Steinberg Groove Agent 2 Operation Manual

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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...

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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.
Dec – Altering the decay of an instrument can create interesting 
changes to the sound, especially if they’re recorded with ambience as 
our acoustic drum and percussion sounds. A normal snare can be 
turned into an extremely damped drum or to an almost gated reverb...

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By clicking the Copy button and then memory slot number 2, all the 
current settings are stored in Memory 1 but also moved into the new 
memory slot. You are now free to go further and find the right sound 
for, say, the chorus. With slot 2 active, you may fiddle around the panel 
to your heart’s desire. That perfect verse setting is safely stored at 
memory position 1, so you’re free to experiment. (While this description 
does not represent the ultimate in flexibility...

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The setup lid
By clicking the rugged button 
above the little Setup lid, you 
open an area resembling a bat-
tery compartment. This is where 
the really secret functions are 
hidden. You close this lid by clicking the Close button in the lower 
right corner. Let’s open it and have a look!
MIDI Output
One fantastic feature of Groove Agent is its ability to write a MIDI part 
containing the notes you actually hear! By setting this switch to the 
ON position, a whole array of new...

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•It’s usually a good idea to turn on the SysEx (System Exclusive) filter in 
your sequencer when using Groove Agent. If you don’t filter out SysEx, 
the Run and Stop commands are written into the MIDI part, causing 
Groove Agent’s engine to start playing along with the incoming MIDI 
data. If you filter out SysEx, the Run and Stop commands aren’t written 
into the MIDI part and life becomes generally easier.
❐It is advisable to turn off your sequencer’s auto quantize...

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GM Output
We’ll tell you more about GM Output shortly, but first some background.
For Groove Agent we used the following keyboard mapping. You’ll 
see it if you use the MIDI Output function and look at the MIDI part that 
Groove Agent creates. It starts off like an ordinary GM map with kick 
drum on C1, sidestick on C#1 etc. But after tom 1 you’ll notice differ-
ences. There are two groups of percussion instruments and, finally, a 
series of ride and crash cymbals above C3.
This...

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you’ll probably want to have the speaker icon (or similar) activated, so 
that you can hear the drum sounds while you scroll through the notes.
When you set the GM Output to its ON position, Groove Agent will 
redirect output notes so that it follows the General MIDI protocol.
When GM Output is active, this status is shown by a GM 
symbol in the LCD window.
Ambience Split
You can make Groove Agent output the ambient or reverberated 
sounds to a separate mixer channel...

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Reset All
The Reset All button is handy if you want to start building your own kit 
from scratch. This could be the case if you’re using Groove Agent as 
a pure sound module. Clicking the Reset All button empties all the 
group slots and sets all the edit knobs to their default position.
If you’ve lost yourself completely when editing the kit of a certain style, 
you can always get the original kit back by first selecting another style 
and then going back to the one you used...

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•Method 2: Play along with your song in real-time, using the Groove 
Agent panel controls to create a living and breathing drum track. Your 
sequencer records the MIDI notes output by Groove Agent in a MIDI 
part. The MIDI Output switch must be activated for this to work. We 
believe this is the most intuitive and creative way to create a drum track.
Advantage: “What-you-hear-is-what-you-get”. The drum part will sound identical to 
your performance. Also, it’s easy to...

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Using Groove Agent’s MIDI output in Cubase SX
While we’re not sure what every available host will do with MIDI notes 
being sent from a VST instrument (as far as we know, Groove Agent is 
the first virtual instrument with this feature), Cubase SX users can cer-
tainly use this method. Follow these steps.
1.Open Groove Agent in your VST instruments rack. Select Groove 
Agent as your input (and de-select it as an output to avoid double trig-
gering) on the desired MIDI track. Open...