Steinberg Groove Agent 3 Operation Manual
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Groove Agent 3 50 English The Control Strip You load a module by pressing the appropriate buttons on the left side of the Control Strip: GA for Groove Agent, SA for Special Agent and PA for Percussion Agent. Any Agent can be selected for the up- per and/or lower halves. The Volume knob to the very left sets the overall output level. The Bal- ance knob controls the balance between the two modules. Use it to set the ideal mix or use automation to create a dramatic fade from one kind of rhythm to another. The central control strip allows you to control two units with very little mouse movement. The most important transport buttons are split into three sections – Upper, Lower and Upper+Lower. For instance, you may want to start the upper module first. Press the U section of the Run button. Then you want to start the Lower module. Okay, press the L section of the Run button. Or start them both at once by clicking in the U+L section of the Run button. The same prin- ciple applies to the Stop, Accent, Fill and Half Tempo Feel buttons. Consequently, when using two drummers, it’s easy to make only one of them play a fill. Or to pause the lower drummer only. Creative use of these buttons will make your drum track sound more dynamic. The button To Classic takes you to the original Groove Agent page. Please regard Classic Mode as a dear old friend and Dual Mode as the new exciting stuff. Groove Agent in Classic Mode and Groove Agent in Dual Mode (in the UPPER slot) are basically the same drum machine; changes made to Groove Agent in Classic Mode will be reflected to Groove Agent in Dual Mode (in the UPPER slot), and vice versa.
Groove Agent 3 English 51 ENGLISH A world of possibilities! Imagine what Dual Mode can do for your music! You can combine old style Groove Agent drumming with a live drummer module, the Special Agent. Or you can base your drum track on Rasmus’ drum tracks and add a Percussion Agent. Or you can decide to only work with percus- sion, building up exciting, slowly evolving sonic landscapes (with help from the Random button) and add Groove Agent kick and snare at a later stage. Or make two Groove Agent drummers compete! For further reading on this topic, please refer to the chapter “Ideas on using Dual Mode creatively” on page 62. Groove Agent in Dual Mode You’ll recognize the Groove Agent module quite easily. While the screen layout is different from Classic view, the same controls are still there. Groove Agent behaves like before, only the control surface has changed a bit. The new design became necessary to accommodate two modules on one screen. The main difference is in the Style selector. The top slider has been replaced by two pull-down menus in the top left corner. The Link but- ton is still there, so selecting styles is still very comfortable. And, as usual, you can always click on the Style and Kit names in the LCD window to make your selections, if you prefer. For a detailed description of every single aspect of the Groove Agent module, please refer to page 31.
Groove Agent 3 52 English Special Agent We’re very proud to present Special Agent Rasmus Kihlberg! He has recorded a total of 15 new styles, each with their own 25 levels plus 25 fills and 25 unique half tempo feel renditions. All of them made ac- cessible in a module inside Groove Agent 3. The best thing about having recordings of a live drummer inside a drum machine is the FEEL. The Groove Agent approach of using MIDI-controlled samples is great, because you can compose and edit patterns any way you want. Because the patterns were recorded live as loops, Special Agent doesn’t feature user-playable drumkits, and due to the different concept Special Agent isn’t able to export its grooves as MIDI patterns like Groove Agent classic. So Special Agent is not as flexible as Groove Agent classic, but there is the good FEEL. So, lets get into this new module and see what we can do with it! Read more about Rasmus on page 29. About tempi in Special Agent During recording of the Special Agent grooves, we had to establish a “home tempo” for each style. That’s the basic tempo where a particu- lar style sounds just right. As with Groove Agent, there’s an indication showing a suitable tempo range near the middle of the module.
