Steinberg Cubase 11
As has become an annual tradition, Cubase’s latest significant update landed in the final weeks of 2020. Let’s explore how to work smarter in version 11
Cubase has been around longer than most DAWs, and like its competitors it’s grown in scope and power with each new version. As with other powerful software tools there will be functions that you may never use, and some you don’t even know about. Alongside this there may also be multiple ways of achieving the same thing, or quicker ways of getting there.
Of course, a DAW should only ever be a tool for enabling your creativity, but as with any other cutting-edge technology it can sometimes be the unexpected consequences of taking an action that could unleash new ideas. However, whilst the prospect of trawling through a manual may come a poor second to making new music, it may well be just the thing to inspire your future endeavours. Now for the bad news – the Cubase 11 manual weighs in at over 1200 pages, and the plugin reference nudges that to nearly 1500. And in reality the manual is big on facts, but somewhat lacking in creative insight into why you you might use a particular feature. In their defence, doing so would expand the manual to over 2000 pages! Once you have understood the basics though, a decent alternative to full-on immersion can be to set aside five minutes each day for a random page dip. In fact, long term users will find this just as relevant, as it is easy to miss things over time, and when moving between updates – and not all habits are good ones!
Another useful exercise is to try writing, recording and/or mixing a track only using the built-in plugins – especially in a world were there are just so many third-party plugins vying for our attention.
Over the last few years, Steinberg have overhauled the look of many well-established Cubase plugins – and it is interesting to note how the GUI alters our impression of the ‘sound’ of a plugin – but they also sometimes refresh the features as well as the aesthetics. A more extreme example is Quadrafuzz, which was brought back from the dead in the Quadrafuzz v2 update – and with a much richer feature set.
While Groove Agent SE and HALion Sonic SE both do a truly sterling service in their all-purpose rhythm and instrument roles, and come with decent sound sets, Padshop is definitely worth exploring further for its unusual sound-design potential and Retrologue remains an excellent, and flexible, subtractive synth. However, our top choice for creative mayhem is LoopMash – a kind of algorithmic audio slice and dice sequencer intended for rhythmic material, but fun to use with any type of source. After forgetting about it for a while, some recent forays have reminded us of its originality, though it would certainly be more relevant to FM readers than to producer or composers of a more mainstream persuasion!