Working With Pads V1 in Groove Agent SE

today we talk about

Working With Pads V1 in Groove Agent SE

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigital audiom manual.com today we'regoing to start talking about how to workwith the pads with Groove agent SE inCubase but before we start I want toremind you that there's a link below tothe content navigation guide which is aneasy to navigate web page with links toall the content on this channel andbesides that in the near future I'mgoing to begin adding tips and otherbits of information that will only beavailable there if you're working withprograms like wavelab or qbase pluginsor the cable gu shaper box and many manyother projects that are in the worksthen I know you're going to find justlike I have that this is an invaluablestudy Aid and the other thing I want tomake sure you understand is that this isnot a simple PDF this is a constantlyupdated page that has any informationthat is new or anytime videos arechanged really anything updated and onceyou have it you will always have thelatest information constantly updated soif you haven't gotten it already go tothe link below click on it and save itto your favorites it's my gift to youokay so let's get started when we openup Groove agent over on the left we havethese buttons that say pattern andinstrument of course we've touched thesea couple of times already but whatexactly is that and what does that meanwith Groove agent when you're on theinstrument side here you're dealing withplaying individual samples when you hitthese little pads and that's what thesethings are is the pads down here forexample a kick or a snare or a high hator whatever your sample is on the otherhand when you switch over to the patternside you are playing groups of thosesamples in patterns those patterns cancome from you know things like we'vetalked about with the Styles or the midipatterns or things you've createdyourself but they are groups of theindividual instruments collected into apattern of some kind in each one ofthese tabs again you have these thingsand these things are called pads downhere and this is what actually playseither your samples or your patterns andyou have different pads for theinstrumentand you have different pads for thepatterns now these pads each one of themhas a lot of information involved withthem of what they can do whether it bewith a pattern or the instrument andsome of these pads kind of functiondifferently depending on whatever agentwe have up here like if you have thebead agent there might be one thing orif you have an acoustic kit up here itmaybe something else to begin with thiswhole area over here is what'sconsidered the pad section and it hasits own set of buttons you have theselittle trans support buttons we're goingto talk about it has these 1 througheight what they call group buttons andthen it has the pads I'm going to goover to my load panel open it up andlet's go ahead and put in our usuallaser beams ambush of tigers and in thetransport I'm going to go ahead and hitthe play button and that's going tocontinue to play as long as I leave thistransport playing if I hit stop it stopsnow let's observe one other thing I'mgoing to play these patterns if you lookat the pattern like a little clock itstarts ticking away down here if I hitthe nextpattern each one of them has its ownlittle clock now right now it's pickingup each pad is picking up where theother one left off like if this thing is3/4 of the way through and then I hitthis one it starts 3/4 of the waythrough and continues on why is that whydon't they just start from the beginningwell there's a thing called the triggermode which determines how these padsactually pick up and play we're going toget into that later now this grooveagent SE has these 16 pad ads for thepatterns but when you go to theinstrument side it actually has 128 ofthese little buttons here forinstruments and you access those bythese different group buttons up here ifI hit this number four that's the fourthgroup and it has its own set of pads ifI hit this three that's the third groupand it has its own set of pads nowbecause you have 128 doesn't mean you'realways going to use 128 and if you lookat the groups a few of them have littleyellow marks above them that's tellingyou that there's actually sounds mappedin those groups but these groups fivesix seven and eight there's no soundsthere because there's no little yellowmarks also when you're playing a patternlet's go back and hit our pattern hereand we switch over to our instrumentside you will see it kind of blinkwherever the actionis so if it's not blinking somewhereelse nothing's really happening on thoseat the moment you'll find this usefulbecause a lot of times you're going tobe searching for paths to do thingsyou'll kind of want to know where thosesounds are you'll notice on every pad inthe upper right it shows the actual notenumber midi note number on the patternpads you can change these midi notenumbers if you want on the instrumentpads it's more uh involved with Hardwaremapping that's something we'll get intolater on these patterns there's actuallynames involved on the bottom like wesaid before in these other Banks herewhere there's nothing being used if youlook at these pads there's no littlelights above them but if you go down toany of these ones that have assignmentson them these banks these pads also havethese little lights above them whichjust means that they're being used theyhave you know instruments assigned tothem a really important feature andwe've seen it before and you will findis just very useful is that when thesethings are actually triggered when thesounds are playing they lightup and that's really going to be usefulbecause when you need to find things youknow when you're trying to assign soundsit's nice to be able to see which onesare being used most of the time when youclick on a pad you want to hearit when you're going to make a change toit but if for some reason you don't ifyou just want to trigger it withouthearing it hold