Groove Agent 3 English 53 ENGLISH Using a higher tempo, outside of the recommend range, can make our drummer sound a little pushed, but there’s nothing wrong with it from a technical point of view. However, since the Special Agent styles were recorded live and then edited into slices (one slice for each beat), using a tempo lower than the recommended range may result in glitches during playback. Silent gaps between the hits, so to speak. This sounds a bit nasty and not very realistic. Shorter sounds, like kick, snare and closed hihat, may not be affected too much, but sustained sounds, like half open hihats and ride cymbals, will surely suffer a lot. Use lower tempi with caution! If you absolutely must use a low tempo, try adding a little reverb to disguise the gaps. A guided tour around the Special Agent module You start making music by loading a style from the pull-down menu. Set the tempo of your host to somewhere within the limits given in the range window. With the Complexity slider set somewhere around the middle of its travel, you’ll have a good starting point for using this style. The letter T after a style name indicates that this style is triplet based. There’s a complete listing of all styles with descriptions written by the composers starting on page 81. The Complexity slider in Special Agent works just like in Groove Agent. Good, basic drumming is played with the slider set somewhere around its middle third. The levels labeled A-B-C-D-E are often very sparse. They are intended to be used during song intros and breaks or even as ornamentation in songs that don’t really benefit from regular drumming. The levels to the right are more complex, probably louder too. You may want to use them at the end of your composition.
Groove Agent 3 54 English As in Groove Agent, you can use the Link button (found on the top right) to split the Complexity slider in two halves. This gives you the option to use a particular complexity level with a particular fill. Press- ing the Link button again re-establishes the connection between these two settings. Import & FX and Ambience The following two controls are identical to the ones found in Groove Agent. Import & FX – This button takes you to the page where you can import Groove Agent samples and add EQ and Com- pressor to the audio outputs. Ambience – The ever-important main Ambience knob de- termines how much reverbation or room will be added to the dry drum sound. For most natural results, stay within the 9-1 o’clock range. For more detailed information about these controls, turn to the descrip- tion of the controls found in Classic mode, starting on page 31. Pre-Delay Here’s a little novelty for you! By moving only the ambi- ence samples backward in time, you can adjust the amount of pre-delay between the dry and wet sound. Most reverb units have this feature. Experiment! The default setting is at the 0 position and will sound most natural. It’s the sound that engineer Marco Manieri set during the Special Agent mixing sessions. Dry Out, Ambience Out You can route the sound from Special Agent to any of the (up to) 12 outputs. You can even treat the dry (di- rect) and wet (ambient) drum channels separately. Here’s your chance to add flanging to the reverb only!
Groove Agent 3 English 55 ENGLISH Please note! The total number of available outputs is determined/lim- ited by the number of outputs chosen on the Setup page. Setup The Setup button takes you to the Setup page, where you can define general preferences and settings. The Close button cunningly closes the Setup page. Random, Auto Fill and Random Fill These three controls are identical to the ones found in Groove Agent. Random – Pressing this button will instruct the Complexity slider to make random level changes automatically. It is only allowed to select levels ±2 steps away from the current level. Auto Fill – Here you can instruct Special Agent to play a fill every time you change the complexity. Or to play a fill automatically every 2nd, 4th, 8th, 12th or 16th bar. Perfect when jamming with Special Agent! Random Fill – For greater variation, Special Agent can choose a fill randomly from levels within ±2 levels from the current one. For more detailed information about these three controls, turn to the de- scription of the controls found in Classic mode, starting on page 31. You can close the Special Agent module by clicking on the green SA button next to the current module (Upper or Lower). If Special Agent is running and you “To Classic”, playback will stop. This is normal behavior. To start playback, press Run again.
Groove Agent 3 56 English Percussion Agent The second great innovation in Groove Agent 3 is the all new Percus- sion Agent. As with the live drumming in Special Agent, there’s a spe- cial “something” about instruments recorded live (as opposed to samples triggered by MIDI). So we asked Rasmus Kihlberg to record percussion grooves for this new module. Percussion Agent can be seen an ensemble consisting of up to eight percussionists (one per channel) playing together. Each player has an instrument playing a particular groove, or rather five variations of a groove. For each player you can adjust the shuffle factor, tuning, amount of ambience plus pan and volume. Each channel can also be assigned to any audio output. Let’s jump on the bus that takes us around the Percussion Agent module. A guided tour around the Percussion Agent module The first point of interest is the Preset depart- ment in the upper left corner. Here you can load and save entire ensembles of percussion- ists, complete with settings and all. For a head start, simply load one of the presets we’ve prepared for you. This gives you a great chance to evaluate the possibilities. Or you can skip the use of presets and start building your own ensem- bles right away! More of that later. The Import & FX button takes you to the page where you can import Groove Agent samples and add FX to the Groove Agent 3 modules.
