Steinberger VSTi GrooveAgent 2 User's Manual

The information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not rep­resent a commitment on the part of Steinberg Media Te c hnologies GmbH. The software described by this document is subject to a License Agreement and may not be copied to other media. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or otherwise transmitted or recorded, for any purpose, without prior written permission by Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.
All product and company names are ™ or ® trademarks of their respective owners. Windows XP is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. The Mac logo is a trademark used under license. Macintosh is a registered trademark. Mac OS X is a registered trademark.
© Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, 2005. All rights reserved.
Groove Agent
2 English

Table of Contents

4Welcome! 6 How do I use Groove Agent? 7What is Groove Agent? 7 Register Groove Agent! 8 The Steinberg Key 10 System requirements (PC version) 10 Installing Groove Agent (PC version) 11 System requirements (Mac version) 11 Installing Groove Agent (Mac version) 12 Activating the Steinberg Key 13 Setting up Groove Agent as a VST instrument in your host application 14 Setting up Groove Agent as a DXi2 instrument 15 Using Groove Agent in an AU compatible application 16 Groove Agent stand-alone and ReWire 17 First test 18 Groove Agent terminology 20 About the sounds in this VST instrument 27 Using Groove Agent 28 The LCD window 29 Range 29 The right-click menu 30 Sliders and buttons 39 Mute, grouping and instrument selection 40 Stop/Run 41 Under the hood 44 The setup lid 48 Creating a drum track in Groove Agent 50 Using Groove Agent’s MIDI output in Cubase SX 51 Using the automation in Cubase SX 52 Composing with Groove Agent’s Memory slots in Cubase SX 53 About the styles 71 Tempo Guide 73 80 or 160 BPM, what’s the correct tempo? 73 Finding a suitable style for your song 73 Jamming with Groove Agent 74 Smooth handling 74 Controlling Groove Agent from a MIDI keyboard 76 Contact, Internet 76 Credits 77 Last but not least…
ENGLISH
English 3
Groove Agent

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?
A year later it was time for Groove Agent, a modern day drum machine. Now it’s early 2005 and we’re presenting Groove Agent 2 – the next logical step. We’ve added content in the form of acoustic and elec­tronic drum kits plus 27 new styles and some improved functionality. But the basic behavior of our drum machine is still the same, so for any­one saying:
- “I can’t program drums”,
- “I don’t have the time to program drums”,
- “Inspire me!”,
Groove Agent 2 offers instant assistance and inspiration for producing songs, jingles, film scores or any other genre that requires versatility and speed. We also know that some Groove Agent customers prefer using our drum machine as a rhythmic source to feed external sound modules, or to use the built-in sounds for their own drumming. Or any combination thereof.
I firmly believe that the slogan we used two years ago still holds true for this updated version of Groove Agent: “Create a professional drum track in the same 3 minutes it takes to play your song!”.
Groove Agent
4 English
So why not skip the boring parts of life and concentrate on the inter­esting bits! I personally consider song-writing to be the finest craft of all, and Groove Agent 2 is designed to help anyone who needs drums in their music; instant drums to keep the creative flow.
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 2 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.
ENGLISH
Please use Groove Agent 2 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
Groove Agent
English 5

How do I use Groove Agent?

You can use Groove Agent as stand-alone application or 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 or a sub-style using the top slider in Groove Agent (see
page 30). 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!
Groove Agent
6 English

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!
The Timeline slider allows you to choose a musical style or sub-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.
ENGLISH
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 7
Groove Agent

The Steinberg Key

Please read the following section before installing the Groove Agent software.
Included with the Groove Agent package, you will find an activation code (not to be confused with the serial number) for the Steinberg Key (sometimes referred to as a “dongle”), a hardware copy protec­tion device that is part of the Groove Agent copy protection scheme. Groove Agent will not run if there is no Steinberg Key and if this key hasn’t been properly activated. You can either separately purchase a new Steinberg Key for use with Groove Agent, or use a key previously bought for use with a different Steinberg application.
If you have a Windows PC and have never used a dongle on your computer before, the installation routine may initiate a restart of Win­dows after installation of the key drivers. After the restart, the key must be plugged into the USB port for the installation routine to continue.
If you already own software that requires a Steinberg Key, it should be plugged into the computer’s USB port after installing Groove Agent and restarting the computer!
When the key is plugged into the USB port, Windows will automatically register it as a new hardware device and will attempt to find drivers for it – these necessary drivers won’t be present until Groove Agent has been installed and the computer restarted.
The Steinberg Key
Groove Agent
8 English
The Steinberg Key is, in fact, a little computer on which your Stein­berg software licenses are stored. All hardware-protected Steinberg products use the same type of key, and you can store more than one license on one key. Also, licenses can (within certain limits) be trans­ferred between keys – which is helpful, e.g. if you want to sell a piece of software.
If you already own a Steinberg Key (e.g. for Cubase or Nuendo), you can load your Groove Agent license onto that one, using the activation code supplied with Groove Agent. This way you need only one USB key for both your host and Groove Agent (see below).
The Steinberg Key must not be plugged in before or during the installa­tion of Groove Agent if this is the first time you use such a key. Other­wise Windows will register it as new USB hardware and try to find drivers that won’t be present before Groove Agent installation.
ENGLISH
English 9
Groove Agent

