Steinberg Geoove Agent, Groove Agent Operation Manual
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described by this document is subject to a License Agreement and may not be copied
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© Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, 2003.
All rights reserved.
Groove Agent
2 English
Table of Contents
4 Welcome!
6 How do I use Groove Agent?
6 What is Groove Agent?
7 Register Groove Agent!
8 System requirements (PC version)
8 Installing Groove Agent (PC version)
8 Removing Groove Agent (PC version)
9 System requirements (Mac version)
9 Installing Groove Agent (Mac version)
10 Removing Groove Agent (Mac version)
10 Setting up Groove Agent as a VST instrument in your host application
10 Latency and VST instruments
11 First test
12 Groove Agent terminology
14 About the sounds in this VST instrument
18 Using Groove Agent
19 The LCD window
19 Range
20 Sliders and buttons
28 Mute, grouping and instrument selection
29 Stop/Run
30 Under the hood
33 The setup lid
37 Creating a drum track in Groove Agent
39 Using Groove Agent's MIDI output in Cubase SX
40 Using the automation in Cubase SX
41 Composing with Groove Agent's Memory slots in Cubase SX
42 About the styles
54 Tempo Guide
55 80 or 160 BPM, what's the correct tempo?
55 Finding a suitable style for your song
55 Jamming with Groove Agent
56 Smooth handling
56 Controlling Groove Agent from a MIDI keyboard
58 Contact, Internet
58 Credits
59 Last but not least…
ENGLISH
Groove Agent
English 3
Welcome!
In early 2002, a member of our Swedish VST forum suggested that
someone should create a modern day drum machine VST instrument.
Just like in the old days, when drum machines offered exotic musical
styles like Rumba and Cha-Cha, this baby would be able to play a huge
number of styles. And with today's 24 bit audio technology, velocity
layers, real ambience recordings and an easy to use control panel,
what could go wrong?
Okay then, a year later it's time for Groove Agent, a modern day drum
machine. An active one that houses both sounds and a huge number
of musical styles. A drum machine with a few extra surprises that adds
more music to your songs.
Here's how the advertising department would phrase it:
- “I can't program drums”.
- “I don't have the time to program drums”.
- “Inspire me!”.
The above words should be uttered by some depressed musician, and
then, in a strike of lightning, Groove Agent would come flying from the
skies, accompanied by a voice announcing this slogan:
“Create a professional drum track in the same 3 minutes it takes to
play your song!”.
End of commercial. I hate commercials.
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So why not skip the boring parts of life and concentrate on the interesting bits! I personally consider songwriting to be the finest craft of
all, and Groove Agent is designed to help anyone who needs drums in
their music; instant drums to keep the creative flow.
ENGLISH
Computer tools can't replace real humans, no more in music programs
than in other software. We've done our best in maintaining the human
touch in Groove Agent by asking real musicians to contribute with
their very best grooves. And when they thought the job was done, then
came the hard bits; adding half tempo feel and sidestick versions of all
25 levels of complexity for each style! The results often surprised the
musicians too, and the collected effort of all that musical activity resides somewhere there in those thousands of bars of drumming.
Please use Groove Agent to create sweet music! Music is good for
your soul, and hopefully this musical tool will assist and inspire you to
reach higher levels.
Sven Bornemark
/Producer
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How do I use Groove Agent?
Groove Agent is a VST instrument. You use it together with a host application, a sequencer program. If your sequencer supports VST instruments, then you can use Groove Agent. Here's how to get started:
1.
Prepare a track and load Groove Agent.
2.
Select a style using the top slider in Groove Agent. Wait while it loads
its sound data.
3.
Click the Run button and Groove Agent starts playing. Move the Complexity slider to hear variations in the style.
4.
Choose another style and hear what it sounds like when you change
the individual drum sounds, click the fill button, mute or un-mute the
percussion instruments, try the half tempo feel or add a syncope (accent). Have you found the ambience knob yet?
Now it's time to let Groove Agent act as a real drummer in your music!
What is Groove Agent?
Technically speaking, Groove Agent uses thousands of custom designed MIDI patterns created by Swedish top musicians. These patterns trigger samples especially recorded for this instrument. That's
basically it!
