You should see two bars of score with no notes and a treble clef.
A new window should open and you should see a treble clef near the centre of this window, with draw bars on either side.
Compared to creating the Electric Piano part, the Synth Bass part is extremely simple. During this section you will learn about the following topics:
As you could probably guess, the Synth Bass provides a bass rhythm which underlies the whole of the song and gives it a sense of fullness.
In some pop songs, the bass part provides a counterpoint melody in its own right; however, this song uses the bass to provide a fast staccato rhythm, playing the same note (pitch) for the entire bar. It is worth noting that bass parts rarely use chords, even when the instrument is polyphonic.
As with the Electric Piano, you will use a two bar rhythm which plays the same note in each bar. At the start of each bar, you have to change the note being played to reflect the chord changes through the song.
Once again, there's a choice about which track/channel to use; quite arbitrarily, the decision is to use track 8.
With the Electric Piano, it was possible to play the basic rhythm using the keyboard. However, the Synth Bass part is too fast for most players, so you will have to create it entirely inside the Score Editor. Once again, it will prove easier to create a simple rhythm (this time using semiquavers) and delete the unwanted notes.
As before, you'll end up with a two-bar version of the rhythm. You will make multiple copies of this and adjust the pitch of the notes in each bar to match the chord being played. Because the Synth Bass only plays single notes, this is a relatively simple operation.
As before, if you're using a Macintosh, remember to use the "Four Leaf Clover" key instead of the "Control" key except when bringing up an alternative mouse menu (the equivalent of a right button click on a PC).
Here you will set up the initial values for the track, give it a meaningful name and set to it to Synth Bass 1 (General midi patch number 39).
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
You are not going to record any notes from the keyboard; instead, you are going to create the rhythm entirely inside the Score editor. First you need to create an empty part, two bars long, which will eventually contain the bass rhythm.
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
Since this is a bass part, you need to change to the Bass clef. There are several versions of the bass clef, with numbers above and below showing octave shifts up and down. You need the simplest version.
Important. When changing the clef, we recommend you follow the procedure below. Do not double click on the existing treble clef - this seems to work at first, but causes problems later on!
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
For information: The drawbar on the right selects the key signature, adding sharps or flats as appropriate. You will need to use this feature when you work on songs in different keys.
Now you have an empty part, you will use drag and drop inside the Score Editor to create the first four notes of the rhythm.
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
The vertical position is given as a pitch, such as 'C1/36'.
The horizontal position is given by three numbers, such as '1.2.3',
When you've dropped all four notes, you should see:
If you drop a note in the wrong position, then deselect the semiquaver tool and drag the note up or down, left or right, to the correct position. When experimenting, you may also create some unwanted notes. Make sure you delete them.
In this step, we will copy our four semiquavers to the paste buffer, and then repeatedly paste them into the part. Eventually, we will have two bars of semiquavers.
Note 1. Notes are pasted at the position given by the main locator (on the transport bar). You must set this to the correct position before issuing the paste command.
Note 2. The main locator position may be preceded by a minus sign indicating a position before the start of the song. Take care that the minus sign is absent when pasting notes into the part.
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
If you forget to increment the main locator, then you will end up with doubled notes when you paste. The simplest way to fix this is probably to type [CONTROL-Z] to undo the previous command.
We will selectively delete notes from the part to create a more interesting rhythm. As before, when we delete a note, Cubase SX appears to replace the note by an equivalent length rest. It is important to remember that these rests don't actually exist as part of the sequence; they are simply the way that the Score Editor tells you there's a gap/silence in the music. Because they don't have any significance, the Score Editor won't let you actually delete a rest, so don't try!
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
When you have finished, you should end up with the following:
If you make a mistake then [CONTROL-Z] will undo the previous operation.
If things go desperately wrong, you can revert to the
version of the part that you saved at the end of step 5.
The part we have just created has an interesting rhythm, but all the notes have the same length and velocity. Since we want a staccato rhythm, there's no need to worry about the note lengths; however, we might like to vary the note velocities to make the part sound less mechanical.
We shall use a special tool in the Key Editor which creates smooth velocity ramps. We will set the notes at the start and end of each bar to a high velocity (around 105-110) and those in the middle of each bar to a lower velocity (70-80). This will give an interesting rise and fall of loudness in each bar of the Synth Bass part.
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
The window should appear in two sections, with a vertical piano keyboard in the upper section, and a separate lower section. You may have to move the transport bar out of the way, or perhaps press [F2] to get rid of the transport bar for the moment.
The Key Editor represents each note as a short horizontal line. The vertical position of the line indicates the pitch of the note, while time runs on the horizontal axis. Here, you can clearly see the gaps (silences) between some of the notes. These gaps are represented by rests in the Score Editor, but in the Key Editor they are shown as empty spaces.
Along the bottom of the editor window, you'll see what looks like a bar chart underneath each note. The height of each block indicates some parameter of the associated note. Here, we've set it up so that the height of the blocks represents the velocity (or loudness) of each note.
Note that the cursor changes to an upright cross shape.
The high velocity values should be around 100-110, while the low values around 75-80, but there is no need to be fanatically accurate, and it is not necessary for both bars to be exactly the same.
In this step, we create the complete part by making multiple copies of our two bar sequence. Essentially, we shall be cutting and pasteing the sequence we now have until it occupies 18 bars.
Of course, cutting and pasteing only gives us 18 bars of a bass instrument playing E! Later on, we'll have to adjust the notes to match the chord progression of the song.
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
This is just like we did for the Electric Piano, but the Synth Bass is lot easier because it doesn't actually play any chords. As we work through the part, we must select all the notes in one bar and drag them up or down the staff to the required pitch.
The Synth Bass plays the root note of each chord; however, there is a choice of octave. Here are the suggested notes for each bar:
To avoid clutter, the above figure just shows one note for each bar, but of course, we actually want the bass part to use the rhythm we've so carefully set up. That means that we'll have to change every note in the bar to match the figure above. Here's what it should look like for the first eight bars:
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
Now we can hear both the Bass and Piano parts playing together.
Follow these steps. Put a tick next to each one as you finish it:
Well done! You have now successfully created the Synth Bass part for the verse. You should have found that you worked considerably faster and produced this part much more quickly than the Electric Piano.
(Incidentally, all of this work would have taken an experienced Cubase user about 15 minutes!)
You're ready to proceed to the next section.