Dorico and Groove Agent

Hello all. Having download Dorico 5 yesterday I’ve been playing round with some of the new features and I’m very impressed. However, according to one of the ‘new features’ videos, any drum kit created will load as a groove agent kit by default. For some reason this isn’t happening for me. I’ve downloaded the groove agent pack but when I go into ‘play’ mode it’s just a bog standard kit that’s loaded. I originally thought that it was maybe because I was using NotePerformer rather than Halion sounds so I set up a new playback template using Halion but I still can’t find Groove Agent. Any help greatly appreciated.

Have you tried using the Factory default one ? This one is probably the one that is configured to work with GASE. And if IIRC, playback templates that do use Groove Agent SE have GASE in their name.

This is the same for me.I already have GA through Cubase Pro, but have reinstalled it GASE with Dorico. Dorico still loads Halion as default though. GA I have to reload manually.

Am I right that the version of GASE that comes with Cubase contains more kits, etc. than what came with Dorico, or are they the same? I seem to be seeing a lot more options than I expected given the description in the Release Notes.

(I am not sorry either way.)

Are you using the Groove Agent (“GASE”) Playback Template?

Screenshot

Thanks to your tip, I found the reason - a wrong order in my playback template.
Greetings
Bertram

I can’t see a difference in the scope of delivery between Dorico and that of Cubase regarding GA at all now, since I haven’t used any of the included stuff at all, but I only use the GA extensions “Song Writer”, and “Simon Phillips Jazz and Studio Drums” from Steinberg.
Greetings
Bertram

I was hoping to create some quick drum tracks for jazz scores, but it seems that there are no jazz grooves available in the SE version. I was also hoping for brushes, but they don’t seem to exist, either.

Am I correct in assuming that (unless I buy the full Groove Agent (and there doesn’t seem to be an upgrade path from SE)) I can’t edit patterns/grooves in SE that could be MIDI triggered? Would I need to buy one of the Jazz/Modern Jazz Expansion Kits?

I suspect that those expansions only contain patterns, but still no brushes? Would I need the Simon Phillips Jazz expansion for that?

Thanks,
Tim

You might also check your Steinberg Library Manager

It appears that Dorico also uses this, as the tool is aware of the Indian Drum Basics which came in with the Dorico release too

I don’t know how you access that Indian Drum set though from Dorico …

Patterns can only be edited or recorded live in the full version. In the SE version, however, the patterns can also be set and saved in intensity and complexity (also automated with CC’s in Dorico).

By the way, there are test versions for “Simon Phillips Jazz and Studio Drums” at Steinberg.

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That’s good to know, thanks.

I think I’ll wait for the next Black Friday sale or something similar, and in the meantime, I’ll probably drag and drop GA patterns I like into Dorico, make them swing or tweak them in other ways and then place rhythm bars on top of those. There seems to be enough stuff to learn in the SE version…

Another thing: I noticed that (according to the Steinberg homepage) all the expansion packs use the Soft-eLicenser. Would this have any practical consequences for my setup (all my Steinberg products are using Steinberg licensing, and I remember some problems with instruments that complained about missing licenses when the “mother application” switched to the new licensing model and the plugins hadn’t done so yet)?

Oh, and the shortcut Shift+0 doesn’t invoke the popover in my (German, Windows) version of Dorico 5 - the menu shows that no shortcut is defined at all.
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I haven’t created any key commands on my own (no keycommands_de.json file in my %APPDATA% directory), so this seems to be the default in the German localization. Easy to change manually, but should probably be fixed.

Daniel already acknowledged that only English shortcuts had been implemented for this, earlier this week :wink:

Thank you so much Ben. Your helpful comment solved my problem perfectly. I couldn’t find this info in any of the Dorico documentation (I’m sure it must be there…. I just couldn’t find it) but your comment solved it for me.

Colin

The process of migrating all the Groove Agent expansions to Steinberg Licensing has recently been completed IIRC. Certainly, all the expansions I own are now on Steinberg Licensing. The list of software relying on Steinberg Licensing will allow you to check specific expansions.

I would expect all new Groove Agent expansion licences to be issued on Steinberg Licensing.

We are talking about including the Jazz Essentials expansion pack with Dorico 5 in future, which would bring a bunch of GASE-compatible MIDI patterns suitable for jazz/swing music.

14 Likes

“In the future” seems to mean “within the next two weeks” to the Dorico team :smile:

You guys are awesome! Thank you very much!