Rack and track instruments - Cubase Tutorial

So far in this course, I've pretty much talked about using audio files or MIDI files in our projects, but there are other methods of having sound played back in our projects. We can integrate VSTI's. A VSTI is a synthesizer of some form, that generates sound by the use of oscillators, or by using integrated samples. A piano VSTI, for example, could use recorded samples of all the notes on a piano, and then play them when we trigger them by pressing the keys on our keyboard, or triggered by a MIDI file. Alternatively, the sound of the piano notes could be generated by synthesis. The same could be true for a drum VSTI. We could hear the generated sound from audio samples or synthesis. Cube Ace allows us to add VSTI's to our projects by two methods. Either as a rack instrument, or a track instrument. Either method will load up the same VSTI. Here's what we do: as you can see, I've got a new empty project started here, ready to develop as we progress. I've created the project, but not saved it with a relevant name yet. We see it is still untitled. I'll correct that by clicking File here, and then dropping down to Save. I'll name it "Project", which I admit is not the most interesting of names, but it will do for the moment. I'll click on Save, and we'll now see it registered up here as Project. Okay, now if we come over to the right hand side, to the right zone, we see that within the VSTI panel we get these two options labelled as Track and Rack. I'll start off here by creating a Track instrument I do it by clicking on that button there, Add Track Instrument. Consequently we now see this small Add Track dialogue, and we will go through and choose the type of VSTI Instrument that we want to include here. At the present time it's indicating the last VSTI that I ran, that one there, but I'm going to change it. I'll click and then I can drop down and choose any VSTI from my list. I'm going to choose the Steinberg one, a drum VSTI, so I'll open up the drum subcategory and choose Groove Agent SE and finish it up by clicking Add Track. As a result, we now see it loaded within the VSTI panel over here, and also, automatically generated the track on our track list here. What you'll no doubt notice though, we don't have any MIDI file ready to trigger these drum samples, so what I would need to do with this particular VSTI, Groove Agent SE, come down to this button so that we can open up Groove Agent itself and edit in terms of loading up a particular kit, and then dragging over one of the integrated patterns over to our timeline. Alternatively, we can come over here and click on this button and this allows us to do exactly the same thing. Clicking opens up Groove Agent SE, in this case when we initially fire up Groove Agent SE, no kit is loaded, so what I need to do is right click on this darkened area here, this "Agent" as it's known, right click and then choose to either load a kit, or load a kit with relevant patterns. I'm going to go for that second option, to load a kit up with relevant patterns. With this extra floating dialogue, I would work my way through and choose one at random. This works like the Media Bay that we saw within Cube Ace earlier. Choose a category and sub-categories until you see and find a particular kit that you like the look of. Okay, so that's the kit and related patterns loaded. I'll come over to the pattern tab there, and then all I need to do is choose one of these grooves left click and drag over to our Groove Agent SE track. As a result, we have now effectively added a MIDI track to drive these drum samples. Okay, now I'm going to conclude here with this particular tutorial now that we've set up a track instrument. And what we'll do in the following tutorial is look at setting up a rack instrument.