debmccall wrote: ↑Fri Aug 26, 2022 2:47 pm
Not being a techy, it's been enough of a challenge to get the tracks on! LOL In my first few years, I was blessed to get a few forwards. Now, I'm close but no cigar. Most of the problem seems to be from using my keyboards for piano, strings,horns, drums etc... so I was told to start using the plugins/ virtual inst. available on Cubase , to make the sounds more authentic. I don't know how to accomplish that.
The "too stiff" or "MIDI driven" is often not about the sounds themselves but how they are "played". For example, if you just play string parts like a piano, including playing what would be multiple instruments in a real string section from one keyboard performance, odds are it won't sound like real strings. Not only would the individual instruments be playing separately, thus resulting in slightly different timing and feel than however many fingers you are using acting in concert at one time, but, also, strings have different ways of making articulations than a keyboard typically does (e.g. you can make a sustaining sound louder and softer during its sustain, which you can't do on a piano, and there are multiple types of articulations, such as bowing harder or softer, plucking, etc.), and each of the players would be having slight differences with those real-time changes.
Depending on how you are specifically playing your parts, one start could be playing individual parts individually, using whatever facilities your keyboard has that map to virtual instrument articulations as you play them, then using Cubase's controller lanes to edit whatever you need to after that, be it adding additional controllers, editing what you played, or whatever.
If you are already familiar with MIDI orchestration techniques (and I should note I don't use "orchestration" to mean writing orchestral music, but rather just simulating whatever instruments you're trying to simulate to make them more realistic than what a piano-like performance could do on its own -- and different virtual instruments may do more or less than others in this respect, but the ones that do more tend to require learning some modified playing techniques, too, while the others may require more programming to do the same job), and just need to learn the details of how to program and edit MIDI, and do other things, in Cubase, Groove3.com has quite a number of Cubase courses that greatly helped me past the huge Cubase learning curve (I came to Cubase Pro after almost two decades of using Cakewalk SONAR). I recommend their All Access Pass as then you can take as many courses as you want during the term of your membership. And, for Cubase specifically, do also go back to the courses for versions earlier than the version you're using as I've learned things I'd been missing in more recent versions by going back to courses on much older versions.
I don't think you'd find the virtual instruments included in Cubase Pro would be ideal if sound quality is the key reason why you're getting the responses you indicated because the libraries they provide with Halion SE (the included version of their sampler) aren't exactly standouts in that world. Their included synths like Padshop and whatever the analog one is (totally blanking on the name at present), on the other hand, are quite good at what they specifically do (though I much more frequently use third party synths, too). But the Cubase educational videos at Groove3 could be a help in finding your way around Cubase, be it at an introductory level or going much deeper. I think they also have some courses in MIDI orchestration, and I know they have lots of courses on specific virtual instruments, and some of those can be eye openers for getting better results from plugins you might have.
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