Adding Groove Agent drum patterns

I am not a drummer. Best I can do is some lame imitation of the intro to the drum solo in Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida :blush: . To overcome this deficiency, in Sibelius I would often create a song in an appropriate style in Jammer or Band In A Box, export the drums as a MIDI file, then dump them in the drum kit stave. Sibelius also provides an Add Drum Pattern addin, but the patterns are notoriously simple and lack variation.

So, I thought Iā€™d try the same thing with Dorico, and yes, I can work through the process. But then I realized I have, delivered with Dorico, one of the top notch software drum machines on the market, in the form of Groove Agent. Really great sounds, patterns, and with the flexibility, one would hope, of easily adapting the drums to the needs of the music: holds, fills, etc.

The Problem: Doricoā€™s documentation on ā€œadding Grove Agent patternsā€ is incredibly terse, to the point of being no real help at all. I went looking for videos and tutorials, but, while there are several that deal with GA. itself, I canā€™t find much to provide a step by step process of using GA to add patterns to a Dorico flow.

And hence this post. Any suggestions?

Also, I understand that what comes with Dorico is a ā€œstripped downā€ GA, and there seems to be some discussion going on that the full-featured GA 5 has some sort of compatibility or integration issues. Any problems one should know about?

Thanks for any help.

Have you seen this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsa4n4nMcAM

I have tried pulling in drum grooves and/or using the midi trigger method and both seem to work as described.

1 Like

I saw this video listed, but the title threw me. Didnā€™t think Iā€™d be interested in triggers, at least as I understood the term, which I have usually associated in conjunction with using MIDI in live performance. As it turns out, the video was extremely helpful, and also made me aware of the usefulness of MIDI triggers in Dorico, which look very helpful. Thanks!

I do wish the current incarnation of GA SE presented the available kits in a drop down. Cycling to the Next/Prev kit is a bit of a pain.

Not sure if this is a problem. I dragged some GA patterns in into the Drums track in Play Mode. But when I try to click them in the Drums track, they appear not to be selectable. Canā€™t delete them after I place them. Is the only way to delete/modify after placement in Write Mode? ie, selecting and deleting/repeating the notes?

I obviously donā€™t yet have a complete comprehension w.r.t. Play Mode, which I have mainly used to change instrumentation.

Also #2: once I add some Groove Agent drums, The Groove Agent dialog keeps popping up even if Iā€™m not editing drums. Thatā€™s annoying

Indeed, you canā€™t edit the ā€œregionsā€ shown in the track overview in Play mode. Itā€™s something we would like to implement in future, but for the time being the regions really only serve to show you where notes can be found. So you do indeed need to remove music in Write mode.

However, you donā€™t need to be in Play mode to drag in patterns from Groove Agent. You can have the Key Editor open in the lower zone in Write mode, and drag the pattern into the piano roll.

Iā€™m not sure what you mean by the Groove Agent dialog: if you mean the plug-in window itself, you can close it by clicking the X button in its top corner like any other window, and it shouldnā€™t appear again until you explicitly ask for it to be shown.

Iā€™m pulling drum patterns from Groove Agent into the drummer track in the Key Editor as suggested, @dspreadbury. But the playback is sounding nothing like the pattern within Groove Agent.
Am I using the wrong drum set? The only choice from Set-up menu is the basic drummer.
Thanks.

You might want to use Drum set (full) as the kit assigned to your player rather than Drum set (basic).

I have a similar issue and have been searching for an answer. I want to use the percussion set (particularly bongos, conga, shaker etc.) patterns and I cannot get them to play when I drag and drop - if it lets me drag and drop!

It might be that you need to make sure that the percussion kit youā€™re dragging the pattern onto already has the right instruments in it: Dorico wonā€™t automatically add instruments to the kit if they are referenced in the MIDI pattern.