Steinberg Groove Agent 3 Operation Manual
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Groove Agent 3 40 English Shuffle Some of the music in this world has a “straight” or “even” subdivision. Eights are even eights, so to speak. Other styles use some form of triplets, giving the rhythm a certain “swing”, a smoother, rolling character. Musically, these two types are known as straight and swing based music. And to make matters more complicated, music with a swing 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 to a more “swingy” style (the even 8ths or 16ths turning to triplet feel). On the other hand, a swing based style becomes straighter if you turn the dial to the left (–). Unfortunately, while we’ve tried our best to provide a logical and “in- destructible” user interface, the Shuffle knob can be used to mess things up, too. If you turn it 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 with intelli- gence and an open mind! 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 half-swing, try using a straight style and move the Shuffle knob halfway to its triplet position, to the 57–60% region.
Groove Agent 3 English 41 ENGLISH Humanise Even though the musical tracks feeding Groove Agent have been created with great care, imagination and musicality, 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. Ambience This knob is one of the highlights of Groove Agent! All the acoustic drums and percussion instruments were recorded using a mix of several 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, posi- tioned 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 meters away. Now we’re talking room! These recordings give a def- inite hall atmosphere. Roomy? Yes, definitely! •The analogue and digital drums sounds have electronic and electro- mechanical reverb added to them. 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, roomy, acoustic kits for that vintage sound.
Groove Agent 3 42 English For other kits we used different combinations, and for the analogue and digital sounds we added normal studio effects units like digital re- verbs 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 overall ambience, use this dial to your heart’s content! The Ambience knob also acts as a master control for the 8 individual Ambience controls (one per group). The normal position for this knob is 12 o’clock. Turning it all the way to the left produces a close-mic’d dry sound, while all the way to the right gives you the ambient (wet) sounds only.
Groove Agent 3 English 43 ENGLISH Mute, Groups, Instrument Selection and Solo 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 pitched and quick playing” instru- ments) 8.Percussion group 2 (usually “low pitched and slow playing” instru- ments) 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. Next are the Solo buttons. 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 than to mute all other groups. Solo activated = only solo-ed group(s) is (are) 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! When using the Sample Import function found on the Import & FX page, the sample(s) you’ve loaded can be accessed here at the top of the instrument list as “User”. Please note that the Sample Import func- tion is only available in the Upper module in Dual Mode.
Groove Agent 3 44 English Stop/Run These buttons start and stop the internal drum pattern engine. While Groove Agent can be used with your host sequencer stopped, it always plays at the BPM rate (tempo) and time signature of your host program. When your se- quencer is running, Groove Agent follows the tempo and synchro- nizes to the beat position of the host. You can make Groove Agent start simultaneously with your se- quencer by using this method: 1.Start your sequencer. 2.Start Groove Agent. 3.Click the sequencer stop button. Now, depending on the “When host stops” setting on the Setup page, Groove Agent may be stopped or paused. The waiting/pause status of the Run button is indicated by the green color. This is good for those situations where you want the drums to play from the very start of a song or a section. You can choose how you want Groove Agent to react to Run and Stop commands. The Setup page offers two alternatives: •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 has to be restarted manually. Different modes for different situations. Find the setting that best suits your workflow. Under the hood So far we have described the functions you can reach on the top sur- face of Groove Agent in Classic mode. The black area surrounding the large LCD window not only holds the level meters, it’s also the lid under which the Edit department resides. Let’s open the lid by click- ing “Edit” in the lower right corner of the instrument panel.
Groove Agent 3 English 45 ENGLISH 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 eight instru- ment groups are identical, so we’re using the top row as an example. All knobs have their default position at 12 o’clock. Aud – This button lets you audition the sound chosen in the group window to the left. This function is handy when auditioning the sounds themselves and the edits you make to them. Vel – The Velocity Offset knob alters the response of the drum sounds. When turned counter-clockwise, the MIDI input velocities are scaled down to lower values, making more use of the softer samples. Turning the knob past 12 o’clock increases the input velocities, pro- ducing a harder, louder sound. To compensate for the decrease/in- crease in overall output, a volume compensating device is connected to each group output. This knob may also be regarded as a quick method for making the acoustic drums sound more loose or tight. Please note that this function only works (and makes sense) on multi- sampled sounds, i.e. nearly all of the acoustic instruments. Tune – You can tune each group up and down by as much as 12 seminotes with this knob. Please note that for delicate fine-tuning you may want to hold down [Shift] on your computer keyboard for a more detailed resolution.