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The Timeline slider allows you to choose a musical style and its associated drum kit. Some of the kits are acoustic, others are electronic. The
Complexity slider provides you with increasing degrees of advanced
play. For each level there's an associated fill, half tempo feel pattern
and sidestick version. On top of that, there's an Edit section where you
can tweak the sounds and even change your instruments.
We're especially proud of the fine musicianship behind every single
level of the styles available. This piece of software was produced by
musicians for musicians!
Register Groove Agent!
Before getting carried away with Groove Agent, which we’re sure you
will be, please take a moment to complete and return the enclosed
registration card. This will entitle you to technical support, and we’ll
also keep you up to date with the latest news and updates.
ENGLISH
Groove Agent
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System requirements (PC version)
To run Groove Agent you'll need at least:
• A PC with a 400 MHz Pentium II processor or compatible AMD processor.
• 256 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended).
• 300 MB of hard disk space.
• Windows® 2000 or Windows® XP.
• Cubase or Nuendo (version 1.5 or higher) or another VST 2.0 compatible
host application. Please note that some features may not be supported in
other host applications.
❐
Please also observe the system requirements of your host application.
Installing Groove Agent (PC version)
To install Groove Agent on your PC:
1.
Switch on your computer and wait for Windows to load.
2.
Insert the Groove Agent CD ROM into your CD ROM drive.
3.
Open Windows Explorer, or the “My Computer” window, and doubleclick on the CD ROM drive icon.
4.
Double-click on the Groove Agent Installer icon to run the installation
program, and follow the on-screen instructions.
Removing Groove Agent (PC version)
To remove Groove Agent from your computer:
1.
Open the “Add or Remove Programs” control panel.
2.
Select Groove Agent and click “Add/Remove”.
3.
Follow the on-screen instructions.
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System requirements (Mac version)
To run Groove Agent you'll need at least:
• A G3 500 MHz computer or faster.
• 256 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended).
• 300 MB of hard disk space.
• Mac OS 9 or OS X version 10.2.
• Cubase or Nuendo (version 1.5 or higher) or another VST 2.0 compatible
host application. Please note that some features may not be supported in
other host applications.
Before running Groove Agent in Mac OS 9, you will have to make sure
that you have enough RAM allocated to your host application. To do
this, select your host application icon in the program folder and in the
Memory section press [Command]-[I] to open the “Information” panel.
Set the Preferred Size to a minimum of 30 MB below the total amount
of RAM available in your system. It is crucial that this headroom of
RAM is available for Mac OS, and if possible a headroom of more than
30 MB is preferred.
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If you choose “About this Mac” in the Apple Menu, you can see how
much memory your Mac OS uses and how much is available for your
host application. Also, we recommend that you do not run Groove
Agent with less than 128 MB allocated to your host application.
❐
Please also observe the system requirements of your host application.
Installing Groove Agent (Mac version)
To install Groove Agent on your Mac:
1.
Switch on your computer and insert the Groove Agent CD ROM.
2.
If the CD window doesn't open automatically, double-click on the
Groove Agent icon.
3.
Double-click on the Groove Agent Installer icon to run the installation
program, and follow the on-screen instructions.
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Removing Groove Agent (Mac version)
To remove Groove Agent from your computer:
1.
Run the Groove Agent Installer again (as described above) and select
“Uninstall” (from the pop-up located at the top left) when prompted.
2.
Select the program component you want to remove and click “Uninstall”.
Setting up Groove Agent as a VST instrument
in your host application
This section describes how to set up Groove Agent with Cubase SX
as your host application. However, the same procedure applies to
most host applications, and you should consult your host's documentation if you need further help.
Make sure the host program has been correctly installed and set up to
work with your MIDI and audio hardware (e.g. MIDI keyboard and a
sound card).
To set up Groove Agent:
1.
Open the VST Instruments window.
2.
Click the “No Instruments” label and select Groove Agent on the popup menu.
3.
Wait for a few seconds while Groove Agent loads its default style
samples. Open the Groove Agent window by clicking the Edit button
in the slot for Groove Agent.
4.
In the VST host application, select Groove Agent as the output for a
MIDI track.
Latency and VST instruments
Generally speaking, all VST instruments require a low latency soundcard. While Groove Agent can be played directly on screen with your
mouse, some users may find it more useful to control this instrument
from a MIDI keyboard. When controlling Groove Agent remotely like
this, an audio card with an ASIO driver produces best results.
