Steinberg Studio Case VST Instruments Operation Manual

							VST Instruments
Groove Agent SE 4 – 81
ENGLISH
Using the automation in Cubase SE
1.Open Groove Agent SE in your VST instruments rack. From Groove 
Agent SE's panel, activate the Write button (W). Look in the Cubase 
project window, and you'll notice that a new track called VST Instru-
ment Automation, plus another track below it, have been created. For 
most situations, the auto quantize function in your sequencer should 
be turned OFF. You're now ready to start recording your drum track.
2.Start Cubase SE. When it's time for the drums to start playing, hit the 
Run button (with or without a fill being armed, remember?). Drag the 
sliders, push the buttons and turn the knobs until your drum track 
sounds right. When the song or section of the song is over, hit Groove 
Agent SE's Stop button and then Cubase's Stop button.
3.After recording, right click on the VST Instrument Automation track 
and select “Show used automation for all tracks”. All the automation 
classes (Run/Stop, Fill, Pattern Select etc.) will have a separate track.
4.Click the Read button (R) in Groove Agent SE or in one of the newly 
created automation sub-tracks. Now you'll see the actual data in all 
the tracks. This data can be freely edited.
5.To prevent unintentional over-writing of data, make sure the Write 
button is only lit when you deliberately want to over-write the auto-
mation data.
Controlling Groove Agent SE from a MIDI 
keyboard
There are situations where you want to control Groove Agent SE via a 
remote MIDI device such as a keyboard. We have prepared a scheme, 
so that almost everything you can do directly on screen can also be 
carried out remotely. Here's a complete description.
•MIDI notes B0-A3 (35-69) play the internal sounds according to the 
keyboard map shown on page 80. These drum sounds are available at 
all times.
•If you control Groove Agent SE on MIDI channel 10, the keyboard 
becomes compatible with standard General MIDI (GM) mapping. 
						

							VST Instruments
4 – 82 Groove Agent SE
•MIDI note A#3 (70) doubles as the Accent button. It also kills drum-
ming for as long as it's held; play a syncope and hold this key for one 
quarter note for very realistic behavior. Please note that this key has 
better timing than the Accent button on screen.
•MIDI note B3 (71) stops Groove Agent SE when it's running.
•Moving the modulation wheel or using CC 66 triggers a fill.
•When controlling Groove Agent SE on an odd number channel, MIDI 
notes C4-C5 (72-84) serve dual purposes. Pressing any of these 
keys starts Groove Agent SE. If you hit a key harder than velocity 90, 
you will trigger a fill.
•When controlling Groove Agent SE on an even number channel the 
white MIDI keys C4-B4 (72-83) are used to mute and un-mute the 8 
individual instrument groups.
If you have an extra modulation wheel or dedicated controller/s on 
your keyboard, you can use these CC's to control Groove Agent SE:
MIDI CC Destination
Please note that the controllers mentioned here may also be handy 
when editing Groove Agent SE drum parts in your sequencer.
CC Destination
2 and 65 Snare/Sidestick selection
3 and 64 Half Tempo Feel
7Overall volume
76 Host BPM (60 + value) if your host does not support tempo sync
91 Ambience 
						

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5
The Grand SE 
						

							VST Instruments
5 – 84 The Grand SE
Introduction
The Grand SE is just what it looks like – an acoustic grand piano in a 
lean, easy software instrument. It is derived from its famous brother 
The Grand, which has become a music industry standard and is used 
world-wide by pianists, composers and bands, but is based on a 
scaled-down sample model that uses only 85 MB RAM and does not 
involve disk-streaming.
You’ll love its authentic sound and great playing feel.
Survey of key features:
•based on a top-drawer grand concert piano 
•superior sound quality
•four master timbres: Natural, Soft, Bright, Hard  
						

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VST Instruments
The Grand SE 5 – 85
Playing The Grand SE
We take it that you want to play a piano in the conventional manner 
rather than program it as you would a synthesizer.
In this case, no further adjustments are necessary once you’ve opened 
the lid – that is, launched the VSTi. A genuine grand piano stands be-
fore you waiting to be played.
That you can do by striking the 88 keys in a sequence and with an in-
tensity of your choosing. For reasons beyond the scope of this manual, 
we won’t venture to discuss how to go about doing that. We’re just the 
piano makers – what you play and how you play is entirely up to you.
Pedals
The following pedals are available (from right to left):
Sustain Pedal
Aside from the keys, a piano’s most important means of expression is 
the hold or sustain pedal, which with a sharpness of wit rarely matched 
among musical instrument vendors, we call Sustain. 
Plug a pedal into your MIDI keyboard’s Sustain or Hold port or control 
sustain via MIDI Control Change #64.
Sostenuto Pedal
If you bear down on this pedal while holding a chord, that chord will 
continue sounding. Even when you release the keys, the chord will 
continue sustaining, but any new notes that you play will sound in the 
usual way.
This lets you lay down a cozy “carpet” of chords to solo over.
To this end, plug a pedal into your MIDI keyboard’s Sostenuto pedal 
port or control sostenuto via MIDI Control Change #66.
Soft Pedal
The left pedal lets you dampen the overall volume and tone of the 
instrument. To do this, plug a pedal into your MIDI keyboard’s Soft 
pedal port or control the pedal via MIDI Control Change #67. 
						

