hi so I've done a video on the qbas cord pads before but qbas 13 has really made quite some changes in the cord pad functionality so instead of focusing on just the changes this video will present an overview of the qbase 13 CAD Essentials so that you don't have to refer back to any of the older videos so if you don't have a lot of advanced keyboard skills but still want to play Simple and more intricate chords in a very easy way this video is for you so let's [Music] go now the qbase cord pads allow you to easily play cord pads on vstd instruments either live or record them onto a midi vsd instrument track or the chord track so let's Dive Right In so over here I have an empty qbas project and you can now enable the cord pads in two different ways one is you go project show height cord pads or you can go over here you can open the lower Zone and then you select the cord pads tab so as you can see I now have cord pads but when I click them nothing happens you don't hear anything because to hear them you first need to have an instrument so let's create a VST instrument track let's say that we're going to add a piano sound here yeah this opens Helen Sonic let's open all and I know there's a nice piano the Yamaha S90 es and if I now click these cord pads you can hear the sound now if you look at the cord pad Zone over here on this cord pad tab it actually consists of a number of sections at the top you find the cord pads Zone toolbar this contains tools and settings for the whole cord pad Zone you have the cord pad Zone extended toolbar this contains tools and settings for individual cord pads and the assigned chords on here you have the cord pads itself where each cord pad can have a cord assigned to it which is played back when you trigger the cord pad you have the cord pads Zone keyboard down here this shows which keys are play when you trigger the cord pad and it also highlights the trigger key when you hover over a cord pad the one in blue and on the right side you can open the integrated editor assistant that you can use to aign chord but more on that later so now that I have a linked instrument track over here you already notice that you can hear the chord pads when I trigger a chord pad with my mouse but you can also trigger the cord path with your keyboard if you push alt K you get an onscreen Mini keyboard which shows you the various letters on your PC keyboard that you can use to trigger these Keys q w e now if you use any of these ways to trigger a cord pad they always play at a fixed velocity which you can configure over here for the onscreen keyboard and which you can configure over here when you trigger a cord pad with your mouse however the best way to trigger these cord pads is via an attached midi keyboard you can basically play the cord pads very loud or Softly by how hard you push the key on your midi keyboard let me show you that on the keyboard behind me [Music] here yeah so you have much more Dynamic control over how it sounds now you just saw me add an instrument track and then magically when I played a chord pad the instrument on that track was played but how does it work if you have multiple tracks let me add another instrument track for example and let's put a guitar on there let's do clean guitar VX for example and if I play the chord pads now the guitar is playing the chord pad so how does that work well basically that's determined by the output mode over here so if the output mode is on the output is sent to All record enabled or monitor tracks so if I select the piano track now for example it automatically gets record enabled and now the piano will sound and if I select the acoustic guitar track the acoustic guitar will sound but I can also always let them play at the same time by enabling the monitoring on both tracks and now they will play at the same time now there's another option in the output mode here is that you can turn it off and then output is sent exclusively to record enabled or monitor tracks where input routing is set to cord pads so let's turn it off now you can see that cord pads are no longer attached to either of these virtual instruments but instead I can assign the input here to chord pads now this piano track is directly connected to the chord pads however if I select acoustic guitar you don't hear the piano anymore because it does need to be either record enabled or monitoring needs to be turned on so if I turn on monitoring you can hear the piano and irrespective of which track I select the piano will keep playing let's set this back to the default and turn output mode on and I can now also record a part by just enabling record and playing the cord pads on my midi keyboard in this [Music] case now another way to get these chords onto a midi track is by just dragging and dropping them [Music] so you get the same sequence that I just played and in this case the velocity is as it was set over here 75 let's get rid of this again because another thing that you can do is put chords on the core track in this way if we add a core track to the project put that on top I can drag cord from my core track now but there is even an easier way now if you get rid of this again I can also enable step mode here and then qbas shows the step input position over here and every time I click a chord pad it adds the chord and moves a bar further and I can also move the step input with the arrows on my computer keyboard here if I want to for example skip a few bars now there's also a insert mode and that means that if I now for for example put the step input here right before the C minor and if I then push a chord pad it is inserted in front of the other chord if I turn off the step input for example you can see that it overrides the previous chord yeah so all very nice features to play chords with these cord pads or to record chords onto a track now before I go on to how you actually get these chords onto the chord pad if you like this video or find it useful somehow please give it a big thumbs up for the YouTube algorithm so that it gets spread to more people subscribe to the channel if you like these kinds of videos and ring little bell icon so you get notified when I publish another video If you really dig the channel you can support me by using the super thanks button below which is a virtual tip jar or if you intend to buy anything music related or not music related at these stores please push one of the affiliate links in the description below and I will get a small commission without any extra cost to you but let's now see how you can actually get cords onto these cord pads and let's start by first making all of these cord pads empty which you can for example do by using this button which selects all chord pads and if I then push delete on my PC keyboard I get a warning this operation will remove the cord assignments from the selected pads and cannot be undone okay and everything is blank and I can deselect them again now before you can add something to a cord pad you need to select it and then you can get to a cord editor in two places one is over here and you can basically say that you want to add AC C Minor 7 C cord with maybe a g in the base for example another place where you can permanently enable the chord editor is over here in the right part of the cord pad Zone and if I then select another pad I can for example add a D major 7th chord with a an A in the base now I can transpose these chords if I want to by selecting another root node for example E flat you see that it has transposed all