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First test
Let's make sure Groove Agent is properly set up and ready to play:
1.
Load Groove Agent as a VST instrument. Make sure Groove Agent is
selected as the output for a MIDI track and that the MIDI channel chosen is any other than channel 10. If required, make sure your MIDI
controller is routed to this track.
2.
Open the Groove Agent panel. Move the Style slider to a style of your
choice. Be prepared to wait for a second or two while Groove Agent
loads its samples for this style. The yellow window is helpful here with
its Loading and Ready messages.
3.
Adjust the tempo of your host application to suit each style's favorite
tempo range as stated in the “range” field in the yellow LCD window.
ENGLISH
4.
Click Run in the Groove Agent window. By now you should see the
red LCD meters on the Groove Agent interface flash and the beat
light indicate 1-2-3-4. You should also hear cool rhythms streaming
from your speakers!
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Groove Agent terminology
LCD window
– The big, yellow window tells you, at all times, what's
going on inside Groove Agent. This is your main source for information.
LCD meters
– These are the cool, red level meters that start flashing
when Groove Agent is playing. They indicate that sound is being output from Groove Agent, but for more detailed control you should use
the level meters in your host sequencer.
Style
– A certain musical style, normally linked to a unique drum and
percussion kit.
Kit
– A special set of drums and percussion associated with each
style. Style and kit can be chosen separately.
Complexity
– The level of advancement in a style. In Groove Agent
the complexity levels go from left (simple) to right (advanced). Music
in general benefits from variations in a song, and in Groove Agent
they're easy to reach.
Fill
– A live drummer usually plays a fill every eight bars or so, emphasizing the song's structure and movement. A fill may be regarded as
“an improvised exclamation mark”. Going from the verse into the chorus? Time for a fill!
Half tempo feel
to half speed, while keeping the rest of the pattern going in the other
instruments, creates a dramatic effect. This is very typical live drummer
behavior! Real drummers do this all the time, if you don't stop them.
Accent
marked hit, typically played on the crash cymbal and kick drum. When
played off beat, like e.g. on the 8th note preceding a bar line, it becomes a syncope.
Shuffle
cate the relationship between the 8th notes (sometimes 16th notes),
as these can either be perfect 8ths (“straight 8ths”) or swung (“triplet
8ths”).
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– Typically, slowing down the kick and snare pattern
– Before drum machines became popular, an accent was a
– Sometimes referred to as “swing factor”. These terms indi-
ENGLISH
Limiter
– This is probably the first device a recording engineer
reaches out for when recording drums. Limiting (or compression, the
difference is not always easily defined) controls the overall output
level and can also be used as an effect.
Ambience
– Groove Agent comes with a complete set of ambience
recordings for all drums and percussion instruments. The acoustic
sounds have been recorded with distant microphones and the electronic sounds have been processed through various reverb and effects units.
Dry/Wet
– These are terms that describe the two extremes of a sound.
Either it's recorded very closely in a damped environment – dry – or
we're dealing with the sound recorded from a distance or bathed in
reverb – wet.
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About the sounds in this VST instrument
Before we started producing the musical content for this instrument, we
scanned the market for existing drum libraries we could use. Using
ready made samples would save us oceans of time (Per Larsson/Bigga
Giggas is the first person to agree here), but unfortunately we could not
find anything suitable. Either those libraries were incomplete in terms of
drum sounds (have you ever seen a sample archive that includes “hihat
gliss” or “spoons”?) or inconsistent in the way they were recorded.
We wanted (1) a complete selection of kits and sounds and (2) ambient recordings of everything. So we started recording…
The wonderful Studio Kuling in Örebro, Sweden has the most dramatic
recording room we've ever seen! The room itself is large and mostly
covered with wood panels, and engineer Jens Bogren certainly knows
his way around the equipment. With Mats-Erik Björklund playing all instruments, sound designers Per Larsson/Bigga Giggas and Sven
Bornemark started recording multiple velocity levels of each sound.
There was an initial agreement that this archive should cover most
grounds – as many musical landscapes as possible. Therefore we
decided upon recording all these instruments:
A 50s jazz kit. Not very
damped, sounds a bit
loose, sloppy.
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A 60s pop kit. Very
damped drums from
the era when they put
towels on the toms!
ENGLISH
A 70s rock kit. Loud,
deep and ringing.