							VST Instruments
5 – 86 The Grand SE
Opening the Edit window
Some basic settings for The Grand SE are hidden away in a separate 
Edit window. If you want to edit settings, simply open the Edit window 
by clicking the Edit button.
Sound Character
The Sound Character section’s four sophisticated presets let you ad-
just the piano to suit your musical style or technique in terms of both 
volume and tone.
Natural
•As the name suggest, here no adjustment to sonic properties is made – 
it plays and sounds just like a genuine acoustic grand.
Good for classical and jazz styles as well as other musical scenarios calling for natural, 
realistic sound and authentic response.
Soft
•Full volume range, dampened tonal response. Pounding and caress-
ing the keys elicits the same vast variations in volume, but the tone will 
not vary as wildly as on the original instrument.
Good for soft songs, ballads and mood music.  
						

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VST Instruments
The Grand SE 5 – 87
Bright
•Full volume range, brighter tonal response. As is the case with the 
Soft variant, the dynamic range remains unchanged in terms of vol-
ume, but the tone is brighter, with added punch. You’ll hear the differ-
ence even when you play with a light touch.
Good for solo/melody lines and for playing along with electric/electronic instruments.
Hard
•Compressed volume range; brighter tone. The dynamic response of 
the instrument is limited to the extent that it sounds altogether louder 
and with added punch. Its tone is also somewhat brighter.
Good for the kind of in-your-face, punchy grand piano sounds typical of modern music 
styles.
Global
Quality
This setting lets you improve the performance of your system’s CPU, 
albeit at the expense of sound quality. 
Your best bet is to forget about this parameter, only remembering to 
make use of it when the system performance display of your computer 
tells you that its CPU reserves are depleted.
•Setting this option to Low Quality lightens the load on your system’s CPU. 
The downside is that frequency response and tonal transparency suffer. High 
Quality delivers the highest fidelity, but it also puts the greatest load on the 
CPU. However, unless you have a reason not to, we recommend to leave the 
setting at High Quality.
Master Tune
This knob lets you vary the fundamental or reference tuning of The 
Grand SE in the range of 415.3 to 466.2 Hertz. 
						

							VST Instruments
5 – 88 The Grand SE 
						

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6
D’cota SE 
						

							VST Instruments6 – 90 D’cota SE
Introduction
D’cota SE is a powerful advanced analog synthesizer. It features a vast 
range of synth basses, leads, pads and other typical analog sounds, as 
well as basic FM sounds.
Each instance of D’cota SE that you load adds a high-quality synthe-
sizer with up to 16 voices to your host application.
These are D’cota SE’s most prominent features:
•Advanced analog synthesis.
•Aliasing-free synthesizers provide superb sound quality.
•Stereo output.
•Advanced, yet simple to use controller – modulation routing.
•Complete automation from within Cubase or Nuendo.
Overview
About the default program bank
Like all VST instruments, D’cota SE can save and load programs 
(“.fxp” files) and program banks (complete sets of programs, “.fxb”) 
from disk. Note that you will also find additional program banks in the 
D’cota SE folder. The saving and loading procedure is described in 
the documentation of your VST host application. However, D’cota SE 
has a special feature:
When you open a new instance of the instrument, a default program 
bank is automatically loaded – you can immediately choose between 
a number of programs in the instrument, without having to manually 
load a program bank from disk. You can have any program bank of 
your own choice be the default bank, giving you immediate access to 
your own favorite sounds:
1.Open the folder in which the D’cota SE plug-in file resides.
You will find the “D’cota SE.dll” (PC) or “Dcota SE” (Mac) item in the VSTplugins folder 
of your VST host application, a shared, common VSTplugins folder or a subfolder to any 
of these.
2.Locate the file “DcotaSEdef.fxb” and rename it to something else.
This is just to keep the original default bank, should you wish to use it in the future.