Working with Groove Control™

Using drum loops is great because it's a fast and inspiring way to get a slammin' groove into your track. The only problem is, you can't change the tempo or feel of a drum loop without doing some serious tweaking. Even with software like Acid™ or ReCycle™ you sacrifice fidelity or MIDI sync, and it takes a lot of work besides.

That's why ILIO and Spectrasonics came up with Groove Control™. If you're new to Groove Control, click here to find out about it. If you've bought a Groove Control activated library, you already know how amazing it is, so here are some tips to help you get more creative.

1. Change the tempo of the grooves without the pitch changing.
How? Just change the sequencer's tempo.

2. Change the pitch of the grooves without the tempo changing.
How? Adjust the GC Program's coarse and fine tuning parameters in your sampler.

3. Change the feel of the loop to match the feel of your track.
How? Quantize the GC sequence with the same settings as the other tracks in your song.

4. Tighten up the drummers performance.
How? Gradually increase the percentage of Quantization on the Groove Control™ sequence.

5. Turn a straight feel into a shuffle or visa versa.
How? Use a swing quantize setting or increase the percentage of the shuffle parameter in your sequencer.

6. Change the time signature of the loop.
How? Move the sequence loop point to loop in the new time signature. Move the position of the downbeats and backbeats with the event editing capabilities of your sequencer.

7. Create a No Kick or No Snare version of the loop.
How? Using event editing, reassign the MIDI note numbers of the Kick or Snare slices to Hi-hat slices.

8. Change the "pushes" in a pattern.
How? Move the position of the downbeat kicks in the pattern forward by a sixteenth. (Event Editing)

9. Build your own pattern from scratch using the sounds from the loop.
How? Sequence the parts yourself by playing the GC sampler programs.

10. Create Gating FX by changing MIDI gate times.
How? Change the MIDI gate values or Gate Time parameter in your sequencer.

11. Change the levels of the backbeats and hi-hats.
How? Change the MIDI velocity levels of the related slices.

12. Replace individual drums with different samples.
How? Copy the whole sequence to a new Track/MIDI channel. Delete the snare events from the first sequence, delete everything BUT the snare events from the second track. Assign second track to trigger different Snare samples.

13. Create randomized grooves.
How? Play different sequences with the same sampler program or visa-versa.

14. Make your own breakdown.
How? Reassign busier events to hi-hat or ambience slice events.

15. Use the Kick pattern from one loop and the snare pattern from another.
How? Delete or reassign the relevant events.

16. Create syncopated or displaced groove combos by shifting the starting point of each loop by a 16th note.
How? Stagger the start times of the sequences, offsetting them in 16ths.

17. Change a Snare to a sidestick.
How? Find a Sidestick sample you like, reassign the MIDI events for the snare to play the new sidestick sample.

18. Create echoing grooves using MIDI delay.
How? Copy the track and sampler program to multiple channels, offset the copies by the length of echo you want and lower the velocities of the copy tracks.

19. Lower the pitch of the kick in the loop without the other instruments changing.
How? Copy the sequence and sampler program. Delete the Kicks from one program and everything BUT the kicks in the other. Lower the tuning of the "kick only" program in the sampler.

20. Lay back the snare within the loop.
How? Nudge back the timing of the snare events in the event editor of your sequencer.

21. Combine loops from "musically incompatible" grooves.
How? Assign the Quantize settings the same and delete/reassign the conflicting events.

22. Make the loop sound softer and more distant.
How? Change the Attack time of the Sampler Program.

23. Reverse only the snares in the pattern.
How? Find all the Snare slices in the sampler. Reverse the samples in the sampler.

24. Reverse the order of the groove.
How? Play the MIDI sequence backwards (reverse order).

25. Add Electronica style buzz rolls to live loops.
How? Add short 64th note repetitions on the snare events, with gradually building velocity values.