May 2011 – Reason101

What’s on Your iPod?

Maybe it’s music making month that has me exploring more new music out there. Or maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve been rather introspective lately, looking at various sound design ideas, and needing to take a break from tutorial writing (don’t worry, I’ll be back with more tutorials soon). But right now I’m looking more at what other people are doing out there. Instead of writing a tutorial this week, I decided to present a few things that are inspiring me. My tastes lately have gone more ambient and less dubstep, drum n bass, and whatever other new “step” is the new vogue.

So here are some of the things that are playing on rotation in my iPod, and some new material that has me going “wow, now that’s cool.” I’d be interested to hear what you all think of these artists and tracks. So feel free to comment and tell me what your opinions are. And let me know what you have on rotation in your iPod. Any ambient, drone, or glitch suggestions would also be welcome.

Seefeel: Seefeel (2011: Warp Records)

Seefeel - Seefeel

First and foremost is a CD that I recently purchased which at first listen didn’t catch me. The second time I listened to the whole CD front to back and it instantly connected for me. Now it’s the one CD I play from start to finish continually. It’s the number one CD on my iPod, and if you like your ambient served to you in a crunchy, distorted, and feedbacked guitar-based way, then this will certainly hit the mark. It’s Seefeel’s self-titled CD from this year, and I would definitely recommend it for some blissed-out mystical journey with a big kick.

What I really love about it is the lush layers, distortion, feedback, and the power that each track brings. After a 15-year hiatus, and a line-up change, they seem to still have what it takes to inspire me. And it’s nice to hear their sound get more gritty, and I think their choice to bring guitars back into the mix is spot on.

A note about the CD cover: This music feels exactly like the picture IMHO. Of course that’s why they’re called Seefeel.

Tim Hecker: Ravedeath, 1972 (2011: Kranky)

Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972

Perhaps it’s the fact that Tim is from my hometown (Montreal, Canada) that has me curious about his music. Or perhaps it’s the CD cover image of the first “Piano Drop” at MIT in my current location in Boston that has me intrigued. No, wait. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s done most of the recording sessions for this CD on a church pipe organ in Iceland. Well, now there’s just so many reasons to listen to this, that I couldn’t pass it up.

Interestingly, the music comes across very sparse, but very dense and all-encompassing. It’s broody and almost apocalyptic in nature. There’s elements of Eno here. There’s the spaciousness of emptiness. There’s the beautiful emmersive experience that just cries out “Ambient” in my head. This is what ambient can possibly be in the right hands. I can’t wait to get this CD and give it a full and thorough listen from start to finish. It’s the kind of music that forces you to lie in bed, close your eyes and just lose yourself in it.

Esselfortium: Seventeen More Times (2011: Esselfortium)

Esselfortium - Seventeen More Times

The moment I listened to this artist, I was hooked. The sampling is awesome and the sound is extraordinary. As one of the soundcloud reviewers said on his channel, he deserves more attention. And it’s true. I have Ed from EditEd4TV fame to thank for introducing me to this artist’s work. So have a listen. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. That is, if you like ambient breakbeat. The one thing that struck me about Esselfortium is the connection it placed in my mind with older progressive bands such as Tangerine Dream. The feel is definitely there. But the sound is just as clean and melodies are more traditional.

Introjection by esselfortium

It’s worth a listen if you have a keen interest in quality musicianship, and still enjoy the founders of progressive ambient from the 70’s — Kind of like prog rock takes an ambient U-Turn, then came out to a complete stop in 2011. Nice work here.

School of Seven Bells (SVIIB): Disconnect from Desire (2010: Vagrant Records)

School of Seven Bells - Disconnect from Desire

I know this is more main stream, but I can’t seem to shake this off my iPod for anything. The vocals from twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza and the guitar and production work of Benjamin Curtis are really well put together. Cohesively shoegazish and very ethereal. The band seem to take off where My Bloody Valentine left off. Though this is their second CD, they still hold everything together well. Though, I still tend to like the first CD Alpinisms better, as I think it’s more raw. But there’s nothing wrong with this CD as well, and both get a lot of air time when I’m on the road.

I think I also have an affinity to them because they maintain their own blog. Something a lot of musicians don’t do, but should. Note to all you bedroom musicians out there: start a blog, get a website, and get your name out there!

