*Check out my "How to Write Music" course!* thinkspaceeducation.com/htwm How To Write Music explores the fundamental skills that underpin every great piece of music whether it’s a song or a film score, string quartet or video game sounds track.

I'm not a Cubase or Logic user (Reaper is my DAW of choice), and Reaper also does this - in Reaper it's called the Action List, and it's possible to link everything to a hotkey or a custom toolbar, or both. I have such a tool bar for changing things like the quantise grid and clip/item loop functions. Makes life easy. Great tip Guy. :)

Because of you, the composition world is a far more enjoyable place to be!

Such a great source of how-to knowledge, and it comes in the most entertaining and adorable presentation!! I wanna be like you when I grow up!

For those who can't afford a Streamdeck or happen to have an old tablet or phone lying around, you can get the Deckboard app for the tablet/phone which will basically replicate all the functionality of a Streamdeck. It is not as refined and polished as the Streamdeck system, and of course tablets have touchscreens instead of nice tactile buttons, but it is another great option for those on a budget or just wanting to reuse old mobile devices.

The "woo" and "choo" way of explaining things is the reason I watch your videos 😁😂 simple and relatable 👍

How about posting a list of shortcuts that you use for Cubase? This would help the Cubase user so much. Please include the standard shortcuts and the ones that you have added like F11. Love the videos, Guy. You are terrific!

I bought the Stream Deck last week after trying the TouchPortal app. I prefer the physical buttons over the touch screen. You can get a cheaper version of the Stream deck with only 15 buttons and use their folder option to have access to 256 keys.

One wouldn't know this, even after reading the manual, unless one explores the key command menu item specifically. No clue, that there are more functions than are menu items, is given ANYWHERE except in this video. Thank-you, Guy!

I do a similar thing with Reaper that could be useful to you all. In Reaper you can concatenate multiple actions and link this custom-created list of actions to a single shortcut (let's say cmd + G). For example, when I program MIDI drums, I divide each instrument (kick, toms, snare, etc.) into separate MIDI tracks. Then I use the shortcut to print in a single shot all the midi tracks into separate stereo audio tracks and get rid of the original MIDI tracks. This saves a lot of time!

I love that when you press F11, it goes "boof," and then "dschooo." Very handy.

Thank you so much for this golden nugget of information!

Even if Guy was just having his breakfast, or washed his car, I'd still watch. Oh, wait...

I can confirm that this works with Studio One Pro 3 (and higher) as well!

Dude this was so friggin useful!!!! Watching you share things mean that we all don’t have to Indiana Jones our way through our DAW file menu’s when we are in the middle of a project. Indeed , a time saver. Thanks Guy!

love my stream deck saves me so much time not just for cubase but for vid editing and day to day internet shortcutting

I took your advice and purchased a Koolerton 48-Key...Very useful as I am also using it for Final Cut Pro. I didn't even know about these things until you posted this video. Thanks Again.

I saw how you were using the Akai APC mini in another video and immediately bought one. Love those buttons!!

For the record Guy, I've never found any of your videos 'clickbaity' - love your work!

Thank You so Much for giving So Much, To So Many for So Little... I Love Your attitude and Enthusiasm... Keep it Coming, and again Thanks!!!

I've yet to find the make a cup of tea button

Thank you for the great tutorial

You are the sweetest of all, Guy. Quick facts. Love you, man

Oooh, nice one Guy. I'm a CbB/Sonar user, never thought of that. That'll keep me occupied for a Saturday afternoon!

@Guy Michelmore did you know there's a midi plugin for your stream deck, it will allow you to assign CC messages, program change, note on and off and sysex events to a streamdeck key. Could make for some very visual articulation switching?

you do not need to by stream deck, you can use a tablet with touch portal ...

Great video! Once again, you’re the GUY!

Got my Stream Deck a few days ago and it's really fantastic. I use it to control my REAPER DAW from my digital piano that is too old and big to place it right in front of my DAW display.

