Groove Agent & beat designer - editing / auditioning

I’m trying out Groove Agent + beat designer.

Preparing the beat patterns in beat designer is fine, as is adding them to the timeline.

However, I’m experiencing two problems / limitations and I’d be very grateful for advice…

  1. I can’t find an easy way to edit patterns once they’ve been added to the timeline. If I double-click on a pattern it opens the piano roll, which is (I find) a very difficult way to edit MIDI - I’d rather be taken back to the beat designer editor. The only way I can find to edit a pattern after it’s been added to the timeline is to delete it from the timeline, edit the pattern in beat designer, then add it again to the timeline… that’s very inefficient, particularly for long songs with lots of patterns. It would be much easier if I didn’t have to delete/edit/add patterns every time a change needs to be made.

  2. I also find it difficult to audition patterns. If I have a song already recorded and beat designer patterns already added, I can press Play to hear the active beat in beat designer, but of course that plays the existing song/patterns too - not great if I just want to hear the beat. I’ve ended up creating a second beat designer MIDI track with no patterns on the timeline, which I solo if I want to audition a beat by itself. Again, not very efficient.

Am I missing something? Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could be doing these things better? Or are these unavoidable limitations of beat designer?

Many thanks!!

In Cubase > Click on the top layer of the inspector. Click on the drum map.
Choose “Create drum map from instrument”. From now on a double click on a midi part
will automatically open up the drum editor which is way better to design drum patterns
and matches the design of the pattern editor in GA4.

Cheers!

You should really forget about beat designer and work with
the pattern editor inside of Groove Agent 4. You might be used
to it now. But it makes things way easier.

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Hi @No1DaBeats - sorry for the slow reply. Just wanted to say thanks - I appreciate you taking the time, it’s much appreciated. Good advice - I’m checking it out now.

Cheers.