The demo came long after the release.
Hi,
can someone please mail me an GA3 iso ?
I have GA4 and GA2, but can’t install GA2 in Win7 64
Thanks.
Hello Folks,
If it helps, I’ve created over 90 minutes of training for GA4.
A 30 minute demo can be downloaded at : http://www.musicalnotes.org.uk/
It’s aimed at those just getting into GA4.
Hope it helps.
Hi Folks
The full 90 minute course is available now for Groove Agent 4 at http://www.musicalnotes.org.uk/
I know most Jedi Groove Agent users here won’t need it, but it’s available for those new to the program and want to skip the initial confusion with it.
Hope it helps.
I’ve just spent maybe… 3 hours of a day off trying to install Cubase AI LE 8 that came with my UR22 interface.
Unreal ordeal.
I was mainly interested in trying out Groove Agent 4 SE, and the chord editor. Despite moving the “additional content” folder around to different folders, I can’t get Cubase to recognize Groove Agent is in there. Or any other VSTs for that matter, but that’s another problem.
I long for GA 1/2. It was the quickest way to get an idea to a song, and despite all of the fans of it seen referencing across the internet, it’s baffling Steinberg just ignores that.
PLEASE, MYSTICAL INVISIBLE DEVELOPERS OF GA 1 and GA 2, HEAR MY CALL! RELEASE AN X64 COMPATIBLE VERSION! YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING, JUST RECOMPILE! PUHLEEZ!
Ahghr.
+1
Oh I second that!!!
Rum Drum, I do agree with that! I wonder how hard it would be to release a Retro GA 1/2/3 version. hmmmmmm?
The partnership between Bornemark and Steinberg has dissolved long ago.
Steinberg are no longer in charge of the code. Groove Agent 1/2/3 or the Virtual Guitarist instrument (a real shame - another great VSTi by all accounts) have nothing to do with Steinberg anymore.
Write to Sven at Bornemark and see if you can get any answers there…
http://bornemark.se/
Thanks for the info My Man!
GA3 was excellent for what it was.
Paul
I was in contact with Sven Bornemark when development of the excellent software “Broomstick Bass” was stopped. He said he did not possess the source codes himself and that was impossible for him to develop it further. Perhaps it is the same situation with GA. I will contact him and find out.
RR,
Maybe if enough of use chipped-in 10GBP each, Sven might consider some further development of the GA range!?
Paul
My only complaint about GA4 is that switching between drum patterns doesn’t sound as smooth as it was in GA3, but I get a feeling that you can fix this with a setting that’s right under my nose (lol). Other than that if GA4 came with the GA3 kits it would a straight upgrade in my opinion. There’s a couple of electronic kits in GA3 that still sound pretty good.
Which way is GA 5 going?
Full of hope I threw in a bunch of bucks to get the update of Groove Agent, GA 5 after having enjoyed GA 1, 2 and 3 (which doesnt work at all on a recent mac computer today since they are outdated now (which says something of the longetivity of Steinberg products). I was totally disapointed with version 4 when it arrived some years ago.
I dont know why this makes me so mad. I think it is the serious need of a true drummer plugin for the serious musician. I also know there are sensible people at Steinberg with good intentions that I dont want to hurt, but there are so many grooves and sounds in this that are nothing but kids crap.
Now 2018 I thought Steinberg ”today at least must have come to their senses” regarding GA, and took a chance to buy the update.
But no, not at all. GA 5 is just as far off for any serious musician as before. In the ads for GA5 Steinberg says it is supposed to serve many different genres. That is true only to a certain degree. I find it in practice totally mainly geared for the aspiring young teenager doing hiphop, techno, punk or whatever of similar sort. If you are looking for nuances look elsewhere my friend. This is not for someone playing drums, this is for those beating them!. The sound estethics of GA reminds me of ”as many and as hard hits per beat as possible” This is what you get evrytime you are to try out a new ”groove”, before you have manually tweaked every single button down to something more human. (it´s like evrytime you turn on the radio it has to be on full blast!)
