CUBASE NOTES

Just like the VST Mixer, Cubase's Arrange window implements lots of little features that are there to make life easier, and this month's Cubase Notes explains how to make best use of them. There's also news of the latest Cubase 5.1 upgrade.

In November 2001's Cubase Notes I pointed out some of the lesser-known functions of the VST windows. This month, I'm going to do a similar thing, but focusing on the Arrange window. So if you've ever wondered how to make the structure of your songs clearer by using Marker tracks, Group tracks, and some of those commands in the Structure menu, read on...

The Marker track is a very useful way of giving human names to the sections that make up the structure of your arrangement, such as verse and chorus. To display the Marker track, simply click the Marker button on the Arrange window's function bar: if you know how to work with MIDI and audio parts, then you already know how to work with Marker parts as well. To add a new Marker part, click the pencil tool on the Marker track where you want the part to begin, drag the 'rubber band' to the length required for the new part, and then type a name when prompted. Alternatively, you can set the left and right locators and double-click in the Marker track area to create a Marker part between the locators. Marker parts can also be moved with the arrow tool, while their start and end points can be repositioned using the pencil, and a Marker part can be renamed by Alt (PC)- or Option (Mac)-double-clicking on it.

Once you've created some Marker parts in this way, navigating your song and setting locators becomes much more convenient. When you're working with the Arrange window or any of the editors, you can access a pop-up menu containing a list of the Marker parts on the Marker track by holding down Shift+Ctrl (Mac: Option+Ctrl) and clicking in an empty space. Clicking on the name of a Marker will set the left and right locators to the start and end of that Marker, and clicking on the one of the start or end positions will move the song position line to that location.

The third section of the Structure menu is home to many oft-forgotten (but very useful) commands for slicing up and adding space to your Arrangement. To start with, have you ever wanted to remove four bars from the middle of your song without having to use the scissors tool and then delete the parts manually? By using the Cut at Locators command, you can! If you want to remove the section of your song between bars 21 and 25, for example, simply set the left and right locators to bars 21 and 25 respectively, and select Structure / Cut at Locators. Although you can undo this operation, unlike traditional clipboard-style commands, you can't paste the cut section to a new location later on.

Another useful command for inserting and removing bars from an Arrangement is the cunningly named Insert/Remove Bar(s) command. This might appear to be superfluous after the last commands, but for the fact that it has a secret weapon. Going back to our last example of adding eight bars at bar 5, let's suppose the rest of your song was in 4/4, but you wanted to add eight bars of 6/8 time. Normally this would mean using Insert at Locators and manually adding the time signature changes, but when you use Structure / Insert/Remove Bar(s), it's possible to specify the time signature for the bars you want to add. Cubase automatically makes the change to 6/8 at bar 5, and then the change back to the original time signature at bar 13.

One aspect of the Arrange window that often gets overlooked is a feature known as groups, which has been included in Cubase since the early Atari days. Unlike folders, which are purely visual, groups allow you to take a number of parts and pack them into a single group part. Group parts can then be placed on Group tracks and manipulated just like any other part on the Arrange window, with the exception that you can't cut them up with the scissors or use 'Split at' commands. This method of arranging is useful if you want to work with a more pattern-based approach to sequencing. For example, you could build groups for the sections of your song, such as verse, chorus, bridge, and so on -- but these are only the most obvious examples. Any aspect of your song that might need to be repeated later on is eligible to become a group.

Packing a selection of parts into a group is very easy: simply select the required parts, choose Edit / Build Group or press Ctrl/Command+U, and then type a name for your group when prompted and press Enter. To hide and show the list of groups in your current Song, choose Edit / Show/Hide Groups or press Control/Command+J. I say 'current Song' because groups are global to the currently loaded Song, meaning that any Arrangement in a Song can share the same group list.

Groups can be dragged from the group list onto Group tracks on the Arrange window, which are created by setting the track type of an empty track to Group track. A really neat feature when adding groups to a Group track is that if you want to insert a group part between two existing group parts, you can simply hold down Alt/Option when you drag the group and the existing group parts will be nudged along automatically to make space. The only thing to be careful of when working with groups is not to delete any of the original parts used in a group, because if you delete a part used in one of the groups, it's also deleted from that group. You'll need to keep the original parts, but mute them so you don't get any weird flanging effects by having the same thing played twice.

Using Marker Tracks In The Score Editor     Working with the Marker track can become especially useful if you're doing any work involving Cubase's Score editor. Once the Marker track is set up, it can be used by the Score editor to automatically create rehearsal marks by selecting Score / Format / Marker Track to Form. This very handy feature adds a rehearsal mark at the start bar position of every Marker part, although because the vertical positioning of the added symbols isn't always as a tidy as you might like, going through and manually tweaking them may also be a good idea. Even if you're not creating rehearsal marks, the Marker track can still be useful to anyone working with the Score editor. If you select Score / Format / Show Marker Track, the Marker part labels will be displayed on your score, which is useful if you want to refer to sections of your music by name, saving you from referring back to the Arrange window. To hide these labels again at a later stage, simply select Score / Format / Hide Marker Track. If you don't like the font or text style used for the marker part labels by default, it's very easy to change them by selecting Preferences / Scores, clicking on the Global Text tab, setting the 'Font for' parameter to Marker Parts, choosing the font and style you want for the marker part labels, and, finally, clicking OK.

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