As most of us know, you can’t automate the Re-Groove in any way within Reason and Record. . . or can you? As with all things Reason-esque, there’s usually a workaround or two available for you. And Automating your Re-Groove, though time consuming, can indeed be accomplished. Here’s how:
ReGroove Mixer Automation Workaround
Let’s assume you have a drum track tied to a Redrum (or as most of you will be going nuts for Kong, let’s say you have a Kong track). The easy way to set this up is the following:
- First, decide on a groove. Open up the ReGroove Mixer and then place that groove inside channels 1-8, or however many channels will require your groove movement. For now let’s set up 8 slots with the same groove.
- Next, you will need to create the same amount of note lanes for the device which you will be “Grooving.” So create 8 note lanes.
- In the case of Redrum, create the drum pattern using the pattern sequencer, and place this pattern on the first note lane for the Redrum (right-click on the Redrum step sequencer and select “Copy Pattern to Track” which places it on the current note lane).
- Go to the sequencer and copy the Redrum pattern 8 times. Move each copy to a separate lane in sequence. So, for example, note lane 1 will have the pattern from bar 0-2; note lane 2 will have the pattern from bar 3-4; and so on, right up to the 8th note lane.
- Associate a different groove with each note lane from A1 on the first note lane, right up to A8 for the eighth note lane.
- Now comes the fun part. On the ReGroove mixer, set up each channel as though it were steps in the step sequencer of the Matrix, except this time you are creating different “grooves” for each step between Channel 1 to Channel 8. If you want to get a better feel for setting this up, loop through each note lane’s note clip and adjust the parameters for the groove as you listen. Let your ear be your guide in this instance.
I hope you see where I’m going with this now. When you play your track forward, the drum beats play in sequence as if they are on a single lane, however, since you set up each lane with a different groove, you are essentially applying different grooves to each note clip and therefore changing the groove as the song progresses and as the note lanes switch from one to the other. Since you can create 32 different groove patterns, you have a 32-step groove sequencer using this method. The only downside is that your sequencer can get pretty cluttered quickly; especially if you split your different drums on different lanes (for example, if you have all your kicks on one lane, and your hi hats on another, and want to provide different grooves for each, you’ll have to create different sets of note lanes for each drum — up to 32 of course).
Still, if you are willing to invest a little time into your track, this ReGroove automation trick might come in very handy to create some further dynamics in your tracks. And you are not limited to applying this to drums only. You can apply this to any set of note lanes for any note-generating devices.
Just a Quick Tip. . . don’t forget your Solos and Mutes!
I just wanted to post this quick video to point out the idea of automating your solos and mutes on your mixer. Often times it’s easy to forget to use your mixer as a creative tool when producing the track. Having some play with the solos, mutes, and other aspects of the mixer can open you up to a lot of creative potential. It’s a great way to add more dynamism to your tracks.
Here’s a file based on Emile’s comment below this post. Emile’s tip is about tying the Noise Oscillator in slot 1 to an Analog Oscillator in slot 2. I kind of ran with it to provide a bit of a strange patch here. But it might spark some ideas. It has to do with modulating the kbd and pitch of the Noise Oscillator to affect the sound of the Analog Oscillator. The file is a zip format file which contains an .rns with the setup. Have a look here: kbd-pitch-idea
Well, that’s it for now. Let me know how these tricks work for you? And if you have any others, please start up a discussion and let us all benefit. Until next time, happy reasoning!
Great tips 😀
I have a nice tip I recently found out too.
You can get the noise oscilator on the thor to follow your midi, so it goes up and down, by turning the kbd knob on the filter all the way up, then creating an analog osc in slot 2, and turning the osc 1 AM from osc 2 all the way up too. this creates a very weird synth with a noise osc as a basis
Emile,
Nice tip. I think to further clarify you probably need to sync Oscillator 1 to Oscillator 2, and then need to turn on Osc.2 (Analog) to go through the LP filter in Filter slot 1, and turn off Osc.1 going into the Filter 1 slot. What might actually blow your mind is if you then start playing around with the Kbd knob on Osc.1 (Noise Osc) in this circumstance. You can get very weird sounds indeed. In fact, put Thor inside a Combinator, and in the Combi’s mod matrix, have Rotary 1 affect the Kbd parameter of the noise oscillator, and have Rotary 2 affect the pitch of the Noise Oscillator (via the Rotary on Thor). Then tie some CV source to the CV slots in the back of the combinator and you can make all of this controllable via CV, for some really weird stuff. Actually, If you scroll up in this post, I’m going to put together a file for you, so you can see what I came up with from your idea. See how posting a simple trick can lead to some new ideas. 😉 Thanks for sharing.