Steinberg Groove Agent 2 Manual
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Groove AgentEnglish 31 ENGLISH 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, mak- ing 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. ❐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 com- plexity. 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 terri- tory. 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!
Groove Agent 32 English 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 un- til 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 combina- tions 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 hit- ting 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 num- ber 13” (or whatever) is the only one you want to use at a particular po- sition in your song. Or throughout the song, for that matter. Clicking the Link button again re-establishes the link between com- plexity 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 sides- tick at any level of complexity.
Groove AgentEnglish 33 ENGLISH 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 avail- able in most but not all the complexity levels in Groove Agent. ❐The sidestick playing technique generally sounds more natural at lower complexity levels. Accent 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 approxi- mately 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 in- strument! 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 al- ways. In Groove Agent you are the band leader, the conduc- tor! 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 ef- fect 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 click- ing the Run button makes Groove Agent start playing with a fill.
Groove Agent 34 English 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 pat- tern 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 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 seri- ous thought, we decided it would definitely be a big bonus; no other drum machine (that we know of) has a “Half Tempo Feel” button. But all drummers do! 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 avail- able 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.
Groove AgentEnglish 35 ENGLISH Random If you want some automatic pattern variation, the Ran- dom 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. The Random button only moves within a range of ±2 levels from the slider’s original position. Auto Fill Here’s a handy little button. It can automate the way fills are triggered. When you move from one complexity level to an- other 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 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. As with the Random button, the randomly chosen fill always lies within ±2 steps from the slider’s current location. Shuffle 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.
Groove Agent 36 English 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 in- terface, 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 57- 60% region. Humanize Even though the musical tracks feeding Groove Agent have been created with great care and mu- sicality, 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. The normal position for this knob is to the far left.
Groove AgentEnglish 37 ENGLISH Limiter The first thing any studio engineer reaches out for when recording drums is probably a dynamics pro- cessor, 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 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. 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 sev- eral 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 me- tres away. Now we’re talking room! These recordings give a definite hall atmo- sphere. Overly roomy? Yes, definitely! •The new drums that come with Groove Agent 2 have electronic and electro- mechanical reverb added to them.
Groove Agent 38 English 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 hi- hat and the overheads for the cymbals. We then added the distant re- cordings 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 Am- bience 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.
Groove AgentEnglish 39 ENGLISH 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) 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. One welcome addition in Groove Agent 2 is the inclusion of Solo but- tons. When you’re listening to a full drum kit and want to tweak one of the groups only, it’s usually easier to press Solo for that group. Solo activated = one group only is heard. Solo not active (un-lit) = all groups are heard. While listening to the preset styles and their related kits, you may want to experiment with changing 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!
Groove Agent 40 English Stop/Run 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 sequencer is running, Groove Agent follows the tempo and synchronizes to the beat position of the host. 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 surrounding the Run button. This is good for those situations where you want the drums to play from the very start of a song or a section. New in Groove Agent 2 is the facility to choose your favorite Stop/ Run behavior. You do so by right-clicking somewhere in the Groove Agent screen or by clicking on the Steinberg logo. Selecting “When Host Stops -> Pause Playback” puts your drummer in waiting mode whenever the host is stopped. Selecting “When Host Stops -> Stop Playback” means that Groove Agent 2 has to be restarted manually. Different modes for different situations.