The Orb: Metallic Spheres (2010: Columbia)

The Orb - Metallic Spheres

What list would be complete without something from The Orb. At least my list that is. Well, I can’t knock the Orb. They were pioneers of Ambient Dub, and broke out a whole generation of chilled out rave youths. So this purchase for me was a no-brainer. And the fact that they teamed up with David Gilmour (finally doing something Pink-Floyd-esque) is a bit of a treat.

I have to make a confession: I love long drawn out ambient tracks that progress and move over time. So to get a single track in two 20-minute parts was really nice. A clean break from the everyday 3-5 minute soundscape that everyone is used to. The tracks have a chance to breathe and develop. And that’s a very integral part to ambient as a genre.

So does this CD hold up. Yes and no. It’s a great CD overall, but it’s not what I would consider the best from either artist: The Orb nor Gilmour. For the most part, Gilmour voices a few words and does his guitar thing. And the Orb seem a bit tried, tested, and tired. It’s not that the CD is bad. It’s had a lot of listens from me already. It’s just that with the wealth of everything else out there, and with their track record for breaking boundaries, I guess I expected more from them. It’s still a very solid CD and the music production is really wonderful. But it also falls a little flat for me in places. I’m still a die-hard fan, but next to all their other ground-breaking work over the past 25+ years, it kinda made me go “eh. ok. so what?”

Still worth a listen though.

Mum: Yesterday was Dramatic — Today is OK (2000: TMT Entertainment)

Mum - Yesterday was Dramatic - Today is OK

Still one of the best musical glitchy debut CDs of the decade, and gets a lot of airplay from me. I have most of their CDs, and I have to say this one is the best of the bunch. My favorite track is “Asleep on a Train” which just sounds like perfect music to fit the title. This group is from Iceland, and I would say this is one of the best “mood CDs” which fits my personality perfectly. It’s quirky, upbeat and downbeat from track to track and it weaves in and out of a really nice journey which makes the listener focus very deeply on what’s being played. Perhaps because I like to create music myself, I tend to listen harder than others. But I think this could have appeal for everyone who is willing to listen to some of the outer edges of our tiny little pop culture.

Most of their newer CDs since this one go down a very folksy path, and that’s not a bad thing. But it’s not necessarily MY thing either. This CD is much more electronic and glitch, and holds it’s head up high above a lot of others that were produced 10 years later.

Jonsi: Go (2010: XL Recording)

Jonsi - Go

This is the guy from Sigur Ros (I must have a weird affinity to Iceland this year). His first solo project was taken from lots of recordings that didn’t quite fit the Sigur Ros style. The CD is an interesting musical journey that is somewhat akin to Bronski Beat’s Jimmy Sommerville vocals, and modern day acoustic ambient. The cross-breading is superb. The best song on the CD by far is “Grow Till Tall,” the second to last track.

His vocals are haunting high pitch yearnings for what? I have no clue. But it all just works. And even cooler is that I heard a rumor that all the music on this CD is from acoustic instruments. No digital instruments. Which is refreshing in this day and age, and for this genre especially. Have a listen for yourself.

So that’s just some of the stuff loitering around my iPod or waiting to be purchased. Any suggestions based on these tastes? What do you think of these artists? I’d love to get your feedback. As always, never forget to stop and take a minute to listen to the music of others. It can be its own reward, and it will help tune you into sounds and ideas for music-making of your own.

The Theory Refill

This Contribution is one I’m thrilled to showcase here on my blog. 3rdFloorSound’s The Theory is a terrific set of Music Theory learning tools in a huge refill. So this is not a refill with sound patches or samples. Rather, this is a refill which gives you a whole music theory master class in a download, and then some. Here, I’ll pick it apart and show you what you can do with the files, how to use them, and sing nothing but praises for it, because like many people who use Reason, I can definitely use all the help I can get when it comes to music theory.

This Contribution is one I’m thrilled to showcase here on my blog. 3rdFloorSound’s The Theory is a terrific set of Music Theory learning tools in a huge refill. So this is not a refill with sound patches or samples. Rather, this is a refill which gives you a whole music theory master class in a download, and then some. Here, I’ll pick it apart and show you what you can do with the files, how to use them, and sing nothing but praises for it, because like many people who use Reason, I can definitely use all the help I can get when it comes to music theory.

