buggo
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Well hell. It's been ten years. Hello again! This thing has really blown the fuck up. Congrats Kilo and way to stick around!
So technology has come a long way. Duh. I've been using hardware forever, first a Kawai Q80+akai s20+Juno 106, then ditched the q80 for an MPC60, which died after a few years and got replaced by an mpc1000 (thanks dave) and my kit for the last few years has been MPC1k+TX81z+EH Bass microsynth stompbox, with a little controller and some effects, doing recording and vocals on an old PC with Audition. I did two records, a handful of remixes and a bunch of work with bands with this stuff, learned how to wrestle the sounds I needed out of it and became very attached to the MPC's sequencer, especially the step edit and its cool easily editable list format, the song mode where you can flexibly chain sequences together, the intuitive recording, the ability to make the samples gated instead of just triggered, etc. This year, my MPC finally shit the bed for good and when I was looking around for a replacement I decided it was finally time to make the software plunge. I got a nice Mac and Reason 4, with a novation knob box. I've been with the new rig for about a month and the synths and samplers are rad, the sound quality impeccable, etc. But the sequencer sucks for someone who likes to work like I do. I knew this from dicking around with the demo; i figured I'd be rewiring it to something else but didn't really think about what that would be. Live doesn't do what I want although it's slightly better as a MIDI sequencer than Reason, and it has a lot of shit I don't need/don't want to pay for. If I'm going to work with audio, I'll pretty much put it in a sampler. I'm leaning towards Cubase but since there are no demo versions out there, all I've got is a couple of screenshots, some reviews and some vague manufacturer's claims and comparison charts. Since I primarily want to use it as a MIDI sequencer through Rewire, I don't need all the instruments and vast audio tools of the full version. Essentials looks like a good (and cheap) bet but it's hard to see if it's workable with no way to try it out.
So I guess this goes at Cubase users:
--Step editing
I've seen screenshots of a list-format MIDI event editor, which looks a lot like the MPC style step editor. I love that shit, especially because i'm particular about my drums, and I always go in and tweak velocity, note length etc and it's great to be able to do this numerically instead of dragging shit around. (A lot of these sequencers with great graphics seem like they were designed by total non-musicians; all the shit they show you in the videos and demos seem like great features until you actually try to create or edit something. I've been with the 96-tick formula for so long that the 24/48/72 and all the divisions between come very naturally, but seeing things on a grid, especially with always having to zoom around to get enough detail to make sense of it, is a pain in the ass. Does this type of editor really exist in Cubase, and does it work like one would expect? And what is the "in-place MIDI editor" that is absent on Essentials but present in Studio and the full version? Web site details are vague.)
--Clip-based editing/composing
Live has got a reasonably good approach to this but i still find it cumbersome. I like to make complete MIDI chunks (1 bar, 4 bars, whatever) with all the tracks playing, then be able to copy the entire chunk to create, for example, a new, identical 4 bar loop, but with a drop out/fill/transition piece in bar 4. Put one after the other and there's an 8 bar section with a transition at the end. Blah blah, fairly simple shit, but surprisingly hard to find a soft sequencer that will let me do this easily without making me record a linear arrangement of it. My songs are usually composed of 50 to 100 short phrases, arranged in a long-ass list. Another thing that is essential with this is the ability to switch between clips on the fly to audition changes and see how parts fit together. My tracks tend to make a lot of sudden u-turns so this is essential. (And very easy on an MPC; flip the wheel to "next sequence" and it will change over seamlessly at the end of the current sequence. Live does this, but not in a way I find helpful.)
I know there's other stuff that I can't think of right now. If any experienced Cubase users have anything to say about this...thanks.
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