Hi Lee,
Cubase & Genos
yea, I feel your pain. Been struggling with those two for a while.
For recording Genos to Cubase, I have tried to record directly into Cubase - following Thios videos on YouTube - but I never got it to fully worked. Sometimes it sounded fine, but other times I got some really weird results.
Nowadays I record the basic song foundation in Genos first (Style, instruments and effects).
Sometimes I use the chord step record feature and other time I do live recording, but I am not such a good live player, so when recording live, I'll have to do quite a lot of editing in Cubase.
After recording in Genos, I save the result as a midi file and import into Cubase and also turned midi local off on Genos to use it as a controller.
At first I still had some issues with the effects I used on the instrument tracks not being enabled when I played the file back in Cubase. It could be working from the beginning of the playback, but as soon as I stop the playback in Cubase, the effects turned off.
I later found out that there was a sysex message that turned off the effect after I stopped the multi recorder in Genos. I thought I only needed to record a few seconds of the instruments I wanted to use, but then you will have to find the sysex message that turn off the effect and it might not be so easy if you don’t know where to look. So now when I record an instrument in Genos, I just let the multi recorder run until the song ends, so that I know I will get all the effects.
Even if there is a bit more work to do the initial recording in Genos and then import the midi file in Cubase, I feel that I get a better result this way. The result sounds exactly as it does when playing the style back on Genos. Also, using the Yamaha musicsoft downloader app, makes is fast to transfer the midi file from Genos to my computer.
As for controlling VSTi instruments from Genos, I have only used basic functions like playback, using sing pitch bends and modulation. Unfortunately the Genos lacks transport buttons, like on the MOFX and other keyboards, so the option to control Cubase is limited and you might be better off using a dedicated controller, like the Steinberg CC121.
I have heard that the new VST3 standard, support MIDI Learning for mapping MIDI CC to controller. I have not been experimenting with this though.
Best regards
/Jorgen