The idea behind the Refill is simple: provide those without a lot of music theory knowledge under their belts a chance to take a look at all the possible scales and chords that are available. The Scales and Chords are available in several “Chord” and “Scale” .rns files located in the Refill. So you will need to go to File > Open, as opposed to trying to open the refill files from any sound device. As previously stated, there are no device patches in here. Simply song (.rns) files. This makes life a lot easier, because you can open the files directly from your “Explore” or browser window, if you wish.

The refill costs $34.95 and for what you get, it’s a bargain. Though this refill is targeted for those without a music theory background, I think even seasoned professional musicians may find some new scales and chords in this refill to inspire them. At the very least, it’s a great hands-on musical index. You can download the example files here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordbooker/

Here’s a few short videos put together by 3rdFloorSound to showcase the refill:

And here is what 3rdFloorSound has to say about the refill:

The Theory is not your average instrument refill. It’s an idea refill, a scale and chord resource, a midi score checker, and a teaching tool for Reason 5 and Record 1.5

3 scale files that include every possible 5, 6, and 7 note scale organized by structure, mode, and transposed in modes. 1 file containing 30 full scale maps transposed for each key.

152 Reason and Record song files, 76 for each program.

1 Music Theory overview – a song file that works as a course covering everything from sight reading to time signatures, the circle of fifths, chord construction and more.

17 Chord files containing 82 chords, each in individual clips organized four different ways: by quality, type, interval structure, and type versus structure.

12 Scale files containing 223 scales in individual clips, and 30 full scale maps that contain the scales plotted across the entire keyboard.
Home Contact

12 “chords on scales” files that contain all the chords transposed and plotted across 30 scales they fit into.

30 more Chords On Scales files, one for each scale, that has the scales and chords transposed for each key.

2 pdf files: a companion to the music theory overview, and a chord & scale index listing the spelling for every chord and a cross reference of every scale.

The Basics of Music Theory

To get things started, there’s 2 PDF files that ship with the Refill: one PDF file provides a color-coordinated chord and scale index, outlining all the possible chord and scale names. The chords and scales are also listed by section and measure, so you can quickly go to the proper measure within the .rns document and locate chords and scales with ease. If you’re looking for a chord or scale by name (Phrygian, for example) or category (Harmonic Major, for example), this list works well to provide bread crumbs in your journey.

The second PDF file is a nice 28-page introduction to Chords, Scales, and Notation. It’s not going to turn you into a grand wizard of musical theory, but it will point out the basics about how tempos and time signatures work, the circle of fifths for Chord progressions, and how to notate your musical ideas. It’s very basic and simple terms, which is really nice for the absolute beginner to get their feet wet.

the Table of Contents for the Music Theory primer PDF

What’s even nicer is the fact that this PDF corresponds with a special .rns file in the root folder of the Refill: “Music Theory.rns” Let me just say that I think 3rdFloorSound is even crazier than I am when it comes to creating humungous project files. This one single .rns file is a complete recap of the Music Theory PDF file, and uses a very intricate and detailed system of blocks, clips, note lanes, and actual notes to create diagrams. Just check out his explanation of the circle of fifths or how the clefs relate to the keyboard. It’s brilliant just for the sheer amount of work that went into it. It will have your jaw dropping on the floor, I promise.

I will provide a slight bit of guidance however, and that is you may need to expand or contract the main sequencer view area to make the diagrams and explanations show up clearly. Since notes are used to create the diagrams, they can get squished if the view area is too small, or expand too much if the area is too big. But this is a minor issue, and one that does little to detract from the usefulness of the information. Personally, I prefer reading the information directly in the PDF. But I would recommend that everyone just open up this file and take a quick look to see a marvelous and ingenious use of the Main Sequencer as a learning tool. One of the most creative uses of the Main Sequencer I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying a lot!

And Now for the Really Good Stuff

Chords and Scales. That’s it folks. That’s all you’re going to find here. But wait. This is really all you ever need in music correct? I mean sure there’s progressions, timings, composition, and all the rest. However, when it comes to the building blocks of your songs, it all comes down to Chords and Scales. And all of them are here. I mean ALL OF THEM! Every Scale you never thought existed, and every chord in every one of those scales you never thought existed. I lost track after the 10th page of listings in the PDF Chord & Scale list. I thought 3rdFloor was going to run out of colours to connect the dots between the list and the .rns files to be honest. But just for the heck of it, I counted exactly how many scales were listed: 364 in total. And that’s not even getting into the chords.

