Drum Patterns and Loops in Groove Agent/Beat Designer Cubase

Hi I am new to Groove Agent. I am running it in Cubase 7.5.

I know that I can load drum kits in Groove Agent and the create beats in Beat Designer from those kits.

Is it possible to load pre-existing drum patterns into Beat Desginer or do you have to create them yourself? All the instructional videos I have seen focus on creating the patterns from scratch.

Lastly I see alot of third-party Drum Loops for purchase on the internet. Upon purchasing them do you then load the patterns into Beat Designer or do you load the WAV file of those loops into the DAW and then convert to MIDI in Groove Agent?

Thanks

You can’t load existing MIDI files into Beat Designer, you have to create them yourself. However, once you have created drum patterns in Beat Designer you can save them in BD for later use, or drag them to a MIDI track, and you can even drop the MIDI files to Groove Agent SE 4.

You have to distinguish between drum loops in audio format (wav) and drum loops in MIDI format. Most common are loops in audio format, usually Wav. These loops can be used in different ways:

  1. directly on a audio track in Cubase, where it can be sliced/edited/manipulated using the tools in the sample editor.
  2. you can drop them on a pad in Groove Agent SE 4. In GA you can then slice the loop, then export the pattern as a MIDI file to the GA MIDI track, like you suggest. Now you can play back the loop at different tempo, etc.