you spend

like 95 of your time in cubase which

makes using it actually

really simple at least once you know

where everything is but don't worry

that's what you're going to learn as you

progress through the course so

in the middle of the projects window is

where you bring in and arrange

all of the elements of your tracks which

you'll see in just a second

around the outside of the window you

have three zones which you can show or

hide

by clicking these little buttons up here

which are the hide or show

zone buttons now we'll be learning more

about the zones as we go through but

first of all i want to focus on this

right hand zone

so i'm just going to hide the lower zone

for now so this zone is where you find

sort of media to bring

into your projects whether that is the

built in

cubase samples or samples from your

computer

in order to understand this better let's

bring in our first bit of media a kick

drum

and you'll start to see what i'm talking

about so in the right hand zone make

sure you're in the

media tab now cubase does come with many

of its own

sample packs which you can actually get

to by clicking loops and samples

and you'll see all the ones that come

with cubase now we're going to use some

of these later in the tutorial but for

now we're going to press the home button

and i'm going to click on file browser

so we can bring on our own samples

so if you guys watching this on youtube

if you have not yet bought the course

you will find a link

to the audio samples needed to complete

the first four lessons below

in the description so to find the work

files on your computer first obviously

download them

i've just put mine on the desktop here

so to extract the zip we just double

click it

now i'm using winrar on the pc but this

will be the same

if you haven't got winrar or you're

using on a mac and then you'll see the

cubase tutorial there we're just going

to click and drag it out this has all

the work files inside it

so i can close that now so back in

cubase remember in the media tab we're

going to go to file

browser and then we just need to

navigate to wherever we put

our work files now for ease of use i put

mine on the desktop so i'm just going to

expand that

as you can see i've got the tutorial

files here which include the work files

let's just expand that

and then go into the work files and then

we've got our audio folder so click on

that and we've got this

strange little problem in cubase just

because i'm on a slightly smaller screen

here so

at the moment it's not showing the files

in this particular folder all we need to

do

it's just a little glitch all we need to

do is come up to where our cursor turns

into this little double

headed vertical arrow and just click and

then

the files will appear so if you've got

the same problem just do that

so at the moment when i click a sample

it's not automatically playing we want

it to auto play so we just need to

select

or highlight this little button down

here

and then when we click a sample

it will automatically play and we can

hear what it actually sounds like

so as i mentioned we are going to start

with our kick so there's a couple of

ways we can get this into our projects

the first way is you can just click and

drag it into your project and just drop

it anywhere

and cubase will automatically create an

audio track but we're going to do

a bit of a different way we're going to

actually right click the sample

and we're going to click create sampler

track

so as you can see this has created a new

track called kick 01

and it's opened up the lower zone and

it's showing us the

sampler control tab as you can see here

so before we go any further at all i

just want to

color the track in a bit just because

this is sort of boring gray color

so i'm going to hold alt or option on my

keyboard and just click the little

colored area

and it brings up a color palette and

we're just going to select a color let's

just pick yellow for drums for now

just so we can keep everything neat and

tidy throughout this project

so the sampler control shows us that the

kick sample

is loaded into it now we can change that

at any time we like just by clicking and

dragging in

another sample and it will then play the

snare i

do want to keep the kick though so i'm

just going to drag the kick back in

and replace it we have a keyboard down

the bottom which if i

click it you can hear it's playing the

kick at different pitches

and the important thing to remember here

is that when you press the c3 that's

this blue

highlighted key the kick will be played

at its natural pitch

if you press any other key it's either

going to be pitched down or it's going

to be pitched

up so there are quite a few more

functions to the sampler control and

especially since cubase 11 we've got

these

extra bits down here which we'll be

looking into in more detail later on

but for now let's just get our beats

into the project window

so to get actually playing in the

project we need to use

midi to trigger it i'm just going to

scroll