A screenshot showing all the 7-note scales by "Interval," "In Modes," and "In Modes - Transposed"

And of course you are given all possible Chords for each of those scales. So coming up with your own chord progressions is as easy as copy, paste, tweak, done! The beauty of all of the chords captured in a Reason format is that you can solo the chords and listen to them to instantly find new and interesting progressions. For those inept at theory, such as myself, this is a great hands-on feature.

A screenshot capturing a mere fragment of what is available for chords.

Then there are the Scale Maps. These maps can be used to overlay on top of your note lanes so you can immediately see any notes that don’t fit the scale in which you are working. The idea is simple. Copy the scale map clip from the .rns file into your own .rns or .record document and place it in advance (to the left) of your own note clip on the same note lane. Then go into the scale map clip by double clicking it, and select the entire set of notes in the clip (Ctrl+A). Finally, extend the notes, by dragging them over your own clip. This creates an overlay of the scale on top of your notes. You can then go into your note clip and delete any notes that are outside the scale map. If you’ve ever worked in Photoshop before, this is the same concept as creating an overlay or “image mask” on top of your layer. Simply delete everything that falls outside this masked area, or move the notes that are outside the mask to a note within the scale, and you’re halfway to correcting your song.

Of course, you’ll still have to ensure the composition sounds the way you want, and there’s still the human element of ensuring the notes make sense when played together. But this process goes a long way to helping your melody fit together coherently.

Here’s a short video I put together to showcase the refill:

To Summarize

This refill is massive in Theory, providing all the scales and chords you could ever want, and goes above and beyond to try to make things easy to find, and easy to use with scale maps, great color-coding, and nicely laid out files. It’s clear a lot of tender loving care went into this refill, and it’s well worth the bargain of a price. On the flip side, if you already have your theory well under your belt, or already own some chord and scale charts that work well for you, you may want to invest your money elsewhere. But even then, I think you’d be missing out on some great functionality. There’s no denying that having everything inside Reason files makes working with chords and scales a lot easier.

In the future, I’m looking forward to seeing more from 3rdFloorSound. Two great ideas that popped to mind as I was using this refill were: 1. Chord Progressions, and 2. Song Structure Templates. I think adding in groupings of common or even uncommon chord progressions could really enhance the refill, and adding some song structure templates, complete with lanes (or blocks) for bass, drums, guitar, pads, pianos, etc. would be a nice addition as well. Or both concepts could become their own new refill. And if anyone has the ability and determination to do it right, I think 3rdFloorSound is the one for the job.

I usually can’t find too many places to put my money, but this Theory refill is one that will reward you richly for such a small investment. I’d be crazy not to recommend it to every musical-minded person I know. Great job 3rdFloor!

3rdFloorSound is an upstate New York musician who uses Reason and Record extensively. You can reach him at www.3rdfloorsound.com or occasionally on twitter: @3rdfloorsound. To purchase The Theory refill direct, go to http://www.3rdfloorsound.com/theory.html

62 – Song without a Sequencer

After working with the Thor step sequencer, and in honor of Music Making Month at Propellerhead Software, I posted a challenge on TSOR (The Sound of Reason): Create an entire song without the main sequencer in Reason. So here is my attempt at a song without a Sequencer. And I’m here to say, it can definitely be done!

You can’t use the main sequencer. This means you can’t have any note, audio, pattern or automation lanes or clips. Kindly step away from the Main Sequencer!
The song has to be a decent length: about 3-5 minutes.
You can use the L / R and End markers in the sequencer (to indicate the end of the song, or to loop the song over again so we at least know the song’s end location).
It can’t be a “live jam” and it can’t consist of the same one note sound over 4 minutes in length (yes, I get the joke Mr. Marcel Duchamp — Har dee har har). In the spirit of a challenge, this is put out there to challenge you as a musician who loves making songs in Reason. So give it a good shot.