This kit is big!
An 80s studio kit. Fresh
and modern, like on
most of today's CDs.
On top of that, we
added stuff that
adds color and realism to the different eras and
attitudes we
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wanted to cover. 50s drums played with brushes and mallets, 80s kit
with rods and additional snares like piccolo and deep models.
To make the archive complete, we had a long session with only percussion instruments, both those included in the GM protocol plus an
array of other, interesting sounds: African fur drum, rainstick, tambourine, cascabelles, mouthplopp etc.
Recording bongos…
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…congas…
…and timbales
Jens Bogren came up with the suggestion that we'd run everything
through an analogue 24 track tape recorder for “that warm sound”.
Great idea! Coupled with our original intention to produce a very complete archive, this is what we actually recorded:
• Tracks 1-2: closely miked drum.
• Tracks 3-4: overhead microphones.
• Tracks 5-6: ambient mics 2 meters away.
• Tracks 7-8: distant mics 7 meters away.
After the recording sessions, Per Larsson spent several months editing the sounds. Editing in a multitrack environment like this is a task
very different from working with only stereo samples. We carefully
chose the takes that would go together best and went for a mixed
setup, where the 50s and 70s kits use the dry and distant sounds and
the remaining instruments use the dry and ambient recordings.
ENGLISH
Mats-Erik Björklund was also the person responsible for bringing all
the carefully chosen instruments to the studio. So even if the 70s hihat
recordings went astray and we totally forgot to record the sound of a
whistle, his help has been invaluable!
So much for acoustic timbres. For the more modern and experimental
electronic sounds we turned to the sample library of Primesounds,
Stockholm. There was the multitude of sounds we needed. On top of
that, many of our musicians spent time on building their own unique
sounds from the ground up.
❐
Sounds marked with a B, M or R were recorded with Brushes, Mallets
and Rods respectively.
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Using Groove Agent
Here's the extremely compact version for the impatient amongst you:
Choose what style you want to use with the upper slider. Make sure
the lower slider is somewhere in the middle third of its total range and
that the tempo is inside the tempo range of the chosen style. Start your
sequencer, and when you want the drums to start playing, hit Run in
Groove Agent.
For really easy living, activate Auto Fill. Move the Complexity slider to
the left for easier/gentler playing and to the right for a more advanced/
noisy/wild drummer. Stop Groove Agent with its own Stop button or by
stopping your sequencer. To record the output of Groove Agent as a
MIDI part, click Edit, open the Setup section and put the MIDI Output
switch to the ON position (this only works in Cubase and Nuendo).
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The LCD window
the style names difficult to read. Please, have a look in the LCD window. It makes it much easier for you to place the sliders exactly where
you want them.
ENGLISH
The information given in this window
is mostly self explanatory, but let us
give you the most useful tip of all:
When navigating the Style and Complexity sliders, the big LCD window
always tells you where the sliders are.
We've crammed 54 styles into the
top slider, and some users may find
Range
Each style has its own favorite tempo range. If you play a hectic House
style at 40 BPM, it probably won't sound very impressive. We won't try
to stop you from trying any style in any tempo, but we remind you of
each style's home BPM range in the LCD window.
The recommended tempo range should be regarded as a helpful hint
if realism is what you're after. If not, break this rule!
❐
Look elsewhere in this manual for a tempo map overview.
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Sliders and buttons
The style slider/timeline
The top slider is perhaps the most important gadget in the entire instrument. It is a timeline with various musical styles written above it. When
dragging the slider along this timeline, you select what style to use.
Every style has its own carefully crafted drum kit assigned to it. Many
of the early styles sound a bit old by today's standards – both musically and soundwise – and that's exactly the point!
When first selecting a style, the plug-in will take a few seconds to load
the samples. When you move to another style, there are a few seconds of loading time again. But if you go back to the first style again,
loading time will be much shorter, because the samples are still in
your computer's cache. This is especially true for the Windows operating systems. So, if you are brave enough to use several styles within
one song, you may encounter glitches at those style changes, but only
the first time.
Styles stored in memory locations stay loaded, so Groove Agent will
not glitch when switching between them.
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The Style Link button
Choosing a style also selects a drum and percussion
kit especially assigned to it. As long as the two halves
of the slider are linked, that is. Clicking the Link button
once un-links the two halves of the slider button, making it possible for you to play the Bossa Nova style with a Techno
drum kit! In this mode, the upper half selects the playing style and the
lower half of the slider the kit.
