Hey guys. a little help with this issue would be greatly appreciated.
ive created a project using groove agent se 4 for the drums. originally i setup one instrument track with all the various drum patterns repesent in the one track. but i want to seperate each of the drum pads patterns to there own tracks using the dissolve track. the problem with this is im now presented with 10 seperate groove agent se instruments in the vst instruments panel all of them loading the same drum preset patch. as apposed to one instance.
what a complete waste of cpu and ram, leading to a large vst performace load in the meter.
so i decided to load a vst rack of the now newly purchased groove agent 4 with the thinking that i could just copy and paste each track from the 10 that are now seperated and assign each track to output to the rack vst… but ohhhh no… thats just not possible for some bizarre reason.
im forced to copy midi note data and paste into a new midi track. likewise with all automation for each track which has been tricky and not always worked out to well.
please… some one tell me im doing something wrong and that there is a simple process to just take my groove agent se tracks and send them straight to groove agent 4 on the one loaded rack vst.???..
if not then please people at steinberg. create the facaility of an instrument track and all its advantages… but with the option to send the data to a rack vst… its bad enough i cant take a tweeked drum preset in se and copy it over to full agent due to copyright limitations… even though ive purchased the full vesion… that in its self is just pants.
cheers guys for any help on this issue
Load the GA 4 in to the instrument rack.
Activate the amount of individual outputs (audio tracks) you need from the GA 4.
Route the drums to the individual outputs in GA 4.
Now you will have your drums on individual audio tracks.
As for the midi. If you are not using midi plugins on the midi tracks. There is not much point in having them on seperat midi tracks. So you can glue them back together. Have 1 midi track and audio on several tracks. Or you route the midi tracks to trigger the kit in GA 4.
I ofthen use the Beat Designer midi plugin. I use the Create Drum map from instrument, to feed the Beat Designer the correct drum names. The Beat Designer has ok swing fx, so it dosn’t sound to static on the grid.
And I always load the drum plugin in the instrument rack, so I can activate multiple outputs for the drums.
hi thanks for the reply. i theory that is what i should be able to do. but once you create an instrument track it can only be routed to other instrument track instruments. theres no way to route to a vst rack instrument straight from the previous midi recordings i create via ga se 4 in the instrument tracks. i have to pick out every tracks midi data and copy and paste it into a misi track for the vst rack. it gets even more complicated trying to copy any control data from each track to paste into corrosponding midi tracks on the vst rack ga4. it just doesnt work,
Just drag the midi preformance over to the empty midi track. Dont need to copy past. Just drag.
Make shure that what ever individual tweeks you have done to the multiple se4 kits, are done in the main GA 4 kit.
It is as easy as drag and drop. Should not take you long to alter the setup.
You can also export the midi and import it to new midi tracks, if you feel that draging and droping is to much out of the comfort zone.
You can route MIDI tracks to any plugin/channel you like.
So, if the drum part you wish to dissolve is living on an ‘instrument track’ then:
- Select the track.
- Right click and choose “select all”.
- Hit ctrl C to copy.
- Create a new MIDI track.
- Put the project cursor at the beginning of the project.
- hit ctrl-v to paste.
- Dissolve your new MIDI track.
Now everything is living on a MIDI track of his own, and these can be directed to any plugin/channel you like. Including your already loaded GA instrument track. Now you can mute (from the tool bar) or delete the original part(s) living on the Instrument track.
If the drum part you wish to dissolve is living on a MIDI track and using a GA instance in ‘rack mode’, then you’ll only need step 7 above. Just direct the output of your dissolved MIDI tracks to the GA instance/channel of choice.
Also, I highly recommend checking out the Diamond Drum Editor if you have not already. It’s a great editor that just might eliminate your urge to dissolve GA tracks (no real need for it unless you want to isolate the MIDI triggers of a kit piece for some reason, I.E. to drive a side chained plugin, or to ‘double’ the part with multiple plugins/etc.). Be aware that you can import maps for GA kits directly into the Editor. It’s a quick and fairly automatic process. With GA4, loading the map should make it possible to more easily drive and/or score all 4 of your GA4 kits from a single track…if the map is loaded the track then knows about each respective ‘kit channel’.
Also be aware that you can dissolve to ‘lanes’ in the same track. Essentially this just regroups your events into individual ‘part’ containers and stacks them back on the same track. This is usually a great thing for GA instrument tracks. Instead of creating new MIDI tracks, or many instances of a GA instrument track, you’d just get new lanes that can unfold with a click (all the stacked parts unfold into visible lanes). Each lane can be opened into an isolated MIDI editor (drum, key, list, or score), and easily moved or copied/pasted to other tracks at will.
Instrument Tracks vs MIDI tracks…
One great thing about instrument tracks is that you can export them as MIDI loops that can be previewed directly from MediaBay. Just click the MIDIloop in Media bay, and hear a preview. MIDIloop tracks can also easily be imported into fresh projects, and they bring back GA all set up exactly like the track was made. In essence, ready made drum loops, with the kits and all pre-defined. In contrast, saving things as plain MIDI files can’t be easily previewed in Media Bay, and will require you to rebuild kits from the ground up to recycle them in new projects.
The advantage to MIDI tracks is that you can easily direct it to any plugin/channel you like. These are super for anything through composed, or involving recording real time drummer controllers or MPC playing. You also get all of the same real time MIDI insert options of instrument tracks, but now you can more easily route what instrument(s) should get played by the track. You also get 4 MIDI effect sends that can be pointed to any plugin/channel you like (If you don’t want a special effect, you can still use the insert to echo the track to other plugins/channels by leaving the effect slot empty). These AUX MIDI sends (not present in instrument tracks) can come in handy for extending kits, applying various real time humanization/quantization to individual kit pieces, isolating events to drive side-chains, driving lights on MPC pads, transforming pedals to note events, etc.
Hybrid Approaches
It’s really common to be working with an instrument track, and decide you’d like to isolate an individual kit piece to a new MIDI track. Maybe you just want to apply some humanization or velocity compression from the track inspector, but only to the kick drum. Maybe you want to echo the kick drum’s trigger events to side-chain a compressor that can be driven via MIDI events. So…don’t hesitate to split things off into a MIDI type track and take advantage of the AUX MIDI sends that track type affords.
Instrument vs Rack mode
There are many plugins out there that I’d rather use in rack mode, and drive exclusively with MIDI tracks. GA is one of the few plugins that I load in instrument track mode 99% of the time. Why? It was born to work this way in CuBase. Making MIDI loops and such become a breeze. It integrates well with the CuBase drum editor and drum mapping system. It integrates well with the ‘score’ making abilities of CuBase, even across multiple kits in a single GA instance. It’s easy to also MIDI tracks on the side as needed. There are a few cases where it makes more sense for me to go with rack-mode and use MIDI tracks…but GA integrates so well with CuBase it’s pretty rare I need to go there.
Don’t feel like you must build patterns and grooves inside the tiny GA interface. You can build them in CuBase directly if that is more convenient, and drag and drop things into GA. It’s also easy to drag and drop things built inside GA onto CuBase tracks for editing fine details or creating scores and such. It’s all very well integrated…GA and Cubase merge into one cohesive app, so take advantage of that, and be aware that your GA workflow can really be extended quite a bit…