***Music/1 page/742 words/1 grab/2 Boxouts/Neil Martin*** ***feature*** ***Neil Martin*** ***Music Reference Book*** ***90%*** The Fast Guide to Cubase Speed up your sequencing with the help of the most elegant Cubase companion yet published. I don't much like computer program manuals, and I think I'm not alone in that regard? Wouldn't it be handy if all manuals were written in a concise, engrossing and entertaining style; if they could always be easily opened to the page needed for that particular moment; if they gave enough extra advice to be useful without wasting time having to wade through irrelevance? I was impressed with the bright cover design, the good quality white paper (130-odd pages) and the excellent print quality, but it was with some scepticism that I opened my copy of Simon Millward's 'The Fast Guide to Cubase.' 'Oh dear', I thought as I read the introduction, 'not another overview!' But I was surprised to find a lightweight and readable style which held my interest. I wasn't too sure at first about the 'Cubase Universe', as Simon describes it, but the way it clarifies the internal structure of the Cubase system prevailed over my initial dubiety. This book is not primarily intended to be read from cover to cover of course but, for someone with a working knowledge of Cubase, the experience of doing so is both lucid and fascinating. The book's layout has obviously received a great deal of attention. All paragraphs have a bold header which identifies their subject matter and they are separated by enough white space to ensure that the page is not cluttered. Almost every page has one or more hint/tip boxout: all of the most useful hints and tips are presented in this way so that finding them again at a later date is a simple matter. There are plenty of clearly labelled screenshots, all of which are relevant to the text. Die hard atari enthusiasts (in other words, readers of this magazine!) will notice that the screen grabs are mostly not from the atari version of Cubase. The book caters for a generic version of Cubase without troubling us with platform specific differences. It was written using the atari version as its main reference and, in fact, all of the grabs were originally submitted to the Publisher in atari format. The Fast Guide to Cubase is smartly organised into chapters (see Chapter Titles), each dealing with a different part of the 'Cubase Universe'. Somehow Simon manages to mention a huge number of short-cuts without resorting to lots of lists (my pet hate, as far a manuals go). He also describes many useful techniques for dealing quickly and easily with recording and editing. With the help of this book, a complete novice to music sequencing could be using Cubase at an acceptable level of competence within less than an hour. But don't think of it as a beginners' guide because that is far from the truth: even 'power users' are finding useful titbits and may perhaps be enlightened a little with regard to some of the more obscure parts of the Cubase system. The Fast Guide to Cubase tries to be a quick reference guide as well as a user companion and, surprisingly, it succeeds admirably. It has a concise index to complement its chapter and page layouts. I am that impressed by its structure that I think the book would fall open at whatever page I needed next, but for the lack of a spiral binding! In short, unless you are one of those few magicians who can use Cubase fluently without the help of any documentation whatsoever, you are likely to find The Fast Guide to Cubase a godsend. ***Boxout*** Chapter Titles * Arrange Window * Key Edit * List Edit * Drum Edit * Control Functions * Score Edit * Logical Edit ***End of boxout*** ***Product box*** Product name: The Fast Guide to Cubase Publisher: PC publishing Contact: * Sound on Sound Publications, Ltd. 01954 789888 * PC Publishing, http://www.pc-pubs.demon.co.uk/ Price: œ10.95 Pros: * excellent index and layout * useful for beginners but with lots of tips for the 'power user' too * a good read, particularly as it's a reference book as well * easy to find a particular section or tip Cons: * a book this size can't cover everything * I should have preferred a spiral binder Score: 90% ***End of boxout*** ***CUTPASTE.GIF*** Screenshots like this one make The Fast Guide to Cubase the slickest computer 'program guide' I've ever seen.