Hello, long time Cubase user, first time posting in the forums.
I’m using Cubase 7.0.2, and I love the chord track.
However, is the a way to transpose the entire chord track along with transposing the midi files in the same project?
For example you have your midi tracks laid out, and above them the Chord Track.
You want to transpose 2 keys down from A to G. Transposing the midi is easy; MIDI → Transpose Setup.
But I haven’t found a way to transpose the Chord Track so it matches the new transposed midi tracks.
Yes you can open the midi track and click match to chord track, but this is very slow and time consuming as you have to do it for EVERY chord.
Changing the midi notes on the key editor has no effect on the key represented in the Chord Track.
They appear to be a separate entity.
If I transpose the notes in the midi track key editor, I can then select “add to chord track” however this is extremely time consuming on a large project with tons of different chords.
Or say for example I don’t have any midi tracks, just a Chord Track and some audio tracks below it.
Now I simply want to highlight the chord track and transpose it for reference’s sake.
Isn’t there a way to do that? Was it left out in the design?
While it is possible to transpose the way the Chord Track sounds (simply use the Transpose Track), you are right, there is no way to globally change the way the chords actually read. (e.g., in the example you used, you would hear the track transposed down to G, but it would still display in A).
A “real” transpose function, e.g. in the Info Line for the Chord Track, would certainly be a welcome addition .
Select all chords on the chord track, use the drop-down menu in the info line to change the “Root Key” selected chords are transposed
Note: Root Key is the wrong term for this, it should simply be ‘Root’.
Edit: Wow. I saw several weird behaviors that I could not consistently reproduce. I had to clear the selection (Select None) in order to repeat the function dependably.
Man, you have to really love Cubase to learn and tolerate all the special workarounds and quirks.
I was having serious problems with this and then noticed that it seems to interact with the scale being shown. I had auto-scale turned on in the inspector. When it is on if you use a chord that is not fully consistent with the current scale (for example a major minor substitution) Cubase will change the scale to whatever it thinks best to accommodate the problem chord. I noticed that if I selected chords that did not cross scale change boundaries I could change them all from the info line. But if the selected chords were in different keys none of the chords could be changed.
So I turned off the auto-scale and often, but not always this resolved the problem. I’ve been using the info line to modify chords in the Chord Track quite a bit recently since I’m reading a book about chord progressions and using the track to check out examples. To do this I copy a bunch of C chords on each quarter note and modify them using the info line (faster) when I can and the Chord Editor when I can’t (typically because some items are available in the editor but not the info line, like setting a 9th). So I’m not transposing chords, but rather selecting 4 chords here or 2 chords there and changing the root, major/minor, 7ths etc. With auto-scale turned off 80-90% of the time the info line changes work, but sometimes they won’t take. I can’t see any pattern to when it won’t work. For example yesterday it let me change the 4 C chords in bar 2 to F, but in bar 5 wouldn’t let me change 4 C chords to F (at this point I yelled at the monitor “but you just let me change the exact same thing” ).
In any case it seems you can always transpose any chord individually from the info line, independent of auto-scroll being on or off. But of course that can get tedious. If you find you can’t transpose all the chords at once, you might be able to do it in two or three groupings. Sometimes it seems to not like changing both 3 and 4 note chords at the same time, while other times it is fine with it.
I think it’s ridiculous for it to be so fiddly. I’m afraid to get into using these innovative features because I get sidetracked by troubleshooting and lose sight of what I was trying to do in the first place.
I would rather have the program do less, but consistently, without a bevy of quirks I need to remember. (i.e., to make a diminished 7th chord you need to make a diminished triad and add a major sixth, if you use edit-in-place you can’t have a the chord track adjacent to an open editor - chord selection will include the track. The list goes on. )
The drop down menu in the top info line indeed is faster, and I’ve been using it since it was recommended.
Of course it’s still on chord transpose at a time…but faster than chord matching form the midi track every time.
A global Chord Track transpose would definitely be great though.
I think many people including myself would find it very useful for large tracks.
Maybe they’ll add it in a future update (wink wink).
What Steve and I have been saying is that it is supposed to be working already… select the chord events you wish to transpose, e.g. all of them … go to the Info Line and transpose the “Root Key” that you see displayed (it is probably the Root key for the first event), transpose it as desired, and the other selected chords will transpose accordingly…
The current problem seems to be that it is intermittently not working.
Yes exactly. And if it won’t transpose all of them, try selecting half or a third of the events and transpose in 2 or 3 batches. It will often let you do this even when it doesn’t work when selecting all the events.
Select the chords to be transposed on top then use the drop menu to change the root, and yes it will transpose many chords at once. I understand now. The problem was I was also highlighting the Scale underneath the Chord, and that prevented any transposing of any kind.
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(I’ll investigate further…)
).