Cubase is an incredibly powerful DAW — but it's also a lot to take in when you're starting out. Here are 10 things we wish someone had told us on day one. They would have saved us months of frustration.
1. Learn Key Commands Early — It Changes Everything
This might be the single most impactful piece of advice for any Cubase beginner. Learning even a handful of keyboard shortcuts will dramatically speed up your workflow and make Cubase feel far less clunky.
You don't need to memorise hundreds of them. Start with the essentials: Space to play/stop, R to record, P to set locators to the selection, Ctrl/Cmd+Z to undo, Ctrl/Cmd+D to duplicate, and F3 to open the MixConsole. Those six alone will save you a lot of mouse-clicking. Add more as you go.
Cubase also lets you create your own custom key commands, which is brilliant once you figure out which operations you use most. But for now — just learn the basics and watch how much faster everything becomes.
2. Create a Template — Don't Start from a Blank Project Every Time
Opening Cubase to a completely blank project is daunting and slow. One of the best things you can do early on is create a basic template with your common setup already loaded: a drum track, a bass instrument, a couple of synth tracks, maybe a reverb bus and a master chain.
Save it as a template (File → Save as Template), and every new project starts with your tools ready to go. This removes the friction of setup and lets you jump straight into creating. Professional producers all use templates — it's not cutting corners, it's being efficient.
Shortcut: If you want a ready-made starting point, our Cubase Templates come pre-loaded with professional routing, effects chains, and preset configurations — plus tutorial videos showing you how to use them.
3. The Lower Zone Is Your Best Friend
Cubase's Lower Zone (toggled by clicking the icons at the bottom of the project window) lets you access the MixConsole, Editor, Sampler Control, and Chord Pads without leaving the main project view. This is a game-changer for workflow, especially on a single monitor.
Many beginners don't even know the Lower Zone exists, and they spend their time constantly switching between separate windows. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you ever worked without it. The Lower Zone MixConsole alone — where you can see your faders while still viewing your arrangement — is worth discovering early.
4. Don't Ignore the Chord Track
Cubase's Chord Track is one of its most underrated features, especially for beginners who aren't confident with music theory. It lets you build chord progressions visually, and any MIDI instruments you route through it will automatically conform to the chords you've set.
This means you can experiment with different progressions, hear them instantly across your instruments, and even use the Chord Assistant to suggest chords that work well together. It's like having a co-writer who handles the theory while you focus on the creative decisions.
5. VariAudio Is Hidden Gold
If you record vocals in Cubase (Artist or Pro), VariAudio is an incredibly powerful pitch and timing correction tool that's built right into the software — no third-party plugins needed. It's Cubase's answer to Melodyne, and it's surprisingly capable.
Double-click an audio event, switch to the VariAudio tab, and you can see every note of a vocal performance displayed as a segment. From there you can correct pitch, adjust timing, straighten or add vibrato, and even create harmonies. It's not a feature many beginners discover on their own, but it's one of Cubase's genuine superpowers for vocal production.
6. Stock Plugins Are Better Than You Think
There's a common trap beginners fall into: spending money on expensive third-party plugins before they've even explored what Cubase comes with. The truth is, Cubase's stock plugins are genuinely excellent — and they're more than enough to produce professional-quality music.
The stock EQ, compressor, and limiter are solid. The reverb and delay plugins sound great. Groove Agent, HALion Sonic, Retrologue, and Padshop are all capable instruments. The new effects introduced in Cubase 15 — like UltraShaper and PitchShifter — add even more to the toolkit.
Master what you already have before looking elsewhere. You'll be surprised how far Cubase's built-in tools can take you. All of our Cubase tutorials deliberately focus on stock plugins so every student can follow along regardless of which Cubase edition they own.
7. Use Group Channels and FX Channels from the Start
This is a mixing habit that's worth building early. Instead of putting effects like reverb and delay directly on individual tracks (which eats CPU and sounds isolated), use FX Channels — also known as send/return tracks. Set up one reverb on an FX Channel, then send multiple instruments to it. They'll all share the same reverb space, which makes your mix sound cohesive and professional.
Similarly, Group Channels let you route multiple tracks to a single fader. Group all your drum tracks together, for example, and you can control the overall drum volume with one fader and apply processing to the drum bus as a whole. This is how professional mix engineers work, and setting it up in Cubase is straightforward once you know how.
8. Colour Code and Name Everything
This sounds tedious, but trust us — it pays off enormously as your projects get more complex. Give every track a descriptive name and a colour that makes sense to you (drums in red, bass in blue, synths in green, whatever works).
When you're 30 tracks deep in a project at midnight and you need to find that one background pad that's slightly too loud, you'll thank yourself for taking 30 seconds to label and colour things earlier. It's also essential if you ever collaborate or share projects with other people.
9. Cubase 15's New Features Are Worth Exploring
If you're starting with the latest version of Cubase, you have access to some genuinely exciting new tools. The AI-powered stem separation lets you extract vocals, drums, bass, and other instruments from any audio file — perfect for remixing or learning from reference tracks. The melodic pattern sequencer is great for generating bass lines and arpeggios. And the expanded modulators let you create dynamic, evolving effects across your tracks.
You don't need to dive into these on day one, but it's worth knowing they're there. As you grow more confident with the basics, these tools will open up entirely new creative possibilities.
10. Follow a Structured Course — Seriously
This is the one that would have saved us the most time. When Jay and I started with Cubase, we spent months clicking around randomly, watching disconnected YouTube videos, and feeling frustrated. We learned eventually, but it was slow and painful.
A structured, start-to-finish course doesn't just teach you the software — it teaches you music production at the same time, in context, as you build a real track. You learn why certain tools exist, when to use them, and how they fit into an actual production workflow. That context is everything. It's the difference between memorising button locations and genuinely understanding how to make music.
We say this not just because we make Cubase courses (though we do, and they're excellent if we say so ourselves) — but because it's genuinely the single most effective way to get past the beginner phase quickly and start enjoying the creative process.
🎹 Ready to Learn Cubase Properly?
Our Cubase Tutorial for Beginners is the most fun and effective way to learn — make a complete track step by step while mastering the DAW and production skills together. Free sample lessons available so you can try before you buy.
Explore the Cubase Beginner Course →
Or grab the Cubase Beginner Bundle for the complete package at a massive discount.
Bonus: Where to Go After the Basics
Once you've got the fundamentals down and you're comfortable navigating Cubase, you'll naturally want to level up. Here's the path we recommend:
Take your beginner project and push it further with our Cubase Beginner to Pro course, which picks up exactly where the beginner course leaves off. Dive deep into mixing with our dedicated Cubase Mixing Tutorial. Explore genre-specific production techniques in our Make a Track Start to Finish series. And if AI-assisted music production interests you, check out AI Music Mastery to learn how to combine AI tools with your Cubase workflow.
The journey from beginner to confident producer is incredibly rewarding — and with the right guidance, it's a lot less painful than going it alone. We're here to help you every step of the way.
All the best — the Born To Produce Team ✌️
Browse our full range of Cubase tutorials or check out what people are saying on our reviews page.