Step by step
1. Adding swing to a house beat in Cubase for a funkier vibe
1 Create a new project in Cubase, then right-click the Track List and select Add Instrument Track. Click the instrument slot in the window that appears and select Synth» HALion Sonic SE. When you click the Add Track button, a new instrument track with HALion Sonic SE on it will appear.
2 To load a drum kit, click the Load Program button (the option top left of the menus). This brings up a huge list of presets. Don’t worry, you can filter these down by Category, Sub Category, Style and even by the Character of the sound.
3 Select the Drum & Perc filter in the Category column. Activating this filter means that only drum kit presets will be shown in the list on the right, making it much easier to find what we’re looking for. Scroll down to the bottom of the list and double-click T9 Analog Kit.
4 You can hear how it sounds by playing your MIDI controller or clicking the keys on HALion Sonic SE’s virtual keyboard. Close HALion Sonic SE’s interface, and drag between bars 1 and 2 on the ruler above the arrangement to set up a loop.
5 Click the Loop button on the transport bar to activate the loop, then double-click the first bar on the instrument track to create a new MIDI region. Select MIDI »Open Drum Editor from the menu. Let’s start with a four-to-the-floor kick drum. Click the Drumstick icon on the Tool Buttons menu at the top left-hand corner of the interface.
6 Using the Drumstick tool, add hits by clicking the vertical lines. The darker lines represent the four beats of the bar. Click every beat of the bar in the Bass Drum row to create a four-to-the-floor kick pattern. Press the Play button in the transport bar to hear how it sounds. While the beat continues to play, let’s add some more sounds.
7 Add a Hand Clap on the second and fourth beats. As well as putting sounds on beats, we can put them between beats, too. There are four beats in a bar – these are called quarter-notes, and we’ll also use eighth- and 16th-notes in this example. By default, Cubase’s grid also displays paler 16th-note divisions.
8 Two 16th-notes are the same length as one eighth-note. Put Open Hi-Hats on every other eighth-note. This kick, clap and open hats pattern gives us a very basic house music template to work with, which we can make more interesting by adding other sounds. Let’s give the beat more energy with the addition of some closed hats.
9 Add Closed Hi-Hats on the first, second, eighth and tenth 16th-notes. This sounds OK, but the rhythm is very straight – it’ll sound a lot better with some swing. Turn the Swing parameter on the left up to 50%. As you do this, every other 16th-note grid line will move to the right slightly, ‘shuffling’ the beat.
10 Press Ctrl+A on PC or Cmd+A on Mac to select all the drum hits, then Q to quantise them. Most of the hits will be unaffected because they’re on quarter- or eighth-notes, but the Closed Hi-Hats on 16th-notes will be moved to the shifted grid lines. This gives us a much funkier, classic-style house groove. (Audio: House beat.wav)