Look at the so called ”media bay” or browser database which is an absolutely nonfunctioning system to my mind. This is maybe actually the most senseless concept of Steinberg in the whole of Steinbergs lineup, allthough the original idea might be well meaning, but it just don´t work, and it never really has either. It jumps from one menu to another and redraws in the spur of a second until you go mad. Still Steinberg stubbornly sticks to it. crazy! Of all the myriads of choices there is still no way to follow any logical structure in picking your genre, style, beat or part in the flow of verse or chorus.
Grooves are classified by names like ” The London way”, ”young and proud” or ”College bound”. Is this for kindergarten, one might ask.
Have Steinberg not discovered that a drum hit consists of many parts where the striking agent plays an important role, the stick, hand or brush or mallet, but there are no mallets here and definetly no brushes and most drums and mixes has the same (loud” velocity. For an all round musician working in many different genres GA 5 strikes me as totally useless and a complete waste of time and money, I am sad to say. This makes me finally having had it with most things Steinberg, I doubt there will be use keeping up even Cubase on my system. GA 5 is not a serious tool to my mind. And definetely not suited for many different genres.
I am getting GA3 to work on Sierra, and I guess it would work on newer OS as well, using 32 Bit Lives as Brigde. Nice also to use BlackCats wrapper. If the vst does not work, the AU might, and since you are on a MAC you can install both. BlackCats wrapper and 32 Bit Lives are bundled at an, if not cheap, then “nice” price.
I have GA4 (full version) but never used it. IMO GA2 was the best from Steinberg and I still use it by linking an old computer to my newer MAC. I prefer GA2 over GA3 for unexplainable reasons and I use this 2 machine set up instead of GA3 on my MAC. I never threw the old computer and now it gives me both old Steinberg stuff and Broomstick Bass. It is also a PC and not a MAC so I can get a lot of PC only VST to work there as well.
My experience with GA4 was so bad I never wanted to try out GA5, and you are right, it is mostly for had hitting Hip Hop or EDM. But, that is where the real money is and Steinberg is not the only ones doing this. Look to Native Instruments and see their development during the last years. To me both Steinberg and NI have become less interesting. It is fighting windmills trying to get them to turn, as said, the money is elsewhere.
I am using different kinds of drum software, depending on genre. Superior Drummer / EZ Drummer are the ones I use the most. I also use Drumcore 4 and and EastWest Pro Drummer. The last one has the best sound, but the first one the better interface (actually SD 2 was better thant the current 3) and workflow IMHO. Drumcore has som nice stuff for jazz, funk and so. I also have a bunch of other drum stuff for metal. Jazz Drums can get a honorable mentioning when it comes to brushes, but it is a little limited and harder to manipulate. If I should recommend only one it would be EZ Drummer. Rahter cheap, a wast variety of drum sets to add and a huge number of available gooves, both by Toontrack and 3. party (although not as sofisticated as the big brother).
Hi, and thanks for a very informative posting. I think we agree about a lot of thing here. My experience is I own EZ drummer with jazz and singer songwriter expansions. However I feel I needed to expand a bit i quality allthough EZ certainly is a good work horse. My music is generally rather soft semiacoustic where I prefer a nuanced brush sound and mallets or felt rods if available. I also bought Avids Strike some years ago, which has some great sounds and fuctions, but is a bit weak on the fills side of patterns. So as I wrote earlier I took a wrong step and updated GA which of course was nothing but silly.