your ALT key and thenclick on it it'll still change over hereyou'll see a different picture assignbut you won't actually hear the sampleand like we said when we were talkingabout the focus you know whenever youclick on something and the yellow Bannergoes around it that's the one that youknow has the focus and also means thatthat's that's the selected pad it's alittle bit harder to see at leastprobably on my system but you canactually select multiple patterns if Iclick a pattern or a pad you canactually select multiple pads by hittinga pad and then holding control andhitting some other pads the original padhas a little bit more yellow and therest of them have kind of a lightershade of yellow and we've also talkedabout how you can right click on any ofthese pads and there's an actual optionto go down where it says set color andthen you can pick a different color forit there's also some more advancedthings with the colors but again we'lltalk about those later on if you want tochange names on any of these right clickon it there's an option down the listsays rename the pad it highlights youcan just put a new name in and theneither hit enter or click on it allright now what I want to share with youhas probably easily been one of the mostconfusing things for me for the longesttime with Groove agent it took me a longtime to get a handle on this and itreally didn't come to light until Ireally dug into learning this program soI want to share it now with youhopefully I can get the message acrossto you clearly and save you from thelong time I went through not knowingwhat this meant when you're looking atthe patterns we have patterns here wehave instruments here okay and we talkedabout down there in the upper right itactually shows the midi number for theactual note value and if you look atthis first pattern here the midi notenumber is gshone so what does gsh one mean if I go uphere in this area kind of in the midthere there's like a keyboard and I hitthe keyboard now you may have no clueabout a piano you don't necessarily haveto but I'm going to use it to helpvisually represent what's going on hereas you know a piano has these white keysthese Black Keys and there's a note on akeyboard they call it C excuse me forthose that seem this seems veryrudimentary but you'll see in a minutewhy I want to get this clear explanationout and they've actually given us the uhclear illustration of that note C onthis piano now there's many many C's ona piano and each one of them is higheror lower than the other let's forexample look at this one right here itsays C3 and these are kind of likerepresentations of the octave meaninghigher or lower basically all right soif you look at C3 three if you go up thekeyboard next it shows C4 and then C5and C6 and C7 and C8 and eventually runsout of keys if we go in the otherdirection C3 goes down to C2 and then C1and finally C 0 and then it goes to cga1and C -2 and then runs out of space buteach one of these Keys is unique there'sonly one of whatever there is herethere's only one C2 there's only one C1and if you notice also they've coloredthem and if you look at our pads up herethey kind of these purpley pads here andthis gsh one that it says here gsh onecorresponds to this little key that Ihave my mouse over now which is also a Gsharp one if I play it it plays thatpattern the same way as if I went uphere with my mouse and clicked it hasthe same effect I can click on the pador I can come down to this G Shar one onthis keyboard and play it now why am Itaking all this time to tell you thisbecause if we go over to our instrumentsnow I'm going to click the instrumentthing and you will notice on thisparticular key down here in the bottomcorner It also says G Shar1 in this case it's kind of some lowBassy note if I go back to pattern itplays pattern on gsh 1 if I go down toinstrument it plays this Bassy know soall this I'm saying is to try to getacross to you that the pattern and theinstruments are in some ways these padsare kind of stacked right up on top ofeach other which again is a confusingyou know concept at first not soconfusing when you understand it but itit's confusing at first but the bottomline is the patterns take over they gotall the precedent in other words eventhough this is sharing the same note itsays G Shar 1 here if I play apattern I hear the pattern and guesswhat if I go down to the gsh 1 note onthe piano key here I hear the pattern ifI switch over to the instrument and Iplay the gsh 1 key I hear that littleBassy note that's what it's assigned tobut guess what if I go down to thekeyboard and hit G Shar one I still hearthe pattern and this is the point I'mtrying to get across the pattern isalways the strong stronger point it'sthe one that always takes over so eventhough there's a note here the patternis always going to play It's almost likethe note doesn't exist even though it isit's there it's underneath the patternbut it always gets overwritten by thepattern most of the time for most peopleand in most situations I know for me itdoesn't really matter because because Ireally don't have too many scenarioswhere I would need to play this note andthis pattern at the very same time forsome people there is a time where theywant to play this pattern and thisparticular instrument note at the sametime maybe they have some kind of livedrum set up or pads they've set up orwho knows there's so many scenarios ofthings you can do as we go along I'mprobably going to cross something thatwill help you see a possible scenariowhere you'd want to use both theseinstrument notes and Pad notes at thesame time but in this scenario you can'tbecause the pattern always takes over soif you were to try to use this noteinstrument you wouldn't be able to cuzthe pattern always takes over butthere's a solution so let me demonstratethe solution and what it means I'm goingto go back to pattern for a minute hitthe pattern button if you look down hereat the bottom there's a funny littleround button it stands for the midi portand next to that there's a