Love track Versions

Creative purposes, experimenting, comparing different ideas.

This is the perfect tool for film music were, for a sequence, you always got your several first tries, then you got the director’s comments and modifications on it, then the producer’s choices. And the music changes a lot across time and you’ll end with many many versions sometimes absolutely different cues/songs . Track versions are a godsend.

The most beautiful thing is for reconfo (don’t remember the name in english), when you got several versions of the cut coming and you have to resync everything each time. Now you can keep track of the modifications and come back !

Just thought of something: maybe MIDI-based automation could be captured, a sortof “versionable automation.”

Totally gonna try this.

I have always used lanes for this purpose. What advantages do track versions have?

I used group track versions today for multi-mic’d drums; it made my life so much easier for trying out different types of grooves.

When you try different types of grooves, how do you then define what parts you want to keep in mixdown?

Me too, which result in a clusterfuck were you have to mute/unmute gazillions of shown events.

Track versions ? Obvious. You don’t mute or unmute objects versions, you just switch from one version to the other, showing only one at a time on the timeline.

Track versions don’t let you visually compare the data. For me, they are almost useless. Perhaps they’ll save the near-instantaneous operation of duplicating the MIDI track, alt+dragging the part down, and hitting ‘M’. Also keeping my session tidier.

If you could visualize the parts, like as playlists, and have them play back as lanes, that would be very handy.

By the way, these stupid dropdown menus eat up about 1/4" of name real-estate on my tracks. Pardon my language, but what tf are they thinking here?

@sonicstate that’s a great question. Did anyone play with with? Does it allow side-by-side visual comparison/editing?

@Keith99 It works on everything the channel has, including inserts. It works on channels other than midi or audio, like chords track, tempo etc. Don’t forget each version has its own lanes, which can be used for different takes of that version of the track.

Oh god i didn’t have time to check it does work for inserts too ! This is marvelous, i didn’t expect so much.

I cannot believe switching of versions cannot be programmed for mixdown!!! What is the practical use of it then? OK, you can try some variations, switch by mouse, but this is useless in mixdown. I want to be able to switch between versions, and then have that included in mixdown. If I cannot mixdown with switching, then what am I supposed to do with different versions of tracks???
It’s like inventing a car without steering. What am I gonna do with it? Well, you can sit in it, yea…!

What do YOU want to do with it? Until we know how YOU work nobody can explain it to you.
We already know how Cubase works. Maybe your concept of it’s intended function is not correct.
If you’re not alone maybe resolving this assumption will help them as well as you.

Yes, probably I didn’t get the concept correctly. Or maybe I did, and it just isn’t implemented properly. When I read about it and saw advertisment videos, I got the impression that with track versions intended use is so that you can do the following:

  1. record track, like say rythm guitar power chords
  2. record more versions of the track, say muted guitar chords, wah-wah version, picked version…
  3. switch between versions, to have one version say on verse, and another version on chorus and so on…

Video advertisment shows switching with mouse, on example of chord track versions, to switch different chord progressions on parts of song. Based on this I assumed that you can switch not only by mouse on the fly, but can also define switches in some way to have switches included in mixdown. Now it turns out this is not the case. You can actually switch with mouse, true, as advertised, but there is no way to program those switches, and include them in mixdown.
I could almost call this misleading of customer, but I won’t.
I asked about this function before release, but there was no reply, post was deleted. I bought 7.5 immediately, and found out it is not working the way it seemed to be advertised. But ok, it happens… Maybe they implement this in the future, it would be nice.

Yes, I assumed. Misled by my own excitement… :slight_smile:
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be able to find some use of track versions as they are. I mean, I can still switch midi and audio tracks by mouse and record to new track in real time, so there is some fun to it…

No, it don’t, or am i missing something ? What a great feature it could be, but probably causing loading times problems. Extanded to the whole mix console, it could be a dream for tryin different mix of a song.

For me, track versions is worth the upgrade!

Let’s say you have a vocal track and you want to test this vocal with a little more compression and reverb, but you realize that the ssss sound is very prominent and you don’t want to use a D-Esser.
You can now create a version track and adjust the effects and cut the sss sounds manually in this new version.

You could do this before duplicating the first track, but now it’s more intuitive, cluster free.
regards

It doesn’t appear this can be done. Inserts and routing don’t “version,” nor does automation.

This was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for, too.

Yes, it would have been great, but my main use for the versions is more “musical” than technical. In other words, I wouldn’t use multiple versions for something radically different (for that I would still use different tracks), but for different musical ideas expressed within the very same context (i.e. same instrument, same FX, same levels etc.) I believe it’s what this feature was designed for.

You are right #jalcide :frowning:
It can’t be done.
Let’s hope for an “Advanced Track version” feature in Cubase 8. :slight_smile:

It’s more of a recording/editing/comping tool than something for mix moves. If you want to combine parts from different TrackVersions, just cut and paste to a master comp version.

This is brilliant for clean versions and alternate vocals takes. Instead of having to duplicate tracks and mute them, which could be problematic if you’re using external inserts for example.