User manual

347
The Sample Editor
Working with hitpoints and slices
Working with hitpoints and slices
Cubase can detect hitpoints, musically relevant positions, by analyzing onsets and
melodic changes. At these positions a type of marker is added. Hitpoints allow you to
create slices, where each slice ideally represents each individual sound or “beat”.
Drum or other rhythmic recordings or loops work best with this feature.
Purpose and preparation
Hitpoints are useful to slice up audio to make it fit the project tempo or to create a
situation that allows the song tempo to be changed while retaining the timing of a
rhythmic audio loop.
When you have successfully detected the hitpoints for an audio file, you can do a
number of useful things:
- Change the tempo of the audio material without affecting the pitch and audio
quality.
- Extract the timing (a groove map) from a drum loop. The groove map can then be
used to quantize other events, see
“Creating Groove Quantize Presets” on page
142.
- Use slices to replace individual sounds in a drum loop.
- Extract sounds from loops.
You can further edit these slices in the Audio Part Editor. You can, for example:
- Remove or mute slices.
- Change the loop by reordering, replacing, or quantizing slices.
- Apply processing or effects to individual slices.
- Create new files from individual slices using the “Bounce Selection” function on
the Audio menu.
- Transpose in realtime and stretch slices.
- Edit slice envelopes.
Hitpoints can also be used to quantize audio material without creating slices. For
details about the quantizing functions, see the chapter
“Quantizing MIDI and Audio”
on page 134.
Which audio files can be used?
Here are some guidelines as to what type of audio files are suited for slicing using
hitpoints:
• Each individual sound should have a noticeable attack.
Slow attacks, legato playing, etc. may not produce the expected result.
• Poorly recorded audio might be difficult to slice correctly.
In these cases, try to normalize the files or to remove DC Offset.
• The recorded audio should contain as little crosstalk signals as possible.
Crosstalk refers to the “bleeding” of a sound into a microphone placed before
another instrument during recording.
• There may be problems with sounds drowned in smearing effects, like short
delays.
Adjusting the tempo: warping vs. hitpoints and slices
Both the warping features and the hitpoint detection can be used to alter the tempo
and timing of audio material. Warping is very useful for continuous audio material
without noticeable gaps between the individual sounds, for example, piano or vocal
recordings.