Be that as it may, why would even bother with instrument tracks when you can just as easily F11 your VST rack to appear? Personally, I hide all the midi tracks in the mixer and keep my instruments folder closed on the arrange page so there isn't any clutter to speak of.hibidy wrote:@beginners using instrument tracks.......false. Many instruments are really only needing one-clean-line without midi tracks and clutter.
MIDI tracks to 'instrument tracks' in Cubase 5
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- KVRAF
- 20714 posts since 22 Nov, 2000 from Southern California
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- Banned
- 3299 posts since 20 Dec, 2008
Exactly how I work!Uncle E wrote:Personally, I hide all the midi tracks in the mixer and keep my instruments folder closed on the arrange page so there isn't any clutter to speak of.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 224 posts since 10 Oct, 2003 from London
Lawrence etc - Ok fine, if you like the Cubase interface, enjoy!
Personally I find it a total drag, and I find myself dealing with mess I just don't run into much, especially in Ableton Live. I'm sure if you get deep into it you can set things up neatly, but that's exactly my point - you need to work hard at it to make it nice. By contrast, newbies are constantly playing 'hunt the window', and fooling around trying to find a VST inspector or a button behind the transport bar, or getting confused by the incompatible Instrument Tracks vs. MIDI tracks / VST panel - it's just not intuitive, in fact IMO it's a total mess, especially compared to the streamlined integration of Live. The basic shape of the interface hasn't changed much since the version I used to use on an Atari ST in the mid-nineties.
Those of my students who are new to it don't know any better - they're just constantly confused by it. But those who've come to it from Ableton or Logic 9 just find it a total drag and bitch about it half the time. Hence my frustration! Ok, that's my tuppence. You like it - fair enough, rant over.
Personally I find it a total drag, and I find myself dealing with mess I just don't run into much, especially in Ableton Live. I'm sure if you get deep into it you can set things up neatly, but that's exactly my point - you need to work hard at it to make it nice. By contrast, newbies are constantly playing 'hunt the window', and fooling around trying to find a VST inspector or a button behind the transport bar, or getting confused by the incompatible Instrument Tracks vs. MIDI tracks / VST panel - it's just not intuitive, in fact IMO it's a total mess, especially compared to the streamlined integration of Live. The basic shape of the interface hasn't changed much since the version I used to use on an Atari ST in the mid-nineties.
Those of my students who are new to it don't know any better - they're just constantly confused by it. But those who've come to it from Ableton or Logic 9 just find it a total drag and bitch about it half the time. Hence my frustration! Ok, that's my tuppence. You like it - fair enough, rant over.
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- KVRian
- 895 posts since 1 Apr, 2005
It seems, that's mostly a matter of the definition of working hard. I really see no point in learning/teaching an expert tool without taking some initial investment of effort to get the most basic layout things done. There's no instant satisfaction, and a return requires an investment.present wrote: - you need to work hard at it to make it nice.
Moreover, couldn't this be a great lesson? Look, that's how it's looking straight out of the box - and see what you can achieve with just one hour of reading and tweaking.
Cheers,
LiteOn
edit: wordings
Last edited by LiteOn on Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:13 am, edited 2 times in total.
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- KVRAF
- 1595 posts since 17 Nov, 2007 from Seattle, WA
It seems to me that this is coming down to the design philosophies and intentions behind Cubase vs slightly less feature-laden apps, like Live. Live channels and directs users much more effectively by either excluding or hiding less common options, and a good job with their interface layout. Cubase doesn't bother directing the user, but refuses to limit it's functionality.
Despite my attempt to get my sister acquainted with Cubase, she chose to get Live... I really appreciate how much less obtuse it is to learn, especially since my sister always comes to me with questions, and this program leaves her with few questions. Despite that, whenever I get in front of it, I can't stand it. I keep wanting to do things that it doesn't do. I use Cubase 4, and I've never felt limited. Quite the opposite, I feel like there's an overwhelming amount of funky exotic shit that I could try out, if I went and flipped open the manual to look it up. Beyond that, I'm absolutely in love with it's modularity, variability.
