In a previous post I explained how to use TouchOSC to do amazing things that will help the workflow when composing, mixing or simply organizing sessions and templates. Most of those suggestions were general enough and were not considering any specific DAW.
I mostly use Nuendo (and Cubase Pro) for composition, production, some mixing and some simple mastering. It is a DAW that I started using more than 20 years ago, that I am comfortable with and that is well maintained. Today I am going to talk about one of the real time-savers.
One of the best workflow features that Cubase Pro and Nuendo have is the PLE, the Project Logical Editor. This is a powerful utility that has been redesigned in version 12 of both the flagship softwares.
This is a powerhouse that allows you to build a few custom functions and make your life easy. I use it mostly to navigate big templates, or to replace text in markers, track names or MIDI parts.
If you have a MIDI controller, you can set up a PLE function to be called via a MIDI event.
In my case, I set up TouchOSC to use almost all Note-On events (128 per channel) and Note-Off events (another 128 per channel) to call PLE functions, Macros or built-in commands. Note that this system (using all of the Note-On and Note-Off events on all the 16 MIDI channels) leads to a whopping 4096 potential trigger buttons at your disposal. This number is naturally rounded down by toggle buttons (which require an "on" and an "off" state), but, again, let me remind you this: you are trying to improve your workflow, not program each button just because you can do that. If you are already one click away from your desired action, what's the point of making a button for it? Trust me - you'll never use it - thank your muscle memory for that.
What the PLE can help you with is reducing the number of your clicks by compressing more operations into one simple, programmable action.
Example 1
Here's an example from my own presets. Can you guess what this does?
Let me put this function in words: select any folder track that has "100" contained in its name, then unhide it, then toggle its folder state (which means: if the folder was closed, then open it; if it was open, then close it).
This preset has been one of many core functions when using big templates.
You can probably see why this is a powerful tool:
If I hid the folder away, this would unhide it in one go - without me having to look in the "Visibility" menu.
Regardless if the folder was hidden or not, it opens/closes the folder, without me having to search through an entire project template.
Since version 12 the PLE includes also the possibility to prepend and append commands. This further simplifies life as in most cases, for operations with a limited number of commands, you can use just the PLE to do everything, instead of doing a Macro (option that is still available) containing different PLE calls.
Up until version 11.5 of Nuendo and Cubase Pro, doing the operation "assign unequivocally the number 100 to a track" required a number of different actions:
Create a "search and destroy" PLE function that, for each track containing "100" in its name, takes "100" off but also leaves the rest of the track name intact;
Create a PLE function that adds "100" to the selected track; and
Make a new Macro that uses the two PLE functions just created.
With the new pre- and post-commands section now you can do this in only 2 steps (as step 2 of the list above would be a post-process command after your "search and destroy" has completed its mission).
Example 2
This following example is especially useful in projects with a large number of tracks. When I work with orchestras I have templates that spans from 400 to 600 tracks. I know people that work with templates with a track count in the thousands.
Mind-boggling? No.
In some sample libraries you might have different articulations for the same instrument: a violin section could play sustained (sostenuto), legato, staccato, spiccato, pizzicato (I am really thankful I am Italian and that these words actually mean something to me when writing music). All the main sample libraries have a selection of these different playing styles and many more. Even now that keyswitches simplified life some people still prefer having one articulation per MIDI channel - hence, one MIDI track per articulation in Cubase/Nuendo. It might be that I compose a track which never uses the staccato or pizzicato articulations. Not even once.
So what you could have is a template with a ton of tracks, most of which empty as they correspond to articulations that were not used in that song.
So... how to visualize what is currently in use?
Here's my solution:
What I'm telling the PLE is: look for MIDI tracks that are empty and hide them. What you're left with, after this operation, is, hopefully, a project window with much denser MIDI tracks that are, in fact, the ones with actual data on them.
It is easy to understand how the PLE can be used to make things easier, from simple project housekeeping to batch operations.
My suggestion is to play with it and make cool additions to your arsenal of useful actions. That is the only way to understand it well. If you have a little understanding of a programming or scripting language, you will have an edge. But the strength of the PLE is that everybody can use it and make it their own by adding custom content.