Yes. I do this with my Korg Nanokontrol 2 which has loads of buttons and only costs £39. Super cost effective controller.

Using Liine Lemur on 2 touchscreens here which has around 2000 commands programmed to manage Vienna Ensemble Pro, Nuendo and ProTools. Great for navigating big templates and setting up new project templates, manipulating mixing setups and MixConsole etc etc etc etc etc!!

Great timing! I was just working on a piece with a frustrating template so the Show/Hide trick proved very soothing. Thanks!

Thanks for the tips

So much power at our fingertips, we just scratch the surface of our chosen DAW’s really.

this solves the question I asked you about "render in place". Thanks!

Thnaks for the tip Sir

Wonderful ! You just made me want to get a stream deck... Great work and great channel !

A previous video of yours was what prompted me to get the Stream Deck XL and I’ve profited a lot in my workflow, from my IT profession to my music production hobby. One push opens my work apps in their proper positions, another push closes them and opens my free time apps, yet another my music setup.

Life saver! Just programmed key commands for quantize length when entering notes in step mode. So much faster now.

Can you add different button banks for different software? This would be so useful in Eplan also.

I’ve been using loads of custom key commands (and macros) in Studio One 5 Pro....but that Stream Deck looks reaaaaaally useful for tying to those key commands!! I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Thanks Guy for reading my mind! 🤘🏼😎🤘🏼

Getting a new keyboard this weekend, Lord willing. I need to go through and do this.

A great tip is that I assign the (-) and (+), (the two to the left of the backspace button, not the ones on the 'NUM Pad'), to frame advance video files for exact and precise frame for putting 'markers' in the hit points for scoring. This is called 'Frame Forward, and Frame Minus in the Key Commands. Great one guy, I do have a Stream Deck on my Crimbo list, just in case you feel a little generous this year. lol. 🧐🤓😎👓

In REAPER it's the Action List (press the ? Key) that reveals all sorts of gubbins like this. You can assign keys, midi etc. Actions can also be added to toolbars and menus.

I've settled on Reaper and it's the same idea. Hundreds of functions, most of which are not set to key strokes. On top of that the SWS extensions add another many many functions. One I use frequently Normalize Track or Item to -23LUFS, and a handful of others.

if you're a Logic user and you already have an ipad, then download Logic remote onto it. it's free and has a section for keyboard shortcuts, which you can edit to your liking. it also does lots of other cool stuff, too.

Love the passion! The enthusiasm! :)

Other than the great content on this channel, I thoroughly enjoy seeing what awesome t-shirts Guy wears. This one and the "jazzy zebra" have been my favourite so far! :)

I always wondered what that was.. now that I know now I want one. Thanks

It's the little things that mean so much cheers guy.

In Reaper I can also assign MIDI events to be the hotkeys. It is a good way to use that old 80$ keyboard you started with. I used CD marker to write functions on white keys, and respective black keys are the opposite function to that. Now I don't need to remember those Ctrl-Alt-Shift-ScrollLock-PgDn-E combinations.

Nice tips. I really need to wrench the Stream Deck off my gaming rig and use it on the Cubase rig!

I would love a full thirty minutes on Stream Deck XL hotkeys. It would be great to have a couple profile templates. One of the hard things is finding unique shortcuts for Cubase. So many combinations are already assigned. Really enjoyed this one! Oh, and I love the Show Channels and Tracks. Top tip, that one!

Didn't Shakin' Steven's have hit song about secrets behind DAWs? A man ahead of his time.

In Digital Performer, this has been my indispensable workflow sine qua non for like 30 years. Nice to see that apparently other DAWs have a similar capability.

thank you guy, time spent looking on menus means missed crochets and quavers of creativity.

I didn't realise that Cubase and Logic was my DAW. Last time I looked, it was Cakewalk.

You should also mention that the Stream Deck has lovely soft feel button, not clicky hard plastic that you get on some controllers. The feeling of real quality. Another advantage of Stream Deck is you can program a button to fire a salvo of keypresses. It can even fire MIDI notes and CC's.