I am looking a Addictive Drums 2 which has a special "Mallets and felt rods expansion that seems interesting, and I might go for that. I feel I need a good system of preprogrammed yet nuanced style patterns to build from, more than tweaking and choosing between a hundred different drums and a thousand mic positions. There I agree I appreciated the GA 2 vs 3 systems. However it seems impossible to reinstall GA3 as I have only and “update” disc. Superior drummer seems slightly expensive and don´t offer any trial so I am a bit reluctant there. Would you recommend it if you want to go for the styles and sounds I described above? /Franszmo
I have Addictive both 1 and 2. I do not used them. I used 1 some but 2 is no good. You are critizing GA for hard hitting and an awful browser. Addictive is a little bit on the same side. As you describe your music I would say the EastWest is not for you either. It is also on the more intense rock side, although rock and not Hip Hop. Actually I found nothing that replaces GA2 on that “soft” and jazzy side. So there is a hole in the drum software here. There are some interesting drums on the soft side, soundwise, but they are pretty limited and soon “worn out” as the variety is not great. Have a look at Jazz Drums and you see what I mean. Superior is more sophistcated than EZ but only slightly. I find the GUI of EZ actually better. You will have increased tweeking possibilities and the expansions for SD will also give you the feel of a real drummer (like flams etc.). There might be a better solution in the future as this “hole” in the market is often adressed in forums. But as mentioned; Hip Hop is the money so it seems to be preferred to compete for a share of this larger cake insted of having a smaller one by themselves. I would recommend you to look at Odd Grooves and Groove Monkee for MIDI grooves, especially the first one has some great low energy grooves for EZ.
Thanks! Great to know one is not alone in this frustration, but strange that the industry cannot produce better in this. I feel I´ve been searching and searching til going numb, still wanting to get something similar to GA2 interface which was so easy to get going with, and really user friendly. The fill function where you could choose from a large number of fills and decide where you want to put them is what I mostly miss in EZ. Maybe I´ll stay out of AD2 for the time being. Found some nice jazz/brush sample libraries from looploft, but it is not really the same thing. Do you have any experience of BFD by the way, or the Vienna Jazz Drum? Otherwise I´ll just have to learn playing the drum myself.
EZ Drummer bears its name correctly. It is really easy to use. IMHO the best workflow around for drum software. The one closest is its bigger brother Superior Drummer. It is really easy to put fills where you want it. In fact easier (however more time consuming) and with the possibility of more variety than GA2. And it has a huuuuuuuuge number of sampled drums to add (buy) and the same goes for grooves. This is the absolutely biggest universe of them all! The time it takes to get a drum groove with fills going, is perhaps the double or triple of GA2, but with a “better” result, as the variety is so huge that you need to use time to scroll, but you can get the fill to “sit” better. So; what you gain is fills more suited to your track. That is perhaps GA’s weekest point, variety. (You can however manipultate the recorded MIDI track in GA2 and of course that also goes for EZ).
When it comes to Jazz drums I find proucts that bear the name “jazz” in them to have a very boomy kick. It is suitable for older styles of jazz but not for modern. I do at least need to change the set to something more modern, but still keep the style of playing. That is a challenge to find a software that gives you that possibility. The previous mentioned Jazz Drums for Kontakt from Stright Ahead is great in some ways but pretty limited as mentioned, but after all perhaps the best (?). There is also something called Kick n Brush from Loops de la Creme that I have but not used it so far (it has that boomy kick).
I tested BDF before buing Superior 2 but found the universe, GUI and sound of Superior to be superior (agin it bears its name rightfully!).
I have no experience with Vienna Drums but I have other stuff from Vienna (Orchestra) and that is great. Vienna and EastWest are my two “go to” software when it comes to orchestra. Vienna has a little strange GUI though, takes some time to get used to.
As mentioned I am using two computers and thus can still use GA2. This is a cumbersome solution and expensive if you start from scratch, but I had the parts laying around anyways so for me it was “free” to set up. It works really well, just need a little more time and patience. Not my strongest side, but I manage.
An advice is not to rush into something but use time to download demos and listen and get the feel of the workflow. You may prefer differently than me. So there is nothing “best” really when it comes to workflow. When it comes to sound there is perhaps an objective way of determining “best” but “best” must be put in the context of the project and perhaps also the economy of the user. Most companies have sales, almost throughout the year and soon it is black friday!
I was hoping with Cubase 10 and GA5 Steinberg would have made creating drum tracks with easy to place fills, complexity variations easier. This is possible with triggering MIDI notes or drag and drop part by part but it is a lot more clunky than it needs to be IMHO.
I generally jump on upgrades but I don’t see what I am missing other than percussion agent and the ability to stack 4 agents by staying with GA 5 SE.