System requirements (PC version)

To run Groove Agent you’ll need:
•A PC with a 800 MHz Pentium or Athlon processor (1.4 GHz or faster recom­mended).
384 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended).
450 MB of hard disk space.
Windows® XP Home or Professional.
Windows MME compatible audio hardware (an ASIO compatible audio card is recommended).
If you want to use Groove Agent as a plug-in, you’ll need Cubase or Nuendo (version 1.5 or higher) or another VST 2.0 or DXi 2 compatible host application. Please note that some features may not be supported in other host applications.
•A Steinberg Key and a free USB port.
Monitor and graphics card supporting 1024 x 768 resolution (a dual monitor setup and a display resolution of 1152 x 864 are recommended).
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 the Windows Explorer, or the “My Computer” window, and dou­ble-click 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.
Groove Agent
10 English

System requirements (Mac version)

To run Groove Agent you’ll need:
•A Power Mac G4 867 MHz computer (Power Mac G4 Dual and 1.25 GHz or faster recommended).
384 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended).
450 MB of hard disk space.
Mac OS X version 10.3 or higher.
CoreAudio compatible audio hardware.
If you want to use Groove Agent as a plug-in, you’ll need Cubase or Nuendo (version 1.5 or higher) or another VST 2.0 or AU compatible host application. Please note that some features may not be supported in other host applications.
•A Steinberg Key and a free USB port.
Monitor and graphics card supporting 1024 x 768 resolution (a dual monitor setup and a display resolution of 1152 x 864 are recommended).
Please also observe the system requirements of your host application.

Installing Groove Agent (Mac version)

ENGLISH
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.
Groove Agent
English 11

Activating the Steinberg Key

Whether you bought a new key when you bought Groove Agent, or if you want to use one you previously bought with a different Steinberg product: your Steinberg Key does not yet contain a valid license for Groove Agent. You must download a license to it before you can launch Groove Agent!
Use the activation code supplied with the program in order to down­load a valid Groove Agent license to your Steinberg Key. This process is the same both for existing and new keys. Proceed as follows:
1.
After installation and restarting the computer, plug the Steinberg Key into the USB port.
If you are unsure of which port this is, consult the computer’s documentation.
2.
If this is the first time a copy protection device is plugged in, it will be registered as a new hardware device, and a dialog will appear asking you whether you would like to find drivers for the device manually or automatically.
Choose to find drivers automatically. The dialog closes, and you may have to reboot your computer.
3.
Make sure that your computer has a working internet connection.
License download is made “online”. If your Groove Agent computer isn’t connected to the internet, it’s possible to use another computer for the online connection – proceed with the steps below and see the help for the License Control Center application.
4.
Launch the “License Control Center” application (found in the Win­dows Start menu under “Syncrosoft” or in the Macintosh Applications folder).
This application allows you to view your Steinberg Keys and load or transfer licenses.
5.
Use the License Control Center “Wizard” function and the activation code supplied with Groove Agent to download the license to your Key. Simply follow the on-screen instructions.
If you are uncertain about how to proceed, consult the help for LCC.
When the activation process has completed, you are ready to launch Groove Agent!
Groove Agent
12 English

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 an audio card).
To set up Groove Agent:
1.
Open the VST Instruments window.
2.
Click the “No Instruments” label and select Groove Agent from the pop-up menu.
3.
Wait for a few seconds while Groove Agent loads its default style samples. The Groove Agent window opens automatically.
4.
In the VST host application, select Groove Agent as the output for a MIDI track.
ENGLISH
Groove Agent
English 13

