# How to | Automate Ostinato Velocities in Cubase Pro



## Doorak94 (Jan 24, 2021)

Hi all, I hope you're well!
First video of the year for me. For those Cubase users, here's a quick tip to speed up your workflow with Ostinato patterns - Automating and randomizing the velocity controls to give you quicker results, with less static movement. All with the click of a button


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## Markrs (Jan 24, 2021)

Fantastic tutorial on getting some quick humanisation into Ostinatos or percussion!


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## Doorak94 (Jan 24, 2021)

Markrs said:


> Fantastic tutorial on getting some quick humanisation into Ostinatos or percussion!


Thank you im glad you enjoyed it!


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## sathyva (Jan 24, 2021)

Really great tutorial !
thanks a lot @Doorak94


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## Doorak94 (Jan 24, 2021)

sathyva said:


> Really great tutorial !
> thanks a lot @Doorak94


No problem @sathyva, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I'm probably gonna get some more of these Logical Editor tips out there but it's a really underused feature of Cubase. So many processes can be automated with it!


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## Rob Elliott (Jan 24, 2021)

Thank you. I can't imagine my daily workflow without shortcuts just like this. Hitting one keystroke is always better than fiddling with a mouse for 2 mins.


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## Doorak94 (Jan 24, 2021)

Rob Elliott said:


> Thank you. I can't imagine my daily workflow without shortcuts just like this. Hitting one keystroke is always better than fiddling with a mouse for 2 mins.


Absolutely! And you don't realise how much time you spend messing about with tedious stuff until you automate it. 

I'm on a spree at the minute. I'll have automated my whole compositional process by the end of the year 😂


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## Rob Elliott (Jan 24, 2021)

Doorak94 said:


> Absolutely! And you don't realise how much time you spend messing about with tedious stuff until you automate it.
> 
> I'm on a spree at the minute. I'll have automated my whole compositional process by the end of the year 😂


Awesome - thanks in advance for sharing anything that could help the rest of us 'logical editor / macro creating' - challenged.


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## CJRC (Jan 28, 2021)

Brilliant!


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## SlHarder (Jan 28, 2021)

All of your Composing Tips videos are EXCELLENT! I encourage everyone to check out your Youtube channel. Please keep your insightful content coming.


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## YaniDee (Jan 29, 2021)

Nice tip..but I don't follow how you set the position in the bar..if I click on the squares, it changes the numbers of paramaters one and two..but I see no indication of where on the bar it lies. Am I missing something?


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## Doorak94 (Jan 29, 2021)

YaniDee said:


> Nice tip..but I don't follow how you set the position in the bar..if I click on the squares, it changes the numbers of paramaters one and two..but I see no indication of where on the bar it lies. Am I missing something?


Hi Yani and thank you for watching!
You need to click and drag to get more than one (similar to highlighting something).
Alternatively you might find it easier to just input the values manually into parameters 1 & 2. I'll be happy to add the exact ones in my video here for ease if you want? 

Cheers


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## YaniDee (Jan 29, 2021)

Doorak94 said:


> Hi Yani and thank you for watching!


Thanks for replying..Now that you told me about the "click & drag" I got it...I guess the numbers you input work on number of ticks per beat..


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## Doorak94 (Jan 29, 2021)

YaniDee said:


> Thanks for replying..Now that you told me about the "click & drag" I got it...I guess the numbers you input work on number of ticks per beat..


Yes, i think so. It took me a little trial and error to get the right numbers in as it seems to be quite sensitive to the hard quantization/length of each note, too. But as long as the notes are hard quantized when you use the process it should be fine. 
Let me know if you have any other issues though and i'll try and help out


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## HarmonyCore (Feb 1, 2021)

Doorak94 said:


> Hi all, I hope you're well!
> First video of the year for me. For those Cubase users, here's a quick tip to speed up your workflow with Ostinato patterns - Automating and randomizing the velocity controls to give you quicker results, with less static movement. All with the click of a button



I really found your video extremely and unbelievably helpful. I was hardly looking for a way to automate my ostinato patterns.

So let me get this more straight ...!

Just like a template, I am supposed to spend time programming my filter and action targets to produce various types of ostinato patterns depending on what I need or what I currently have in mind. Then, put all of these filters in macros for quick button calls which is enormously useful.

One thing I still didn't fully get it are the parameter 1 and 2 in the filter target. How do I know which numbers to put in those params and what are the purpose of these parameters?! I know the concept is to locate which notes to apply velocity on. But I still didn't get these numbers such as 120 to 479.

Thanks again


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## Doorak94 (Feb 1, 2021)

HarmonyCore said:


> I really found your video extremely and unbelievably helpful. I was hardly looking for a way to automate my ostinato patterns.
> 
> So let me get this more straight ...!
> 
> ...


Thank you so much for your kind words, I'm glad you found it helpful! 

I've done a little research into this myself. I've looked into the Cubase manual and checked over a number of forums, and nobody seems to say what the specific values actually mean. 

I think it's safe to say that they don't translate into another measurement e.g milliseconds, etc, 

I think it's just a large quantity of numbers, so that you can be as specific as you want to be? 

The image represents a full bar split into 4 beats, which are then subcategorized in to 4 beats - creating 16 semiquaver bars. 

Each of those bars hold 120 of whatever the "value" is of the parameters. 

So bar 1 is 0-120
Bar 2 is 120-240 and so on. 

All i can advise is to make sure that before you use the macro, make sure that your notes are hard quantized, otherwise the values may be a little bit off. 

hope all of this helps


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## Pablocrespo (Feb 1, 2021)

I think it´s PPQ (pulse per quarter notes) and has has to do with your midi resolution, in preferences you can set this, so 1/16th is 120 "tics" (in spanish) so a beat has 480PPQ (pulses per quarter note).

If you use other resolution your LE won´t work, it happened to me when I changed that


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## HarmonyCore (Feb 1, 2021)

Doorak94 said:


> Thank you so much for your kind words, I'm glad you found it helpful!
> 
> I've done a little research into this myself. I've looked into the Cubase manual and checked over a number of forums, and nobody seems to say what the specific values actually mean.
> 
> ...


Thanks man I got what you wanted to say. It became clearer. Yeah, I thought these numbers are some kind of measurement units in the digital world since computers understand numbers and binaries as values rather than understanding the actual musical notes 😁

Going to experiment this tonight and see what I can come up with. 

Thanks a lot


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## HarmonyCore (Feb 1, 2021)

Pablocrespo said:


> I think it´s PPQ (pulse per quarter notes) and has has to do with your midi resolution, in preferences you can set this, so 1/16th is 120 "tics" (in spanish) so a beat has 480PPQ (pulses per quarter note).
> 
> If you use other resolution your LE won´t work, it happened to me when I changed that


Very useful thx 🙂


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