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Produce a Full Song in Cubase 15 – Step by Step | From Idea to Finished Song – Transcript
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- The producer sets a timer for 30 minutes to create an indie pop song idea inside Cubase 15 using tools like Halion Sonic and Groove Agent.
- After establishing the chords and tempo at 98 BPM in the key of C# major, the producer layers pads, drums, percussions, and guitars.
- Toward the end of the session, the producer tracks a scratch vocal, edits it using VariAudio, and applies a vocal chain before finishing the track.
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One of the most useful tools that you can have as a songwriter or producer is having the skill to get an idea down very, very quickly. When you're in a session with artists or when you're in a session with other producers and collaborators, time is money and you want to be able to immediately get some kind of vibe going. And so today what I want to do is I want to put a timer on for 30 minutes and just see how quickly I can get an idea that's something that I might want to build out later or that I might want to turn into a session. And I'm going to be using some of my favorite tools inside of Cubase 15. So let's dive in. I'm going to go ahead and
start this timer now. 30 minutes is on the clock. Let's get it going. The first thing that I want to do is at least start with some kind of chords. I'm just going to pull up Halion Sonic. It's one of my go-to starting points in Cubase and I'm really into the writing room since. And in my head I'm hearing something like a little indie pop vibe maybe in the camp of like Laney, maybe in the camp of like uh The 1975. So I want to just go for some brass. We'll
try out a couple different ones. I want something a little softer. Like that'll work. So I'm going to pull that up. And let's find a tempo. Let's do Those kind of chords are nice. Do some suspended chords. Tempo, let's take this down to like 98 BPM.
Cool. >> >> Since we're on a timer, I've spent 1 minute. I'm going to go ahead and just lay down some ideas. We can tweak it later in MIDI. Let's go. >>
>> All right. So we're back to the one there. Let's uh go ahead and get this quickly quantized. >> >> All right. So let's go to 16ths because we're kind of sitting on that and and let's find the key real quick. 1 2 3 It looks like we are in C# major. I'm going to swap this to scales and chords just so any notes that I want to tweak can be green as long as I'm in the key.
Quantize these links a little bit. And I'm going to extend that to the one.
I'm just going to go ahead and loop this over and over and over again so we can start kind of building that. And the next thing I want to do is start layering over some kind of little pad on top just so I can have some kind of extra texture, counter melody. We're going to kind of play around. I'm going to go back into here and we'll try the writing room again, but we might swap out. Let's see. I want something that's got a little bit of extra movement.
>> >> Something like that. We can maybe pedal on the one or the
five. Let's try out both. On the one. Cool. Just gives us some movement. I like that quite a bit. I'm going to swap
this to quarter notes and I want to add some kind of modulator just so we can have a little bit of extra movement in this and then I'm going to loop it out. Let's pull up the modulators for this one. Let's pull up the synth so I at least know what I want to be modulating. We can kind of do a little bit of an LFO maybe on this cut off. So we're going to sync this to learn. Do that.
Just give us a little bit of extra movement. Going to make it a little bit smaller.
We don't need that much movement. Let's try slot two. And for this one maybe we can go into the effects.
And maybe we can do like some ring modulation. Just something to give us a little bit of extra. A little bit of flutter. For this one I'm just going to go to random cuz I want this to kind of be its own little random patch. We're going to hit learn and I'm just going to go ahead and hit LFO depth and I'm going to go ahead and hit the frequency. And then we're going to make this very, very, very tiny just
to give us a little bit of randomness in this pad. Let's hear it now. Turn it down just a hair.
And then we're going to go to the shimmer verb which is my favorite in here. Oh. We're getting a little bit out there.
>> >> And I'm going to extend it.
>> >> And we're going to tuck it way in the background. Let's get some drums going. For this I'll typically just start with Groove Agent and then find something. I'm sure maybe like the Lo-Fi Dreams could be cool or maybe like a synthwave kind of library in here. Night Calls I believe.
Yeah, Night Calls. >> >> Let's try that one and then I'll have a beat kick in here. Let's go down. >> >> Let's do a snare.
Maybe that as a >> >> And let's tune these to the key of the song. >> >> C# that's already good.
A# that'll also work. D We're going to take this down one semitone. >> >> And maybe we just shorten this one up just a hair.
>> >> And let's hear that now. >> >> Cool. For this I kind of just want to do like a pattern editor actually. So I'm going to go into instrument. We're going to go into pattern event and I'm just going to use this to load up all my samples. So we'll just open this one and move them over. Let's go ahead and start laying this out.
Cool. Extend this just a little bit. Put that right there.
>> >> There we go. That can be our main little drum line. I'm fine with that for now.
Let's go ahead and layer in some kind of percussion. >> >> Some kind of top I think. >> >> We can try that.
So right now we're at 98. I'm just going to hit one twice until I get the retime icon, drag it out to be a nice little four bar loop and turn this up just a hair. >> >> Try another one. Try some other little percs.
>> >> I'm just going to take the ending of that one and we're going to use that as a nice little fill. So as we duplicate this, just going to do that there. >> We're going to put that on the end.
And I'm going to try to turn it down a semitone or two. Yeah, that feels way better to me. Should I get some other little like top perk stuff? Let's try the little high hat loop.
Extend this. >> >> Try and add a little high hat.
>> >> And again, re-time this. >> >> For this one, maybe use some effects modulator.
Just to give us a little bit of a ramp up. Should give us a little bit of movement. You could even add like some chorus in there.