Groove Agent 3 English 57 ENGLISH Ambience The Ambience knob sets the overall mix between dry (close) sound and the wet (ambience) sound. The most natural sound is found in the 9-1 o’clock area. Please note that there is no facility to route the wet signal from Percus- sion Agent to a separate output. However, there’s an easy workaround: If you want to treat the wet signal from a channel individually, make a copy of that channel by loading the same groove into an unused chan- nel. Make sure the copy channel is routed to an unused audio output. Set the Ambience knobs for the two channels to Dry and Wet respec- tively. Done! Mute, Groove and Solo The functionality and specifications for each of the eight channels are identical, so the explanations below apply to all of them. First there is a Mute button. This button mutes the channel, making it easy to compare the sound of the whole ensemble with or without the channel in question. Second is the slot that allows you to load a Groove. When clicking in- side the text box, a pull-down menu appears. You are now allowed to load a Groove. The Groove name describes its content in the following way: •“Tambourine 120-8T” In this example, Tambourine is the instrument in use. 120 indicates the tempo the groove was recorded at. The number 8 relates to the sub- division; this groove is based on 8th notes (as opposed to 16th notes). The T at the end tells us that this groove is triplet based (as opposed to straight or “even 8ths/even 16ths”).
Groove Agent 3 58 English As a general hint (not a rule), when the groove subdivision is 8ths, this groove suits higher tempi. Grooves based on 16th notes are often used at lower tempi. The third button is called Solo, and that’s just what it does. It plays that channel in solo, temporarily muting the other channels. That’s perfect for those occasions when you want to monitor one specific in- strument. The Complexity buttons There are six buttons in a row here. The first one is called Off. When that button is pressed, this channel won’t make a sound. The remaining five indicate the complexity level of this Groove. You see, when playing a rhythm pattern, it makes sense to change the rhythm somewhere in the song. The groove may become a bit more complex or in- tense as we move into the chorus. Or maybe the pat- tern should become very sparse during a break or a bridge. That’s what Complexity levels are all about. When a Complexity level is chosen and Percussion Agent is running (you have pressed the Run button), you’ll hear cool percussion grooves pouring out of your speakers. Press buttons 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and choose a variation that you like. Af- ter that, load another Groove in an empty channel and try to find something that matches the first Groove. After that maybe a third Groove etc.
Groove Agent 3 English 59 ENGLISH Shuffle, Tune, Ambience, Pan, Volume and Output Next are five knobs plus a selector that help shape the feel and sound of each Groove channel. Shuffle – When turned clockwise from it’s top position, this knob gradually adds a triplet or swing feeling to a straight (even 8ths/even 16ths) Groove. When turned from 12 o’clock and backwards, it can straighten out a triplet based Groove. You can create an interesting effect by adding or subtracting small amounts of Shuffle values to various channels. Tune – You can tune each channel up or down by as much as 12 seminotes (one octave) with this knob. Please note that for delicate fine-tuning, you may want to hold down [Shift] on your computer key- board for a more detailed resolution. Ambience – 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 module) 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. Pan – Most percussion Grooves are mono recordings (with ambience recorded in stereo). You can make your sonic landscape more interest- ing by positioning rhythm instruments in the stereo field, i.e. left to right. Tip: If you place a high pitched, bright sound to the left, try panning an- other bright sound to the right, for balance. Our ears seem to enjoy a bit of symmetry in sound. Also, a wide sound usually sounds richer than a mono sound, where all instruments are placed in the centre.