Now, I'm a bit more technical minded than I am artsy, but my sister is the opposite. Live is definitely the best option for her. Since we're talking about musicians here, there's a damn good reason why Live and other simpler apps are held in high regard. Most of them simply don't want or need Cubase's depth.
But I think LiteOn nailed it when they described Cubase as an expert tool. And as such, it unfortunately requires more investment of confusion, time, and effort. I don't see how you could greatly streamline Cubase without compromising functionality.... But then again, perhaps that's why there's college courses nowadays specifically to study GUI's.
Despite my attempt to get my sister acquainted with Cubase, she chose to get Live... I really appreciate how much less obtuse it is to learn, especially since my sister always comes to me with questions, and this program leaves her with few questions. Despite that, whenever I get in front of it, I can't stand it. I keep wanting to do things that it doesn't do. I use Cubase 4, and I've never felt limited. Quite the opposite, I feel like there's an overwhelming amount of funky exotic shit that I could try out, if I went and flipped open the manual to look it up. Beyond that, I'm absolutely in love with it's modularity, variability.
Now, I'm a bit more technical minded than I am artsy, but my sister is the opposite. Live is definitely the best option for her. Since we're talking about musicians here, there's a damn good reason why Live and other simpler apps are held in high regard. Most of them simply don't want or need Cubase's depth.
But I think LiteOn nailed it when they described Cubase as an expert tool. And as such, it unfortunately requires more investment of confusion, time, and effort. I don't see how you could greatly streamline Cubase without compromising functionality.... But then again, perhaps that's why there's college courses nowadays specifically to study GUI's.
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- KVRAF
- 20714 posts since 22 Nov, 2000 from Southern California
They did exactly that when they introduced instrument tracks.MOK19 wrote:I don't see how you could greatly streamline Cubase without compromising functionality....
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concealed identity concealed identity https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=215821
- KVRian
- 1052 posts since 21 Sep, 2009
Uncle E wrote:What cons are there to using the VST Rack?concealed identity wrote:I think what he's getting at isn't that there's two ways to do it, but that each of these two ways have cons that don't really need to be there in the first place that force you to use both ways when you don't really need to.Why would you use Instrument Tracks at all? It seems to me the only benefit of using Instrument Tracks is they're failure-proof.So it results in me using both the VST rack and instrument tracks.
The advantage to using Instrument Tracks is that automation is MUCH easier, since all of your MIDI, VST, and Output automation is all done on the same track.
An even bigger advantage is that your track automation moves with the MIDI events, so you don't need to constantly manually move automations when you move your MIDI tracks as well. It honestly makes my workflow quite a bit smoother.
I'm sure there's other advantages that I haven't figured out yet as well (I'm new).
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- KVRAF
- 20714 posts since 22 Nov, 2000 from Southern California
As much as I agree with you about instrument tracks for my own personal use, your point succinctly addresses the OP's initial frustrations. The fact is that Logic and Pro Tools both provide equivalent functionality for the same audience: the non-experts.
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concealed identity concealed identity https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=215821
- KVRian
- 1052 posts since 21 Sep, 2009
Uncle E wrote:As much as I agree with you about instrument tracks for my own personal use, your point succinctly addresses the OP's initial frustrations. The fact is that Logic and Pro Tools both provide equivalent functionality for the same audience: the non-experts.
Huh? I'm not talking about Logic or Protools. I'm talking about Cubase. As for his intial frustrations, I replied to those earlier; my response to you had nothing to do with those.
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- KVRist
- 31 posts since 31 Mar, 2007
a very immature remark. what makes you think he is using a cracked version u cubase?states wrote:isnt the C5 manual included in the crack's torrents ? lol!
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- KVRAF
- 3627 posts since 5 Jan, 2006 from UK
Well, we can expect a fair few here (in fact, I'm amazed the floodgates haven't opened following the AiR crack), but someone does deserve to be innocent until proven guilty. This is a UK-based forum, after all, and we're into that fair play stuff, cricket, queensbury rules n all that. and colonialism... and imperialism...