Cubase Midi Help

Cubase is a one of the best pro sequencing and recording programs on the market today. At a first glance all the options and menus may seem a bit overwhelming but this program is very visual and takes very little time to get a song started if you have any type of sequencing, midi or recording history.

Cubase comes with a control for up to 16 midi channels and endless live audio recording channels but you must setup the midi channels before they will work correctly at all. Lots of people give up purely because they can't figure something like this out and go to fruity loops or other easier music programs. I wrote this to help more people get started on Cubase for I use it everyday and love it for music creation.

First thing is first , make sure your audio card passes the ASIO test. Some prebuilt store bought PC's do not come with a good enough sound card for Cubase to work correctly, if you do not pass the test you must first get a new sound card to even use this program. If you do pass this test Cubase should be able to work, how deep you can go depends on your system specs past that.

Second step is to make sure you global midi channels and individual channels are active or nothing will work on any of you channels. To do this you must go to the File tab and scroll down to Preferences. Once you are in the Preference screen you must find the midi section in the new menu and highlight midi filter. This midi filter menu is what controls what is sent/received on each midi channel. By default all midi channels should be active, if the channels have a dark blue color they are inactive, light is active. Once all your channels are active make sure all the boxes in the record and thru are UNCHECKED , this is the most common reason Cubase midi will not work for you if you are having issues getting midi working the first time you use Cubase SX or above. Now all your global midi channel settings are setup and you should have all 16 midi channels active and able to play live and record midi sequencing.

Final step is to activate the midi channels on each midi track ( If you don't have a new 16 track midi project open make one now ). Highlight the first midi channel in your new 16 track midi project, then change the midi in and the midi out setting to whatever midi device you use with your PC.Now your first midi channel is setup, repeat this final step on any midi channel to record or play live on that channel.

Cubase is a very deep program and this tutorial will get you to the point you can start to toy with Cubase and all it has to offer in the world of music creation. I plan to write more advanced tutorials soon so keep an eye out if this helped you at all.

Have fun and good luck =)