Steinberg Groove Agent 2 Manual
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Groove AgentEnglish 21 ENGLISH A 60s pop kit. Very damped drums from the era when they put towels on the toms! 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 22 English On top of that, we added stuff that adds color and realism to the dif- ferent eras and attitudes we wanted to cover. 50s drums played with brushes and mallets, 80s kit with rods and additional snares like pic- colo and deep models. To make the archive complete, we had a long session with only per- cussion instruments, both those included in the GM protocol plus an array of other, interesting sounds: African fur drum, rainstick, tambou- rine, cascabelles, mouthplopp etc. Recording bongos… …congas… …and timbales
Groove AgentEnglish 23 ENGLISH 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 com- plete 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 edit- ing 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. ❐Sounds marked with a B, M or R were recorded with Brushes, Mallets and Rods respectively.
Groove Agent 24 English 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 to- day’s Metal styles, where busy bass drumming is a vital ingre- dient. The dry character of the ride-cymbal and the great sound from the crashes will cut through any wall of guitars.
Groove AgentEnglish 25 ENGLISH The Noisy kit – We wanted to cre- ate a modern drum sound using tra- ditional drums. These instruments are very small but along with the boom-box effect they sound much bigger than they really are. We ex- perimented a lot with different digi- tal effects and came up with a sound that we think will last. The snares are a thin, high pitched pic- colo and a small 10 mini-snare. Some of the cymbals are rare vin- tage 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 re- corded snare drum), a black handmade snare drum from Hanus & Hert in Prague and a Slingerland copper snare . In order to achieve our sonic goals, it was decided that we would not add acoustic ambience this time. Rickard had just purchased an Even- tide 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 26 English In addition to the three acoustic kits, a handful of vintage drum machines from Sven Bornemark’s private col- lection 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 differ- ent 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 dif- ferences. However, we think we’ve managed to capture and re-pack- age 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 AgentEnglish 27 ENGLISH 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).
Groove Agent 28 English 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 Com- plexity 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 win- dow. 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 AgentEnglish 29 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.
Groove Agent 30 English Sliders and buttons The style slider/timeline The top slider is perhaps the most important gadget in the entire instru- ment. 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 sec- onds 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.