Cubase Pro 8 Review – New Features Part 2 – Chord Pads

Chord pads are a simple way of playing chords with notes on a MIDI keyboard. You can change the voicing of the chord and add extensions to the chord as well.

You can access the Chord Pads from the Project menu or use the shortcut Shift, Command and C.

This opens the Chord Pads window at the bottom of the screen where you can begin to assign chords to pads which are assigned to keys on your MIDI keyboard starting from C1. Access to the Chord Editor is from a drop down menu on the left hand side of each pad. You can then select the note of the chord followed by the type of chord and then the extension and the root note.

Once you have edited your chord, triggering it is as simple as triggering a sample on a drum machine. You will need to have a software instrument track in record enable or monitoring mode to hear the chord you are triggering. You have an option on the right of the pad to change the voicing of the chord and at the bottom of the pad you can change the tension or extension of the chord.

Once you have set up all the chords you want to use on the pads you can record a chord sequence in to Cubase by simply record enabling a track and pressing record. Cubase will then record the chords that you trigger from the pads as MIDI information as usual. If you also have a chord track set up it will also show you the chords and suggest a scale that can be used with the chord progression.

Chord pads provide a very quick way to get some ideas in to Cubase, with good options for variation to avoid overly repetitive chord progressions. 

More on the new features of Cubase Pro 8 soon….