to the beginning of our projects and

it's not complicated we just need to

hold alt

or option on a mac and you'll see that

my cursor turns into a little draw tool

and i'm just going to click and draw one

sort of block of midi

now a couple of things here we're a bit

sort of zoomed out at the moment so

let's zoom

in a bit to bar five which is where we

want our midi segment if you've put it

on a different bar you can

always just drag it to bar five so we're

all starting in the same place

so to zoom in there's a few different

ways you can use the slider

down here so we can click and drag that

to zoom in

or we can just hover over it with our

mouse wheel and just use that to zoom in

or out

or you can hold control or command on a

mac and use your mouse wheel to zoom in

and out wherever you like

there are other ways we'll probably talk

about those a bit later on so now we're

zoomed

in we can see we have the bar numbers

here so that's bar five

bar six and we want a four four beat

which means we'll have a kick on every

single beat in the bar so what i also

want to do

is change this up here from bar we're

going to click on that

change it to adapt to zoom and this just

gives us

more control depending on how far zoomed

in or out we are

so okay we've got a blank midi segment

so in order to add notes to it we need

to double click it

and you'll see the editor appear in the

lower zone again you can actually play

the sample

by pressing the keys on the bottom now

just first of all i'm just gonna

turn this kick down so just by clicking

the kick in the projects window you can

see we've got these sort of properties

over here

one of which is volume so i'm just going

to click where the numbers are

and just drag that down let's go down to

about minus

about minus nine is perfect

now our kick is a little bit quieter and

remember that if we want our kick to

play its natural pitch

we need to be pressing the c3 key so a

couple more things here i'm just going

to zoom in a bit

vertically by using this vertical slider

over here on the right hand side

so you can see there we're just zooming

in a bit to the keys

scroll down a bit and then again if i

hold

alt or option on my keyboard it's going

to change my cursor to a draw tool

and i'm just going to draw in four kicks

and you can see as i draw them in we're

actually getting some information

showing up here in our midi block

[Music]

so one on each beat i'm just going to

zoom out a little bit

there we go we can see we've got our

first kick

very nice one thing i will mention so

it's important to set the

level of the first item preferably the

kick that you bring

into your projects because as you add

more and more elements to your projects

the overall volume will get louder and

you'll find that the volume of the

project gets harder to manage so

just a pro tip just set the volume of

your kick

down quite a bit and always use that to

then match the volume

of any elements that you add to your

project okay so this is great but at the

moment it's just sort of

playing four beats and then it's

carrying on and there's nothing there so

what i want to do

is actually set the loop region so

you'll notice as i come up to the top of

the timeline

my cursor changes into a draw tool and

i'm just going to click

and drag it to set the loop region

and then we need to activate the loop

you can do that on the lower

transport panel down here and just click

the activate cycle button

and you'll see it turns purple then when

i play it

it just loops around so we actually want

to make this a bit

longer so i'm just going to zoom out a

bit so i'm holding ctrl or command and

using my mouse wheel

to scroll out and what i want to do is

get eight bars

of this kick so we can then make a

melody to go

over the top so there's a couple ways of

copying something in cubase so i can

hold the alt

or option key and you'll get these

little scissors tools but if i click and

drag

you'll see that i just basically copy

the midi segment over

so i can get four of those but i also

can if i want to

highlight well any number of them and

then hit

control or command plus d and it will

duplicate them

in a row as well so now we've got eight

bars

obviously our loop region is set so it's

just looping the first

set of bars now i can just drag the loop

regions any size that i want but you

also

can go to where you want the right hand

marker hold the alt

or option key and then click to set that

and you can do the same

by holding ctrl or command and then

clicking to set the left hand locator

just so you know so in lesson three of

this course you will be building on this

kick drum pattern and making it into a

sort of proper drum beat

and learning how to edit in cubase but

for now that's good enough

that we can start working on the soul of

this track the melody

if this has been helpful to you please

do like and subscribe

for more great cubase tutorials thanks

for watching guys and girls we'll see

you in the next one

[Music]

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