Click the Link button again, if you want to re-establish the Link between
the style and the corresponding kit.
❐
Please note that selecting a new kit usually calls for new samples to be
loaded. This may take a few seconds.
ENGLISH
❐
There are two ways to help you place the lower half of the slider more
accurately. Either (1) look at the LCD window or (2) grab the slider and
move your mouse pointer to the last character of a style name.
The Complexity slider
This tool is also very important, since it makes the drumming built into
Groove Agent come alive. Getting acquainted with this slider shouldn't
be too problematic, since its behavior is very predictable.
If you move this slider to the left, you'll reach the simpler levels of complexity. As a matter of fact, the first levels – named A, B, C, D, and E –
are usually not even complete patterns. Something is missing here, be
it a kick drum or a few beats. The reason we gave you these levels is
because we think you might find them suitable for song intros or when
producing very sparse music. Maybe only the first verse of your song
needs this gentle touch?
By moving the slider to the right, you move into the more busy territory. Here you'll find variations 1-20 of the chosen style and the further
you move to the right, the busier it gets. Some may even regard the
rightmost levels to be totally unlistenable, but that's intentional. This
drummer gets a bit wild sometimes!
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For convenience's and predictability's sake, level changes occur only
at bar lines. This means that if you want to change from level 8 to 11
and move the slider on the second beat of a bar, you'll have to wait until the next bar to hear the new level. This behavior gives you time to
trigger fills (and click other buttons if you need to) a bit in advance.
If you really want to change levels instantly, you should get acquainted
with the memory section. There you can jump between ANY combinations of panel settings in a split second.
❐
Complexity levels 1-15 are generally regarded as “normal” or “most useful”.
The Complexity Link button
The 25 levels of complexity each have their own
unique fill. By moving the slider to a certain level and
then hitting the Fill button, you'll hear the fill associated
with that level.
You can however separate the two halves of the slider. When you
click the Link button, the two halves can be dragged individually. In
this mode, it's perfectly possible to use a very simple rhythm and
activate a rather complex fill. Or vice versa.
You may also find the Link button useful if you've decided that “fill number 13" (or whatever) is the only one you want to use at a particular position in your song. Or throughout the song, for that matter.
Clicking the Link button again re-establishes the link between complexity and fill.
Snare/Sidestick
One common practice in traditional drumming is to
make the sound “lighter” by playing with the stick lying down on the snare drum hitting the metal rim.
This is called sidestick and here's the button for it.
You may switch between regular snare and sidestick
at any level of complexity.
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While we've tried our very best to make the sidestick option sound as
natural and musical as possible, there are instances where it felt really
awkward to use the sidestick. Therefore, the sidestick option is available in most but not all the complexity levels in Groove Agent.
❐
The sidestick playing technique generally sounds more natural at lower
complexity levels.
Accent
ENGLISH
This button triggers a kick + crash cymbal hit. You
may use it as an accent in your song. When hit at an
off-beat, the accent hit becomes a syncope. The current drum pattern stops for as long as you keep the
button pressed. Holding down the Accent button for
approximately one quarter note after you hit it on an
off-beat creates a very realistic syncope.
Fill
This is one of the most rewarding buttons of this instrument! A drum machine that played its patterns
very regularly and automatically triggered a fill every
8th bar would sound right most of the time but certainly not always.
In Groove Agent you are the band leader, the conductor! Hit the button when you feel it's time for a fill, and Groove Agent
will obey. If you hit the button early in a bar, you'll hear more of the fill
bar than if you hit the button late in a bar. Armed with this knowledge,
you can turn even the wilder fills into more discrete ones.
Please note that in most styles the fills end with a crash cymbal on the
downbeat of the next bar, just like a live drummer. You can turn this effect off by muting the Crash group.
Speaking of arming, you can actually start a pattern with a fill. When
Groove Agent is stopped, hitting the fill button will arm it, so that clicking the Run button makes Groove Agent start playing with a fill.
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There are 25 levels of complexity in each style. This also applies to
fills; the lower numbered fills are generally less busy than the higher
numbered ones.