Groove Agent 3 46 English 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, snappy drum or to an almost gated reverb kind of noise. Amb – Here you can fine tune the amount of ambience for each group from dry to wet. The main Ambience knob (in the bottom left corner of the window) always serves as a master control, so if you make sure it’s in its 12 o’clock position, it’ll be easier for you to do the fine tuning. Vol – Finally you can adjust the total volume for each instrument group. Out – Each group can be assigned to any of the 1-12 available stereo outputs. This is useful when you want to individually tweak one or more groups with Groove Agent’s built-in effects or treat the sound using external EQ/effects. Please note! The available number of outputs is determined/limited by the number of outputs chosen on the Setup page. Memory locations The Memory locations represent an alterna- tive method of working with Groove Agent. Think of each memory slot as a snapshot of the entire Groove Agent panel. When you first open Groove Agent, the first memory button is lit. This means that it’s active, it’s listening, it registers every change you make. You don’t have to activate this memory slot – it’s always live. The Copy button copies whatever is on Groove Agent’s panel into any of the 10 memory locations. Click Copy and then a memory button, and the procedure has been completed. •A dark button means that this location is empty. •A green-ish color indicates that something has been saved here. •A bright light shows the currently active memory.
Groove Agent 3 English 47 ENGLISH Each of the 10 memory slots can be regarded as a snapshot of all set- tings in the entire module. After some tweaking, you may have found an overall setting that is absolutely right for, say, the verses of your song. 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 de- scription does not represent the ultimate in flexibility when using Groove Agent, this is ONE way to use automation.) Here’s another suggestion. Since the Memory slots store the entire front panel settings of this module, you can jump between complexity levels instantly and even completely different styles and kits in one go! This may not be the ultimately realistic scenario – how many drum- mers do you know that can change an entire kit in a snap – but it sure gives you more flexibility than anyone could ask for! If you save your Groove Agent settings as a Bank (.fxb), all the content of the Memory buttons will be retained. Master Volume It’s not very hard to describe a knob marked as Master Volume, is it? You may think that it controls the overall output from this instrument, and if so, you’re absolutely right! Even when using several outputs, the Master Volume knob controls all outputs. Please note that audio activity stops when the Master Volume control is at its minimum position. So if you’re using Groove Agent 3 as a pure MIDI player, and using none of its internal sounds (controlling external drum sounds only), you may want to save some CPU power by turning the volume control all the way down.
Groove Agent 3 48 English Speed Here’s another new gadget for you! The Speed control (not to be confused with Half Tempo Feel – they are in no way related) lets you quickly solve simple tempo mis-match problems. Here’s an example: Let’s assume that you’ve started working on that slow power ballad with a 120 BPM setting in your host instead of 60 BPM. When editing a MIDI part, the note data might look a bit odd with quarter notes ap- pearing as half notes – but it would work. In fact, there’d be no prob- lem at all. Until you want to sync up a self-playing device like Groove Agent, that is… The easy solution lies in the three buttons that make Groove Agent 3 play half as fast, at normal speed or twice as fast. In the scenario de- scribed above, the half setting would cure the problem instantly. The Speed function can also be used as an effect. Forcing our drum- mer to play at half or double speed may give interesting results. Feel free to try this at home! Setup The Setup button takes you to the Setup page, where you can define all sorts of general preferences and settings. Clicking the Close button magically closes the Setup page. Close You can get back to the default view of Groove Agent Classic mode by clicking on the Close button.
Groove Agent 3 English 49 ENGLISH Introducing Dual Mode The biggest step forward in Groove Agent 3 is undoubtedly Dual Mode. We created this mode because we needed to introduce an elegant solution to working with two modules simultaneously. At first glance you’ll see a control strip in the middle of the screen. Here you’ll find some general controls like Speed, Stop, Run, Fill, Vol- ume and Balance. With the blank panels in place, there’s not much you can achieve here. The fun begins when you press one of the mod- ule selector buttons on the left side of the control strip. Press GA, and a new version of Groove Agent will appear. Click on SA, and an all new module called Special Agent will be seen. If you select PA, the all new Percussion Agent will be shown. As you can see, these modules can be used in any combination on the upper and lower half of the screen. Please note that when changing from Classic Mode to Dual Mode (or vice versa), whatever was playing will stop. Only one can run at a time.