Setting up Groove Agent as a DXi2 instrument

The information in this section refers to using Groove Agent within Cake­walk SONAR. We assume that you have correctly set up both SONAR and your available MIDI and audio hardware. Should you wish to use Groove Agent within another DXi2 compatible host application, please refer to its documentation.
Proceed as follows to activate Groove Agent:
1.
Make sure that SONAR receives MIDI data that you generate with your external MIDI master keyboard. You can check this visually with the “MIDI In/Out Activity” tray icon.
2.
In SONAR, open the “Synth Rack” window from the View menu.
3.
Click the Insert button (or select the Insert option on the main menu).
4.
Open the DXi Synth submenu and select “Groove Agent” from the pop-up menu.
5.
By default the “Insert DXi Options” dialog appears. To create one MIDI track and connect an audio track to Groove Agent’s 1+2 outputs, ac­tivate the options “Midi Source Track” and “First Synth Output”. To create all available Groove Agent outputs activate “All Synth Outputs”. Refer to your host application’s documentation for further details.
6.
Clicking the “Connection State” button in the Synth Rack will acti­vate/deactivate Groove Agent. By default this is automatically acti­vated when DXi SoftSynths are loaded.
7. Double-click on the “Groove Agent” entry or click the “Synth Proper­ties” button in the tool bar of the Synth Rack to open the Groove Agent window.
8.
In SONAR, select the previously created MIDI track “Groove Agent”. Groove Agent will now receive MIDI data from the selected track.
Groove Agent receives MIDI data in 16 channel multi-mode. It is therefore not neces­sary to assign a specific MIDI receive channel in Groove Agent. However, you should make sure that the MIDI channel of the currently selected SONAR track is set to the channel on which Groove Agent is to receive MIDI data.
Groove Agent
14 English

Using Groove Agent in an AU compatible application

You can use Groove Agent in an AU host application (e.g. Logic).
The Groove Agent AU version is installed in the folder “Library/Audio/ Plug-ins/Components” and lets Groove Agent work in an AU environ­ment – without any performance loss or incompatibilities.
For Logic Pro 7 proceed as follows:
1.
Open the Track Mixer and choose the desired Instrument channel.
2.
[Command]-click the I/O field and, in the pop-up menu that appears, choose either Multi-Channel or Stereo.
3.
In the sub-menu that appears, select All Instruments and then Groove Agent.
Groove Agent is now loaded as an AU instrument.
When set, you are ready to load some samples and start using Groove Agent!
ENGLISH
Groove Agent
English 15

Groove Agent stand-alone and ReWire

Groove Agent can be used as a stand-alone application, indepen­dently of any host application. This makes it possible to use Groove Agent in sequencer applications that do not support one of the pro­vided plug-in formats of Groove Agent (i.e. VST, DXi, AU), but allow for data exchange using ReWire.
ReWire2 is a special protocol for streaming audio and MIDI data be­tween two computer applications. When using ReWire, the order in which you launch and quit the two programs is very important, as the first audio application launched will capture the sound card resources. Proceed as follows:
1.
First, launch the sequencer application you wish to use (e.g. Ableton Live, ProTools).
If your sequencer supports ReWire, it will provide a way to assign audio and MIDI channels for the exchange of data. See the documentation of your sequencer applica­tion for details.
2.
Now, launch Groove Agent as a stand-alone application.
If you chose to create desktop and Start menu items during installation of Groove Agent, you can launch the program just like any other application on your computer. You can also double-click the Groove Agent program file in the installation folder.
When you now play a style with Groove Agent, the sound is streamed via ReWire to the assigned mixer channels in your host. You can route the separate instrument outputs to individual mixer channels (up to 8).
Note that you are now running two completely separate applications. When you save your sequencer project, this will include the overall channel and bus configuration, but none of the settings in Groove Agent! To retain your Groove Agent settings, choose the Save Bank command from the Groove Agent File menu. You may want to choose a file name that indicates that the file contains settings created for a particular sequencer project.
Similarly, when you re-open a project in your sequencer application and have launched Groove Agent, use the Load Bank command in Groove Agent to reload the Groove Agent settings pertaining to this particular project.
Groove Agent
16 English

First test

Let’s make sure Groove Agent is properly set up and ready to play:
1.
If you 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 green LCD 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 displayed in the “range” field in the green LCD window.
4.
Click Run in the Groove Agent window. 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!
ENGLISH
Groove Agent
English 17

Groove Agent terminology

LCD window
going on inside Groove Agent. This is your main source for information.
LCD meters
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 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 – Typically, slowing down the kick and snare pattern 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.
– The big, green window tells you, at all times, what’s
– These are the cool, red level meters that start flashing
– The level of advancement in a style. In Groove Agent
Accent – Before drum machines became popular, an accent was a 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 – Sometimes referred to as “swing factor”. These terms indi­cate the relationship between the 8th notes (sometimes 16th notes), as these can either be perfect 8ths (“straight 8ths”) or swung (“triplet 8ths”).
Groove Agent
18 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.
New in Groove Agent 2 is the right-click menu. We’ve added some new features that can be reached by pressing the right mouse button or by left-clicking in the logo area.
Via this menu you can reach the About screen or go to the Groove Agent and Stein­berg websites. You can also reach new functions like changing the number of mixer outputs, edit MIDI output behavior, change the MIDI mute key mode or instruct Groove Agent 2 what to do when the host stops.
ENGLISH
Groove Agent
English 19

