Slicing a Drum Loop

Procedure

  1. In Groove Agent, select the pad on which you want to record the first slice.
  2. Open the Record tab.
  3. In the plug-in header of Groove Agent, activate the Activate Side-Chain button.
  4. In the DAW, route the output of the audio track that contains the drum loop to the side-chain input of Groove Agent.

    Alternatively, you can also add a send on the mixer channel of the audio track and route it to the side-chain input of Groove Agent.

  5. On the Record tab in Groove Agent, set Trigger – Start and Trigger – Stop to MIDI Note-On.

    This way, each played MIDI note starts a new sample recording and ends the previous one.

    If you set Trigger–Stop to a Fixed Duration of 1/16th, for example, every time a note-on is received, a sample recording is started and it is stopped automatically after a 1/16th note.

  6. Set the Sample Mode to Auto Next to create multiple sample recordings.
  7. Set Mapping to Chromatic to map the samples automatically to the consecutive pads and their corresponding keys on the keyboard.
  8. Activate the Pre/Post button and specify a Pre Recording Time of a few milliseconds.

    This helps you to avoid missing the attack of a sound when triggering a recording slightly too late, for example.

  9. Set Auto Trim to Silence.

    This way, the attack of a sound is corrected, for example, if you triggered a recording too early or if the pre-recorded section contains silence.

  10. Click the Record/Record Enable button to enable recording.
  11. In the Steinberg DAW, play back the audio track.
  12. Do one of the following:

    • Play a MIDI note each time that you want to start recording a new slice.

    • Use a programmed MIDI sequence that represents the slices that you want to record.

      For example, create a MIDI part that contains eight 1/8th note events and use this part to trigger the recording. This way, you have an exact and reproducible trigger sequence. This is particularly useful if the loop exists as an audio part inside the same project.

Result

Groove Agent creates a sample for each slice and maps it to the corresponding keys. You can now play a MIDI ramp sequence to play the original loop, or get creative and program completely different patterns.