❐
Some musical styles have a definite 2 or 4-bar pattern feel to them. While
an irregular (like 7 or 9) bar period in your music may cause such a pattern to sound wrong (a bit like “one bar late”), it's reassuring to know that
after a fill the music always restarts at “bar 1" in such a pattern.
❐
Fills can also be used for endings. Hit the Fill button in the last bar of
your song and then the Stop button on the last beat.
Half Tempo Feel
bonus; no other drum machine (that we know of) has a “Half Tempo
Feel” button. But all drummers do!
One trick many live drummers use, is to change their
playing to “half tempo feel”. It usually involves slowing
down the kick and snare pattern to half tempo while
keeping the hihat/ride pattern going. Figge, one of the
musicians involved in this project, suggested that we
include this feature in Groove Agent. After some serious thought, we decided it would definitely be a big
In Groove Agent, all the half tempo feel patterns have been especially
programmed to imitate this trick. One very obvious example can be
found in the Fox style. Play it at a moderately brisk tempo and then hit
the Half Tempo Feel button. You will notice how the playing style turns
into something very similar to funk.
In practice, the Half Tempo Feel function doubles the amount of available styles! You can think of the half tempo feel as the basic rhythm of
your song. And then, near the end, perhaps disengage the button for
an uptempo, gospel style ending!
❐
Try activating the Half Tempo Feel button at the bridge section of a song
and then go back to normal play for the end choruses. Or at any other part
where you feel the urge to increase the excitement or coolness with this
function.
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Random
The random button only moves within a range of ±2 levels from the
slider's original position.
Auto Fill
ENGLISH
If you want some automatic pattern variation, the Random button is very handy. This function automatically
changes patterns for you. The general idea is to make
the drumming sound less rigid, less predictable. The
LCD window shows you what level is currently playing.
Here's a handy little button. It can automate the way fills
are triggered. When you move from one complexity level
to another with Auto Fill activated, Groove Agent automatically plays a fill before the next level.
❐
If an auto save function is active in your sequencer, it may cause Groove
Agent to trigger a fill. The medicine is to turn Auto Save off.
Random Fill
As with the Random button, the randomly chosen fill always lies within
±2 steps from the slider's current location.
Shuffle
This is another little tool to make life easier. If you stay
within one complexity level and trigger a fill every now
and then, this button will make sure that every time
there's a fill, it'll be a slightly different one.
Some of the music in this world has a “straight”, or
“even”, subdivision. Eights are even eights, so to
speak. Other genres use some form of triplets, giving
the rhythm a certain “swing”, a smoother, rolling
character.
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Musically, these two types are known as straight and swing based
music. And to make matters more complicated, swung music can be
based on either triplet 8ths (as in the song “New York, New York”) or
triplet 16th notes (as in Stevie Wonder's “Sir Duke”).
The Shuffle knob affects the sub-timing of the 8ths or 16ths and acts
a bit differently than the other Groove Agent controls. If you play a
straight style and turn the knob to the right (+), you'll hear the music
change into a more “swingy” style (the even 8ths or 16ths turning into
triplet feel). On the other hand, a swing based style becomes more
straight if you turn the dial to the left.
Unfortunately, while we've tried our best to provide a logical user interface, the Shuffle knob can be used to mess things up, too. If you turn
in towards 7 o'clock when playing a straight style, or if you turn it towards 5 o'clock when playing something triplet based, the result will
sound weird, to say the least. Use at your own risk!
The normal position for this knob is 12 o'clock. At this setting, all
styles sound as they were originally composed.
❐
For that cajun, zydeco, or New Orleans kind of swing, try using a straight
style and move the Shuffle knob halfway to its triplet position, to the 5760% region.
Humanize
The normal position for this knob is to the far left.
Even though the musical tracks feeding Groove
Agent have been created with great care and musicality, you may want to give your drumming a bit
more natural variation. This knob gradually makes
the instrument play more “inaccurately” in terms of
timing and dynamics.
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26 English
Limiter
complete musical mix, then this Limiter may help you obtain a stronger
and more consistent sound pressure level.
The knob you see actually controls four stereo limiters simultaneously.
If you assign individual groups to different outputs, the loud kick on
output 1 will still affect the crash cymbal on output 3. This linking
makes the Limiter behave more predictably.
ENGLISH
The first thing any studio engineer reaches out for
when recording drums is probably a dynamics processor, like a compressor or a limiter. We've thrown
in a simple limiting device in Groove Agent to put
that dynamic control within easy reach for you.
