I was thinking of venturing into the realms if using Groove agent and was wondering if I could get some feedback. I’m totally new to that part of Cubase (I have Cubase 7.5) so I’m not sure what is what. Trying to search for either keeps pulling up Groove Agent 4
1 - What is the difference between Groove agent SE and Groove Agent One (other than the layout of course)?
I like SE has the “grooves” where you can cut and past a bar of an already played beat (as opposed to coming up with your own) which I like but I don’t see that with Groove agent One
2- I see there is a Groove Agent 4 and a lot of the packages of beats (Library or are they called Maps?) Steinberg has that I looked at look like they wont work with Cubase prior to 8, so I don’t know if those are not an option for Cubase 7.5 or if they will work with Groove agent SE (maybe 4 is only for Cubase 8).
3 - One thing I am having an issue with in deciding if I want to use it is I do mostly rock type stuff but all the “grooves” in SE are more house/hip-hop beats so I have only found one so far in a style that I was able to mess with. Also, it seems like the whole pre-programmed Grooves thing is kind of limited after you use that set a couple times you would wind up with the same beats over and over (unless I go in and program my own, which I can do on a midi track with other drum programs I have, I think even Halion has some drums). I’m guessing you might be able to edit them (obviously haven’t gotten that far yet). I just thought I’d see if anyone else has run into that and see if there’s a bigger concept to it all that I’m missing.
Bonus question - What does SE stand for? is that like code for “trial version that came with Cubase”?
Groove Agent ONE is only included for compatibility with older projects, feel free to ignore it.
SE probably stands for something along the lines of “Starter Edition”. These are “lite” versions of the software with far less features than the full versions. Note that nearly all of the sounds in the full versions of Groove Agent 4 and Halion Sonic 2 are exclusive to them, and they don’t come with the sounds from the SE versions. (you have to keep the content from the SE versions installed to access them in the full versions.)
The full version of GA4 adds 102 Beat Agent kits, 3 Acoustic Agent kits with 58 mixer presets and a Percussion Agent with 23 mixer presets. Most of them have unique grooves/patterns.
The Cubase 7.5 version doesn’t come with the Rock/Pop Toolbox and the Acoustic Agent SE kit. The later is a realistic kit with room mics, round robin samples, many velocity layers and all that fancy stuff.
The following expansions wont work unless you upgrade to Cubase Pro 8.5 or get the full version of GA4, since they require an Acoustic Agent kit:
These expansions come with drum mixer presets for the stock Acoustic Agent kits (In GA SE only the Studio Kit SE will be used, in the full GA4 the Rock and Vintage kits may also be used), which heavily alter the tone of drums, creating a lot of variety. Like every GA4 expansion, they also come with many extra patterns, which can be used with any other Acoustic Agent kit/mixer preset.
You can only edit the patterns from within the plugin in the full version of GA4. In GA SE 4 they can only be edited if you drag and drop them into Cubase.
awesome! than you for the info, that helps a lot and makes a lot of sense.
the Beat, Blues, and Funk essentials were the ones I was interested in and noticed they seed to only work with Cubase 8 so I appreciate you confirming that before I drop $90 bucks on them to find out the hard way. haha.
It sounds like the GA4 is the way to go then and the acoustic sets are probably along the lines of what I’m looing for (and the percussion is a plus too). They just didn’t have any “grooves” to sample in the SE version so I wasn’t sure f they didn’t have samples for the other kits (they only give 1 out of 10 for the ones they do so it was odd they had none) or if they were holding out. It appears its the latter
also sounds kind of what I was thinking with editing them, I’d have to poste a sample to Cubase and then edit in the midi editor if I wanted to mess with it.
That’s what I figured for SE too, I just couldn’t come up with something that made sense. haha.
So with GA4 you don’t buy a bunch of separate sets (like the essentials listed above), it is more of a package deal with the 102 kits and other items you mentioned above? If so that’s pretty cool.
Thanks again for the informative and well explained response. I really do appreciate it.
Thanks for the clarification on Groove agent One too, I couldn’t figure out what the point of it was for the life of me with how much better SE was to use.
Not really, to clarify, the full version of GA4 only comes with the base acoustic kits used by the “Essentials” series expansions, when you buy these expansions you’re paying for extra mixer presets and grooves.
GA4 already comes with 58 mixer presets and tons of grooves like I said, but these are completely different from the ones in the Essentials expansions.
Right, but with cubase 7 I couldn’t use those expansions anyways. So if I were to get GA4 with cubase 7 there would be enough sets/grooves to have a nice variety? I was using the expansions as an example that it’s not like an ala carte type scenario.
Are there expansions for GA4 that work with cubase 7 or is what comes with it pretty much what you get?
Seems like it comes with enough but I’m just curious.
Just watched a video now that I know what groove agent I’m looking for. It really does get pretty complex. I didn’t catch the depth and amount of stuff you can controll with the se version.
Each pattern style comes with a bunch of different intros, fills, endings and main grooves. I think GA4 might have enough patterns out of the box for over 10 full music albums without repeats.
GA4 supports all expansions regardless of the version of Cubase you’re using.
I just re-read your post and it said or the full version of GA4. So if I were to get GA4 I could use those expansions in cubase 7? I think I read it as I would have to get cubase 8
The reason why some expansions wont work on the Cubase 7 version of GS SE4 is because it doesn’t come with an Acoustic Agent kit. GA4 has 3 of these kind of kits, so you can be sure they’ll work, even if you don’t have Cubase 8.
Sweet! That’s a bonus. It really is amazing what they can do these days with all the the technology. The videos on you tube for acoustic agent and percussion agent are insane with how I depth it goes. I see you can even edit and the save the changes as another pattern. The jam mode is pretty wild too. Way more than what I was expecting after putzing around with the SE version
Went ahead and bought it last night, I’m pretty excited to get Grooving, hehe.
I kind of messed with it a little bit last night after it downloaded (a lot to learn) and it is pretty insane I was wondering though if it’s normal that some sets only use one or two of the 8 sets of pads? I think 3 might have been the most I saw on the sets I was checking out.
If so is there a use for all the unused ones or do they just have them there for the sets that have a lot of patterns/drums or future growth of the instrument? I guess I can probably store any patterns I come up with on my own or ones I tweak in Cubase from the ones they have, but is seems like a lot of them left over so I didn’t know if there was another use for them that I was missing.