I have a 22 programmatic buttons on my PC keyboard (SteelSeries Apex350)and I've never used them... This actually might solve this issue :D Thanks, Guy

I use Cubase and I use 'A' for show all tracks and 'Shift A' to show tracks with data - really really useful. I have my own key commands for several other things I use a lot to but they do get hard to remember - especially at my age :) Streamdeck is on my must buy list!

I never get on which Cubase version you are, since the color scheme pretty much reminds me of Cubase SX 3 (oh DAW lord, how much I adored this big leap from Cubase Audio to SX) :)

I've been your follower for a while and I love your videos, also your way of explaining : *Easy, Interesting, Informative and Fun to watch* Love from India 🇮🇳♥️ PS : I'm going to get your music theory course. Wish me luck!

Im using the stream deck with Cubase as well and it’s wonderful! I didn’t know about this hide/show command yet, great tip. Thanks Guy! You wouldn’t know a key command that can extend a midi region to bar 1? I’m dragging regios into Dorico all the time to create the score and this would be a great time saver 😁.

Thanks for sharing! I can also recommend using TouchOSC to create templates with all your favourite commands in Cubase, and it will work wirelessly from your phone or tablet. Cheers.

It would be nice if there was a shortcut to zip us beyond lockdown! It would probably be the most used button ever!! Thanks as always Guy for helping make life (in the studio) a little more elegant!

Funny enough, I JUST discovered this on my own a couple days ago. Just got a desktop instead of a laptop, and remapped a bunch of stuff in Studio One to my numpad!

I use Nuendo and I'll do film scoring and learning from you. Glad nuendo has cubase features which it wouldn't be worth it if they did not bring cubase features in nuendo

Hello,thank you for your high quality videos . I just wanted to know if it was possible to open a vst with the Streamdeck. If yes, how? THANKS

What other self assigned shortcuts do you use? Can you make a video about that?

Magic!! 😘🙏

Even when I already know what your videos are about, I really enjoy them. One of my favorite alerts is when you post something new. Always learn something from your videos and streams. And I’ve never felt anything you’ve done was click-baity. So much great content. Wish I had the funds and time to become a student at your school. Thanks for all you do and share!

Guy, Thank you for your marvelous videos. After 30 seconds of intense thought I bought the Stream Deck XL. You are right-very pretty. However, I simply cannot get it to integrate and communicate properly with Cubase. (I think the trouble lies with setting up the virtual port using a PC and Cubase 11PRO). Is there any chance you could do a step by step set up video to assist your non-techy viewers? Regards and yours in hope

Thanks for sharing this with us, Guy! There is a cheaper alternative to Stream Deck if you own an iPad. It's an app called Custom keystrokes and it does just that. And you can customize it to your will. For me, 6-7$ vs 150€ wins :) There might be other apps out there for Android or Windows but I didn't check

Great tip! I so wish that Cubase would include a filter or something that only shows the commands that have keys assigned to them. At least then, I'd have a chance to use them more often. Instead, I simply forget and resort to using the menus. I got a KORG nanoKontrol2 and assigned some of the buttons to keys but again, forget which are which. The device you have looks to be perfect.

Hey Guy! Huge fan of your channel. I don't know if you covered this on any of your videos but I think a great idea for a video would be on how to make string ostinatos sound as real as possible.. I really love a good ostinato, but the ones I write doesn't sound so good. I know matching the real life sound on a DAW is impossible but you know.....any tips? Thanks! Chu

Very, very, very useful bit of info, Guy! However, between the DAW and every other bit of software I use my brain is about to explode trying to remember all those shortcuts! I have shortcut lists on pieces of paper all over my desk. Maybe I need a Streamdeck.....hmmm.

Thank you.

Would you know of something like a StreamDeck but with a bunch of MIDI CCs instead? Logic seems to have independent shortcut systems for key commands and controller assignments. For example I usually have tracks 1 and 2 mapped to my vocal tracking and full mix busses and I can mute/unmute them quickly when hooked to MIDI controllers with spare buttons, but it’s not always the case.

