Hello and Welcome!

In general, you may find it more useful to post a specific question here, even if it’s something like ‘how should I get started?’

If you need basic help in several areas I’d suggest you pick up the GoMO video/dvd, which will at least get many of the fundamentals of the MO8 straightened out for you.

Yes. you are right. I was non-specific because… “where do I begin?”.
In a nutshell, my MO8 isn’t communicating with Cubase 8 so well.
I was recording in “performance” mode, and getting a single voice in playback. Yamaha has told me that Performance is a single timbral mode. Song and Pattern is multi timbral. I still have not quite got my head around that way of thinking yet.
I am at a disadvantage to technology. I have not recorded for close to 20 years. MIDI existed then, but I did not have the equipment to use MIDI.
The good folks at Yamaha suggested that I refer to page 134 of the MO8 user manual to configure MIDI, which I did. I will need to undo changes I made because MO8 won’t talk to Cubase at all for now.
Very frustrating. For the last 8 months, I have not recorded.
I am very much hoping that someone can help me.

I was hoping that a MO owner using Cubase 8 would reply. I’m going to preface this by saying that I don’t have a MO (mine are Motif XS and XF), and I don’t use Cubase. However, besides obtaining the video suggested by MrMotif…

Your member profile indicates you’re running Win7 64-bit. You might want to verify that you have the correct USB-MIDI driver installed, available here:
http://download.yamaha.com/search/product/?site=usa.yamaha.com&category_id1=16277&product_id=106369

If you don’t receive a helpful reply here on Motifator, consider joining Steinberg’s forum and see if they can assist you:
https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=226
-- or (if you have a “light” version of Cubase) --
https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=25

Setting a MO8 to communicate with Cubase is easy.

Utility -> [F3]SEQ -> [SF4]QUICK SET -> 3 unless you want to record the arpeggiator in which case you should set it to 4. Set this back to 1 to play the MO when not connected to Cubase.

Utility -> [F4]CTL ASN -> [SF4]REMOTE select Cubase (doh)