New to home recording / Cubase LE

[OceanMachine]

I just picked a "Lexicon Alpha Desktop Recording Studio" as its known and it comes with a copy of Cubase LE 4.

Now I'm very new to home recording but so far the process of tracking guitar and working a click track has been fine.

I do however want to use the drum editing part of it, infact that's the one part I'm most interested in because I want to know how my ideas will come to life with drums. I'm talking about the window that opens with a grid and you can basically just point and click a drum beat in.

I have literally no idea how to do this. I don't think it come with a drum VST instrument so I downloaded one but I'm not sure how to link that to cubase.

If anyone has any idea what the hell I'm on about get in touch, you'd be doing me a huuuuge favor.

 

[innerdreamrecords.co]

Re: New to home recording / Cubase LE

I'll assume Cubase is like Logic which is what I use to program drums.

The grid should have a keyboard graphic or something with note values in it. You need a VST drum plugin or VST sampler that holds your drum sounds, kick, snare etc. Each of those sounds should be triggered by a note value C1 kick, C#1 snare as an example.

Hope that helps a little. Also check YouTube for tutorials on sequencing midi in Cubase.

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: New to home recording / Cubase LE

Oh, I know lots about Cubase LE; used it for years before going whole hog to Cubase 5/6.

It's a little convoluted in Cubase, but what you want do is this:

1. Create an Instrument track. Assign your drum VST to this track (I use Drumkit From Hell).
2. Open the Channel side panel for that track. Press the keyboard looking-looking button; this is the editor for the VST. Select the drum kit you want to use.
3. With the pencil tool, draw out how long you want the drum track to be. (Don't worry, you can always make it bigger/smaller later)
4. Double click on the section you just drew using the arrow tool. It will now open the 'Piano Roll' editor for Cubase with the drum grid. You can then step-write the drums that way.

Alternatively,

You can open up the drum editor from the Instrument Track, but I prefer using the Piano Roll.

I would strongly recommend getting a book on Cubase or accessing the User Manual from the Help pulldown in LE; it opens up the User Manual pdf and is quite helpful.

 

[OceanMachine]

Re: New to home recording / Cubase LE

Oh, I know lots about Cubase LE; used it for years before going whole hog to Cubase 5/6.

It's a little convoluted in Cubase, but what you want do is this:

1. Create an Instrument track. Assign your drum VST to this track (I use Drumkit From Hell).
2. Open the Channel side panel for that track. Press the keyboard looking-looking button; this is the editor for the VST. Select the drum kit you want to use.
3. With the pencil tool, draw out how long you want the drum track to be. (Don't worry, you can always make it bigger/smaller later)
4. Double click on the section you just drew using the arrow tool. It will now open the 'Piano Roll' editor for Cubase with the drum grid. You can then step-write the drums that way.

Alternatively,

You can open up the drum editor from the Instrument Track, but I prefer using the Piano Roll.

I would strongly recommend getting a book on Cubase or accessing the User Manual from the Help pulldown in LE; it opens up the User Manual pdf and is quite helpful.

Hey man thanks this was all very helpful. I've found out my main issue is getting cubase to recognize my vst instrument. I downloaded a program called digidrum pro because it seems to be fairly simple and it was a small file. I added to the cubase folder but when i add an instrment track cubase still says there are no vst instrument to choose.
Any advice?

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: New to home recording / Cubase LE

Yep!

You need to update your VST plug ins.

Let me switch to my music log in where I have Cubase and I'll give you a couple of things to check out.

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: New to home recording / Cubase LE

Okay, back.

What you want to do is Select Plug In Information from the DEVICES menu. This will show you all of your plug ins.

Click UPDATE. Then scroll down to see if Digidrum Pro is on there. If it is NOT, you may need to point Cubase to the VST.

The FIRST WAY to do this is click on VST PLUG IN PATHS from the Plug In Information window. This will open up another window with all of your plug in info. Click ADD, and then find the sub folder for Digidrum Pro that says VST or VST Plugins.

Then select UPDATE and see if you can select Digidrums Pro from your VST instruments when you open a new Instrument track.

If that doesn't work, you need to find the folder where Digidrums Pro installed, find the .dll file (this will be the VST) and copy it.

Then paste it in Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugIns and try updating again.

That should do the trick.