What affordable in-ear headphones do you recommend for every day use/ walking out and about

"Any DAW, what about Cakewalk?" Gasp! Will definitely explore this when I have time. At the worst, many functions that take me multiple mouse clicks can be assigned to a key.

Not clickbait. Same for notation programs (Sibelius/Finale/Dorico) but I wonder if there are any for integration between Cuba’s and Dorico? I’m not a Cuba’s user, but maybe I could be convinced since switching to Dorico...

Ah ha! I asked the question and you’re now answering it in the video! 😀👍

Can I just ask is how do you make it into the industry? I'm 13 and I'd love to be a film composer. I'm just wondering what's your advice.

Guy Michelmore I highly recommend Touch Portal, you can have hundreds of buttons for all the functions you need on a Tablet or phone. It destroys stream Decks XL by miles and miles and only cost around $12. You can see the power of TP on my channel and you will realized that you are missing a lot. I am not affiliate with them, but I do see that you will benefit tremendous of what I am talking about. Few free to ask me any questions and I will be glad to help you.

And now the Stream Deck is out of stock, thanks to Guy wonderful advice 😂😂😂

Hello sir, I'm Charles, I am 15 and I hioe to pursue film music production as my future career, your videos help me a lot and I love them......

so maybe the streamdeck is the way to go. I always forget the key commands and end up using menus. Thanks for this, Guy. Very helpful

Hi Guy, did you already check the "Cubase" and "Midi" plugins for StreamDeck by TrevligaSpel ?

Guy - I can dig up a Cubase AI by buying a Yamaha mixer, but I'm pre-obligated and non-budgeted for a while to get a full version. Comment on CakeWalk?

Or use a tablet/smartphone with TouchOSC, Lemur or... I forget the name of the pricey (~£28 when I looked) Stream Deck equivalent app. Combine with your macro manager of choice. I’m using TouchOSC on both an iPhone 3G with iOS4.something and an iPad 3 with iOS 9.3.4, which connect fine with iTunes in Mojave. For macro management, when required, I’m mostly using Keyboard Maestro, with a few functions still using BetterTouchTool (though I’m slowly migrating to KM). Quicksilver is also an option and it’s free. However, I found it so difficult to setup and program, I’ve no idea if it handles MIDI like KM and BTT do. In an ideal world, I’d use Lemur app over TOSC, due to it’s capability for internal modifiers. Also, the editor is better developed vs Hexler’s clunky JavaScript solution. But the simplicity of TOSC is certainly faster to set up and learn.

I use Presonus Studio One. Such a neat and forward DAW. You should check that one out and make a video about it. It sure has Key Commands :)

Maybe you could do this with a Launchpad mini or an Akai APC Mini (can't remember what Guy had before the StreamDeck)?

Elgato streamdeck XL: "delivery date unknown" on Thomann site today . Ditto for the standard size (15 switches). Only the mini version (6 switches) seems to be available at this time. 😞 (if you read that in the future I'm located in february 2012 AD on planet Earth)

And I presume you load, profiles? To change from program to program? Cubase to logic? Audacity? Flight sim? And the key combinations are saved as profiles and you simply load one per program and the little keys light up with there labels.

If I had an italian Guy Michelmore...I’d live in his house. I’d be the coffee guy, just as an excuse to be around

Love this! I’m trying to streamline my workflow, wondering which shortcuts you use the most, either by keyboard shortcut or assigning to the StreamDeck?

Nice!

Love all your videos. You voice was cracklings on this. Your mic could be about 6 inches away and pointing at you for more natural audio. 💕

I have choong buttons assigned to my controllers in reaper

Hello Guy. Do you think stream deck xl it's not overpriced in compare for instance to Fadeport 8 where you have access to mixer and many more functions included assing few shortcuts or to Raven if you want near unlimited possibilities with shortcuts?

Great tip! But I must be missing something - what would I need a Streamdeck for, I already have an F11 key on my keyboard? What value does the Streamdeck add?