button thatsays Omni or could show a number for amidi instrument but we're going to lookat this midi port for a minute and likeI said I would say most of the time Inever use this button and maybe youwon't either but you need to know whatit is just in case so when this buttonis off meaning that I don't hit it andit doesn't light up it's not a differentcolor of some kind we're in thatscenario where the pattern is the mainguy even though underneath him there'sthat little instrument key but that'scan't be played because the pattern isbeing played but we want to be able todo both so what you got to do is turnthis on now it's on now Groove agent hasthe ability to recognize even though thethis pattern is beingplayed somebody could also play thisinstrument but the question is how dothey do that how do they pull it offwell here's how you do it when you goback over to my groove agent that weoriginally set up here for this song IfI right click in this inspector area andI go up and I add a midi track wehaven't used a midi track yet but I'mgoing to use them for this demonstrationI hit midi track and I get a little midydialogue and I say I don't want onetrack I want two so I'm going to hit twodifferent tracks I hit add trackand now it has added these two littlemidi tracks below my groove agent andguess what I can assign one of these midtracks to play a pad and I can assignthe other midi track to play theinstrument and here's how you do it whenI go up to the first midi track and Ilook over here in the inspector got abunch of stuff written down here there'sa little list and I click on this righthere and when I go down this list I gotall these different things that arewritten here and there's one here thatsays Groove agent SE Main and there'sanother one that says Groove agent SEpattern all right are you with me hereif I click the one that says Grooveagent SC main put that on there I go tothe second midi track I click on that Igo back to my little list I hit the longlist again and now I go down my list andit says Groove agent SE pattern so I hitthat one now anything I write or composeon this first midi track which is Grooveagent main is going to play theseinstrument[Music]doesn't matter it's on the same pads asthe as the patterns doesn't matter it'llplay these instruments on the other handwhen I go to my second midi trackanything I write or compose on thistrack will now only play exclusively thepatterns all right so before we wrapthis up let me try to demonstrateexactly what we're talking about letgoing choose a different kit I'm goingto go to this coconut flavored I'm goingto move groovy agent off the screen fora minute as we described I'm going toadd two midi tracks to this first miditrack I'll assign to the This Grooveagent main second one I'll assign to thegroove agent pattern the main I'll callinstrument and the pattern I'll callpattern now when I switch to the patterntab here and I hit this gsh onepattern this is the pattern Ihere and when I switch to theinstrument this is the instrument I herelowbase now I'm going to use my midikeyboard to do this and right now I havethe port disabled it's not lit up when Ihit on the instrument midi trackI hear the pattern I don't hear theinstrument when I hit the pattern miditrack and push the keydown I don't hear anything and if I lookdown at the keyboard it's not triggeringanything either if I go up to the grooveagent maintrack it triggers the pattern again sothe point I'm making is that even thoughwe've got the midi tracks in place andit looks like everything's assignedproperly terms of the inspector andwhere things need to go right now thepatterns are still taking over and anytrack that actually does anything pressG Shar one it only plays the pattern andsome midi tracks don't do anything now Icome over and I activate this midipattern port and suddenly when I playtheinstrument now I get the instrument andI can actually play other Keys aswell if I go to the instrument tabhere I can see the patterns lighting updown here I can see the keysmoving it's actually playing theseinstruments even though they're coveredby the midi patternon the other hand now when I go to themidi track that has the midipatterns it triggers the midipatterns if I move Groove agent out ofthe way for a second let's go ahead andrecord both of these tracks so we cansee that they can be playedindependently first I'll record somepatterns and I'm just hitting differentkeys in this lowerregister but they're triggering thepatterns so you can see it rolled in thethese different midi notes here andthese different midi notes are going totrigger different patterns so now I'mgoing to move up to the instrumentoption and I can play some bassnotes on those instrument pads that areright under thepatterns I'll start recording some ofthat and bring Groove agent back in Sonow what's happening patterns are beingplayed if I switch over to theinstrument tabthe instruments are being played so youhave complete Independence on what youwant toplay and that's how you separate theinstruments from the pattern with thismidi Port Button as always if youhaven't already be sure to grab yourcopy of the digital audio manual contentnavigation guide from the link belowthis video it's a faster better way tolearn and review pick it up look it overall the different topics that aregathered there and then you two can getstarted on your path to a better way tolearn all this stuff so we began talkingabout working with the pads today in thegroove agent SE we basically focused thewhole discussion on how to use the portoption button how that gives us someindependence with the pads between theinstrument pads and the pattern pads wesaw mainly how the patterns overlap theinstrument pads and in order to be ableto perform them independently we hadactivate and make use of that midipattern Port button and we will continueto move through our discussion withGroove agent and all the differentfeatures and functions in cuase asalways it's great to have you guys hereand I'll see you on the nextvideo