chords on the chord pad because that's what I have select selected over here transpose Cordes you can also not select that and then still change the root key however that basically just changes the function of these chords but it does not actually change the actual cords on the cord pad now this gets more useful when we also display the function of the cord on the cord pad which is possible but which I may save for an advanced video because I think this one will be pretty long already so let's keep this enabled you can also change the enonic shift so that chords are displayed with Sharps instead of flats let's leave it to flats for now and and another way to enter chords is by just typing it in text for example A Minor 7 and maybe put D7 over there another way is that you can assign them from midi input but I need to choose a track with a midi input over here and then you see over here that the sign from midi input is available the pad turns red meaning that it is waiting for Midi input so if I now play a chord on my midi keyboard for example an F it recognizes the F now it's also possible that if you already have a nice progression on your core track over here which we made earlier you can also assign the cord pads from this cord track and there's a nice button over here for that assign from cord track so if I push this qas Wars again that this operation will change all cord assignments and cannot be undone fine and you can now see that the cords which I had on my cord track are now assigned to cord pads over here it's also possible to move the cord assignment on cord pads for for example I can just drag and drop this F to other chord pads I can also exchange the chords between chord pads by dragging this F to this D and then you can see that the F and D change places and I can also copy a chord by pushing the alt button at the same time and then dragging and dropping and I have multiple FS over here now it's also possible to select chords to be assigned from other editors for example over here we have the list editor which is showing some well-known cadences and if I right click on for example the C sus 4 over here I can assign this to the first unassigned PAAD I can also just double click on this one and it will also assign it to the first unassigned pad same thing with the other editor the circle of fifths I can rightclick a chord and say assign to First unassigned pad or I can just double click one and it will do the same if I want to assign chord from a major key I can change it to Major here so the root is now C major where it was C minor before and I can also change the key over here for example go to G without transposing the pads it will choose the G as a root chord over here and I can then select chords from the related circle of fifths now another way to assign the cord pads is by using the presets over here as you can see this has a lot of cord presets for example let's choose the Bohemian chords and this now basically sets the chords for a very well-known song now it's also possible to transpose the selected chord pad up or down for example like that remove a cord assignment by pushing the thrash can over here and confirming and you can also do those operation on multiple chords at the same time for example select this one and this one by holding control and then moving them all up and down like this and like I showed you in the beginning it's even possible to select all cord pads at the same time and then transpose them up or down like this which basically accomplishes the same thing as selecting a root key here where you transpose all pads and all of them get transposed at the same time as well so what about voicings of these cords you may ask well let's dive into that so let's get rid of the editor here on the right side and select some different chords for example modern pop keys and let's make sure we can hear these This Is How They sound and the voicing of these chords you can basically see in the chord pads Itself by these little white blocks here at the bottom and when I play a chord pad you can also see the voicing here on the keyboard and at the moment these voicings are consistent for every chord for example look at this a minus 7 here the white blocks will not change when I play a different chords however it may be nice to get a bit more proper voice leading where you more easily transition from one core to the other with minimal movement of your fingers which tends to sound better well you can set the cord pads in qway to that mode if I select them all and then I enable adaptive voicing on all those chord pads now if you look at the voicing of this a minus 7 when I play another chord you will see that it changes based on the chord that I just played not always but sometimes Yeah so qbas basically prepares all the other cord pads for nice voice leading when you play a chord pad and it bases the voicing of the next chord on the chord that you're currently playing nice right which usually makes for a better flow of the chords that you play resembling how a real keyboard player would play chords like this now another option in here is that you can set one chord PAD as the Adaptive voicing reference for example if I want to set this D7 as the Adaptive voicing reference I can click this button over here and you see that it gets assigned a different border and it says AV here in white and now the voicing of all the other chords is based on the voicing of this D7 chord here instead of going by any of the other chord pads that I play so right now the a minus 7 voicing over here will again stay constants because it's B Bas on nice voice leading going from D7 to this one now it's also possible to increase the tension notes on the chord pad for example for this D7 I can select fewer tensions over here going back to full D and more tensions I can change the voicing with these buttons over here and because I have adaptive voicing on on all the other pads you will see that their voicing also changes to have nice voice leading going from this PAAD to another PAAD now you can also lock the selected cord pad by pushing this lock over here and that means you can no longer edit the cord on there you see that there's no possibility to change it now and one more thing that you may have noticed is these green yellow and sometimes red colors here at the bottom of the cord pads and that's basically an indication of Cubase how well that cord pad will sound after the one you just played So based on a number of theory roles that you can actually also configure somewhere but that's again something more for an advanced video qas will tell you whether it's safe core to go to or whether it's a more adventurous score to go to let's have a listen to that [Music] yeah so it gives you the option to choose a more smooth transition to the next chord or a more surprising one now I think these are the essential options of the cord pads in qbase 13 there is a lot more which would make this video a bit too long but you can already do so much with these options so play around with them a bit if you haven't already and let me know in the comments how you like the cord pads in qbas 13 and also if you want to see that video on the more advanced features please let me know in the comments and I'll get right onto the more advanced stuff now apart from the court pass there's actually a lot more Court related functionality in cuase which I already made several videos about which I all put in this playlist so check it out enjoy and see you [Music] soon