Friday, March 21, 2014

Exporting Cubase Tracks with the Click

Been a while since I have posted... busy yo! And this really needs pictures and shit, but I am just going to talk about it and you will be on your own to figure it out.

Here is a problem that has plagued me for years with all sorts of weird workarounds. You work with a band to get the scratch tracks and tempo's all set. Then they want a copy to take home and practice to... fuckin' yes! Oh wait.. how the hell do I do that!?!?!

I have heard and seen all sorts of workarounds. Micing the studio monitors soloing the click and recording that. Routing the click to a mono bus and routing that to an input and recording it. Shit I have even tried a "recorder" VST plugin on the master bus to record what is played at that point. Such bullshit and I don't know why for all these YEARS Cubase doesn't have this.

My personal favorite was using Cubase LM-7 drum machine with its built in Clave sample. To do that you make a MIDI track, use the quantize to draw hits on 1-4. Then Ctrl-K to repeat it the number of times in the song. Mix to taste and export. Of course you can use any VSTi you want.

As LM-7 was dropped (Cubase 4?) I found an old folder online where you could still get LM-7. Then moving to Cubase 7, I started using the "Click" sample in Groove Agent ONE. Ok great, this works... but you get used to hearing a certain click. So if you practice to the clave, you want the clave. All good, just manage it in the session. But that is a pain and you can't use Control Room, or "c" to turn it on and off. Workable but a pain.

So then I would sample LM-7's clave and put it into the Cubase's click configuration as the click wav file. Ok cool. But the bleeps are better IMO. They cut through the mix better and because of that, headphone bleed isn't as bad since it doesn't have to be as cranked in the headphones.

Some guys that use a click regularly don't have a problem switching from the clave the practiced to and the bleep's of cubase (I prefer the bleeps). And I mean you know how everyone practices to a click, no problem right!?!?

Well today I had a thought, sample Cubase's actual click sound and put that sample into Groove Agent ONE. Why didn't I think of this sooner!?!?

So to add a sound to Groove Agent ONE, you just have to import it into the song or find it in the media bay. Then drag and drop it onto the pad of the note you want. Easy! Do that twice and you are done.

Now... sampling the fucking click sound... well thankfully someone already did that for you!

Everyone Hates the Default Click, Shut up I fixed it for you.

It is about reaper, but it even has logic and pro-tools clicks. Now I can even have the pro-tools click for those dudes that are used to that!

Make one measure of a MIDI file and CTRL-k is the magic sauce for repeat.

You are welcome!

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