Steinberg Groove Agent 3 Operation Manual
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Groove Agent 3 20 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 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.
Groove Agent 3 English 21 ENGLISH To make the archive complete, we spent a long session recording percussion instruments, both those included in the GM protocol plus an array of other, interesting sounds: African fur drum, rainstick, tam- bourine, cascabelles, mouth plop etc. Recording bongos… …congas… … and timbales
Groove Agent 3 22 English Engineer Jens Bogren came up with the suggestion that we’d run all sounds 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 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 the person responsible for bringing all the carefully chosen instruments to the studio. So even if the 70s hihat re- cordings went astray or if 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 3 English 23 ENGLISH 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 instruments. 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 3 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. 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 creat- ing some very significant environments for the drum sounds. The re- sulting sounds are very rich and colorful.
Groove Agent 3 English 25 ENGLISH In addition to the 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 tends 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 a well known Malmö recording studio, Tambourine Studios.
Groove Agent 3 26 English Groove Agent 3 With Groove Agent 3 we wanted to add new dimensions to our drum tool concept. Session drummer deluxe Rasmus Kihlberg is one of a very small group of people capable of delivering live drum grooves ranging “from very sparse to very hot”. In 25 steps, with only slight variations between each step plus fills and half tempo feel versions of all levels! All in all, Rasmus recorded over 1.000 unique grooves be- hind his drum kits plus hundreds of percussion patterns. The studio chosen for our Groove Agent 3 sessions was Gula Studion in Malmö, with Marco Manieri as engineer. The sound at Gula is not as big as in Studio Kuling. Instead we relied more on the studio room’s early- reflection style ambience plus an assortment of control room reverb effects. In addition, the “Stone Room” was used with one kit, giving an aggressive yet natural character to the third kit. In parallel to the grooves, Rasmus also recorded individual samples of every drum kit. As usual, we wanted to give each kit its own personal- ity and we treated ourselves to an easy start by recording a kit that was already in the studio, the in-house Gula kit. It looks a bit odd with its extended bass drum (two kick drums mounted head-to- head), but the sound is easily recognized as the very popular sound found on many hit songs recorded at Gula. This kit is referred to as “Gula”.
Groove Agent 3 English 27 ENGLISH The second kit was Rasmus’ own Premier Gen- X set with pinstripe heads. It’s tuned to produce a dry, clean, elegant and widely useful sound, hence the name “Clean Adult Fun”. For the third set of recordings, we moved into the overly reverberant Stone Room, where Rasmus played his old, precious Ludwig kit from the early sixties, nick-named “Fula”. Think “Ringo Starr”, and you’ll know what sort of drum set we’re talking about. Mother-of- pearl finish, white heads and almost no damping gives a very dynamic jazz-to-pop sound that can be used in almost any situation.
Groove Agent 3 28 English We’ve spiced up the sonic palette with some very well known digital drum machines from the eighties. One such drum machine is the Linn LM-1 Drum Computer that be- longs to Torgny Söderberg in Skara. It has serial number 00131 and was one the first to be sold in Sweden. This was Torgny’s main tool during his extremely successful period of songwriting, and conse- quently this very machine has been heard in more Swedish pop hits than any other drum machine. Hmm, isn’t it fascinating how everything goes in circles. When digital drum machines first appeared in the early 80s, we were amazed at the sonic realism. It sounds just like a real drummer! Human drummers didn’t become totally extinct, but they met some fierce competition in those days. Later, with huge, multisampled sound libraries, plus a general revival of the live drummer, those old 8-bit beasts seem to represent an era most musicians want to forget. Until now, that is, for it seems like dig- ital sounds have started to become fashionable again!
Groove Agent 3 English 29 ENGLISH Special Agent: Rasmus Kihlberg Groove Agent 3 sports some totally new modules. In two of them we’re able to enjoy the inspiring drumming and fine percussion work of Rasmus Kihlberg. For me as a producer, finding a person like Rasmus was a stroke of luck. Even though we’ve been acquainted for over twenty years and played together a number of times, it wasn’t until October 2005 that I started to think about Rasmus as a very exciting Special Agent. Some background: Rasmus Kihlberg was educated at Malmö Music University and has worked as a musician at Tambourine Studios and Gula Studion with Tore Johansson. His recording credits include Titiyo, Shakira, A- ha, Junior/Senior, Charlotte Church, Saint Etienne, Tom Jones, Bonnie, Pink, Hideki Kaji, Tomoyo Harada, Dan and Gullan Bornemark, Jan Lundgren Trio, Viktoria Tolstoj, The Ark, Ainbusk Singers, Sylvia Vrethammar, Spitfire, Arne Domnerus and Kasper Villaume. He’s also made live performances with many European artists such as The Cardigans, Björn Skifs, Tomas Ledin, Anders Berglund, Jill Johnson, Toots Thielemans, Putte Wickman, Tommy Körberg, Jojje Wadenius, Monica Zetterlund, Jennifer Brown, Johnny Griffin, Deborah Brown, Nils Landgren, Viktoria Tolstoy and Ulf Wakenius. Asking a drummer to play a basic rhythm is easy. Then asking for some similar patterns with only minute variation isn’t too hard either. But instructing someone to produce 25 different renditions that still remain true to the style in question, that’s a tall order. Very few musi- cians are experienced and mentally organized enough to be able to deliver that. Then, after those 25 levels have been recorded, there are 25 fills needed and an additional 25 levels of half tempo feel. That’s where total musical understanding comes in. I knew Rasmus could manage to do all that, and so he did! It’s very un-Swedish to confess such self-confidence, but for a producer it’s a godsend to find that in a musician. So, he was not afraid of trying, but would he manage to deliver?