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 “Worra” Lars­son/SampleTekk 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 “Worra” Larsson/SampleTekk 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.
Groove Agent
20 English
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.
Groove Agent
English 21
On top of that, we added stuff that adds color and realism to the dif­ferent eras and attitudes we 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…
Groove Agent
22 English
…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.
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.
ENGLISH
Sounds marked with a B, M or R were recorded with Brushes, Mallets and Rods respectively.
Groove Agent
English 23

The new sounds for Groove Agent 2

The Groove Agent 2 sessions sported Mats-Erik behind the drums and as the main sound designer. Engineer for this second round was Rickard Bengtsson. Mats-Erik took the opportunity to record some useful kits to make the sonic palette even more complete:
The Studio kit – A top of the line set with some of the best drums and cymbals around. We wanted to achieve a sound that would fit in a lot of styles that demand a good, clean and modern sound. The three snares are high quality snares with different depth and materials and carefully tuned to bring out the true characteristic of the instru-
ments
.
The Heavy kit – This drum-set is intended to fit in many of to­day’s Metal styles, where busy bass drumming is a vital ingre­dient. The dry character of the ride-cymbal and the great sound from the crashes will cut through any wall of guitars.
Groove Agent
24 English
The Noisy kit – We wanted to cre­ate a modern drum sound using tra­ditional drums. These instruments are very small but along with the boom-box effect they sound much bigger than they really are. We ex­perimented a lot with different digi­tal effects and came up with a sound that we think will last. The snares are a thin, high pitched pic­colo and a small 10" mini-snare. Some of the cymbals are rare vin­tage instruments that are almost impossible to find anywhere today, while others are modern, noisy sounding instruments that have seen better days...
A red Slingerland “Radio King” (the world’s most re­corded snare drum), a black handmade snare drum from Hanus & Hert in Prague and a
Slingerland copper snare
.
ENGLISH
In order to achieve our sonic goals, it was decided that we would not add acoustic ambience this time. Rickard had just purchased an Even­tide Harmonizer “Orville” unit and spent considerable time creating some very significant environments for the drum sounds. The resulting sounds are very rich and colorful.
Groove Agent
English 25
In addition to the three acoustic kits, a handful of vintage drum machines from Sven Bornemark’s private col­lection were added. Some of these beauties are over thirty years old, so sampling them was not without complications. Old analogue gear has a tendency to sound a bit differ­ent from day to day, and even from beat to beat, so when comparing the original, built in rhythms with our MIDI renditions, there are some dif­ferences. However, we think we’ve managed to capture and re-pack­age the better part of the magic of these drum machines of yesteryear.
The vintage drum machines got their ambience from a vintage EMT plate reverb unit located in Malmö’s most well known recording studio, Tambourine Studios.
Groove Agent
26 English

Using Groove Agent

ENGLISH
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).
Groove Agent
English 27

The LCD window

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 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.
You have probably noticed that some of the style names above the top slider are colored differently. That’s because they house sub-styles, the new additional 27 styles that have been added in Groove Agent 2. Here’s the trick:
1. Select a differently colored style with the slider as usual.
2. Right click with your mouse button and select any of the new styles
listed in the pull-down menu.
As you might have expected, it’s still possible to combine the music of one style with the drum kit from another style. Just de-activate the Link button and use separate positions (and sub-menus) for the two halves of the style selector.
Groove Agent
28 English

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!
For a tempo map overview, see page 71.

The right-click menu

Several new features can be reached by right-clicking in an unused area of the main interface of by clicking in the logo area:
About Groove Agent 2 – This page lists the people involved and shows the version number. You can exit the Credits page by clicking anywhere in it.
Groove Agent website – Info, sound clips, FAQ and a friendly forum at this dedicated website.
Steinberg website – Here’s where you can learn more about other cool and creative software.
Audio Outputs – You can decide how many stereo outputs Groove Agent will occupy in your host’s mixer. Please notice, that due to technical reasons, the changes made here won’t be seen until Groove Agent has been re-started.
MIDI Output – Groove Agent 2 can output its drumming to either a MIDI part (as before) or to a MIDI file! That MIDI file can then be imported to your host for further tweaking.
MIDI Mute Key Mode – Remote control of Groove Agent 2 is now easier than ever! Two new modes in this department. More info in the section “Controlling
Groove Agent from a MIDI keyboard” on page 74.
When Host Stops – The Pause behavior has been changed in Groove Agent 2. Please consult the section “Stop/Run” on page 40.
ENGLISH
Groove Agent
English 29

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.
The 27 new styles introduced in Groove Agent 2 can be reached by moving the slider to a differently colored style name and right-clicking on it. You can then make a selection from the pull down menu.
Groove Agent
30 English
Loading...
+ 218 hidden pages