If you feel that the drums don't cut through your
Use with care! There's nothing worse than an over-squished mix.
The normal position for this knob is its minimum (Off) position.
Ambience
This knob is one of the highlights of Groove Agent!
All the acoustic drums and percussion instruments
were recorded using a mix of four techniques:
• Every instrument close miked, giving a very dry sound.
• Every instrument recorded through the overhead microphones, giving a rather
dry sound but with a sweet stereo image.
• Every instrument recorded through the ambience microphones, positioned
approximately 2 meters from the source. This gave us a warm, roomy sound
with a controlled amount of “air”.
• Every instrument recorded through a pair of distant mikes, placed over 7 metres away. Now we're talking room! These recordings give a definite hall atmosphere. Overly roomy? Yes, definitely!
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Now, while editing the sound archive for Groove Agent, we carefully
chose the ambience recording that should go with every dry source.
For the 50s kit, we used the close-up microphones for drums and hihat and the overheads for the cymbals. We then added the distant recordings for ambience. This gave us a chance to create old sounding,
overly acoustic kits for that vintage sound.
For other kits we used different combinations, and for the modern,
electronic sounds we added normal studio effects units like reverbs
and delays.
All in all, the very natural sounding ambience is there for you to use!
We've preset a lot of different kits to go with the different musical
styles, but if you want to change the preset version, use this dial to
your heart's content!
This knob also acts as a master control for the 8 individual group Ambience controls.
The normal position for this knob is 12 o'clock. Turning it all the way to
the left produces an all dry sound, while all the way to the right gives
you the ambient (wet) sounds only.
Mute, grouping and instrument selection
The sounds in Groove Agent are organized in 8 logical groups:
1. Kick (bass) drum
2. Snare drum
3. Toms or effects
4. Hihat
5. Ride and Chinese cymbals
6. Crash and splash cymbals
7. Percussion group 1 (usually “high and
quick” instruments)
8. Percussion group 2 (usually “low and
slow” instruments)
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You can use the corresponding Mute button at any time to kill the
sound output from any of these groups. Mute activated = no sound.
Mute disabled (un-lit) = sound on.
While listening to the preset styles and their related kits, you may want
to experiment with exchanging individual instruments or instrument
groups. Click the sound name field to open a pop-up menu from which
you can choose a different instrument. Change that tight 80s studio
kick to a dull 50s jazz kick in one easy go and hear the results instantly!
Stop/Run
quencer is running, Groove Agent follows the tempo and synchronizes to the beat position of the host.
ENGLISH
These buttons start and stop Groove
Agent. While this instrument can be used
with your host sequencer stopped, it always plays at the BPM rate (tempo) of
your host program. When your se-
You can make Groove Agent start simultaneously with your sequencer
by using this method:
1. Start your sequencer.
2. Start Groove Agent.
3. Click the sequencer stop button.
Now, the next time you start your sequencer, Groove Agent will start,
too! The waiting status of the Run button is indicated by a green light.
This is good for those situations where you want the drums to play
from the very start of a song or a section.
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Under the hood
So far we have only described the functions you can reach on the top
surface of Groove Agent. The black area surrounding the large LCD
window is not only holding the level meters, it's also the lid under which
the Edit department resides. Let's open the lid by clicking “Edit” in the
lower right corner of the instrument panel.
The sound edit knobs
There are eight rows of controls in
the area close to the middle of the
screen. The functions for all the
eight instrument groups are identical, so we're using the top row as
an example.
All knobs have their default position
at 12 o'clock.
Aud – This knob lets you audition the sound chosen in the group window to the left. This function is handy when auditioning the sounds
themselves and the edits you make to them.
Vel – The Velocity Offset knob alters the response of the drum sounds.
When turned anti-clockwise, the MIDI input velocities are scaled down
to lower values, making more use of the softer samples. Turning the
knob past 12 o'clock increases the input velocities, producing a harder,
louder sound. To compensate for the decrease/increase in overall output, a volume compensating device is connected to each group output.
This knob may also be regarded as a quick method for making the
acoustic drums sound more loose or tight.
Tune – You can tune each group up and down by as much as 12
seminotes with this knob. Please note that for ease of use, the knob
has a much finer resolution around its 12 o'clock position than at its
end positions.
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