What you end up with is a song that is pretty much controlled via CV and the device sequencers (Thor, Redrum, and the Matrix). After a few days, here’s what I came up with:

Song without a Sequence by Phi Sequence

I thought this was an interesting challenge, given it’s not easy to throw the Main Sequencer aside. For one thing, how do you mute or fade in / out? For another, how do you automate your sends? All very interesting challenges and all will require those that participate to flex their CV muscles. And I strongly encourage you to do so, because the more you learn about CV and the back of the Reason rack, the more you will understand inner connections, and the easier it will be to take what’s in your head and spit it out in Reason.

So enough preaching. Here, I’m going to explore a few tricks to overcome the lack of the Main Sequencer in our song challenge.

You can download the project files here: Song-without-a-Sequencer. This is a zip file that contains a reworked copy of the 128-step forward sequencer Combinator that is used extensively below (works with Reason 4 & 5, and Record 1.5), as well as a finished song file I created without the use of the Main Sequencer or any automation, notes, or pattern lanes / clips (the Song file works with “Record 1.5 + Reason 5”). Note: please respect that the included song file, like everything else on this site, is under the Creative Commons 3.0 licensing, meaning you can mix, remix, share, and play around with the song to your heart’s content, but you will need to provide the source info and a link back to my site here in any productions you do with this file. Share and share alike ok? And you can’t make any money off the file. But if you remix or play with the file, send them back to me privately and I’d be happy to showcase them here in a new posting (send to my email in the top menu), I’d love to see what you come up with. Don’t be shy! 😉

To start tackling this pickle, I first thought about how the song would be sequenced? Since I can’t use any note lanes, the notes would have to be placed inside one of two possible devices: The Thor Step Sequencer or the Matrix. You can also use the RPG-8 to help play your notes and the Redrum could be used as a sample player/sequencer. But I thought I would stick to the Thor and Matrix for most of my song. As I have already explored creating a song entirely using Matrix sequences on my blog, I thought it would be a better challenge to use Thor as my main sequencer. Note: it also helped that I just came off a Thor Step Sequencer bender in the last 2 tutorials I wrote. So it was fresh on my mind.

With that accomplished, I had to set out using Thor as the sequencer for the song. The next step is to figure out the length of your song. If my song is 120 beats per minute, and I use 4/4 time, each bar is 2 seconds long, or 30 bars per minute. If I set up Thor’s step sequencer rate to be 4/4, that means each step is one full bar long (2 seconds). Using this rate/resolution, I can calculate that I will need 8 Thors to sequence a song 4 minutes long (4 minutes = 120 bars or 120 steps in Thor. Thor can produce 16 steps, so 120 / 16 = 7.5 Thors). I promise that will be the only math you’ll need to do in this tutorial. 😉

So the way I started was to create a Combinator with 9 Thors all strung together. See the Generative Ideas tutorial for a complete explanation, or you can download the Project Files at the top of this tutorial. We’re using the forward running Thor 128-step sequencer as a starting point. This is a Combinator that you can modify for use as a forward running sequencer to control various sounds and their levels. You can set all the rates on these Thors to 4/4 and you’ll have yourself a 4-minute sequencer. Now comes the modifications:

Since we can’t use the Main Sequencer at all, we need a way to a) Trigger the Step sequencer via CV, and b) modify the sound source levels via CV. Here’s how you do that:

Triggering the Step Sequencer via CV

The biggest problem you will encounter when doing things this way is how to trigger the step sequencer to start, and ensure it is only triggered once, and never again. The solution I came up with is to use 2 Matrix Curves inside the step sequencer Combinator.

Hold your Shift key down and create a Matrix under the set of sequenced Thors (we’ll call this “Trigger 1”). Switch to “Curve” mode, and on pattern A1, set it to 32 steps with a resolution of 1/2 (though I don’t think the step length or amount of steps really matters, as long the step length is above 2 steps, but as these settings worked for me, I’m not going to deviate from them). On step 1, set the curve to it’s full height (MIDI 127).
Select this Matrix, right-click and select “Duplicate Devices and Tracks” to create a copy of the first Matrix (we’ll call this “Trigger 2”).
The 2 Matrix Triggers (Trigger 1 and Trigger 2) with the exact same Curve settings.
Now flip to the back of the rack and send the Curve CV from Matrix 1 into CV input 1 on the Combinator. Send the Curve CV from Matrix 2 (Trigger 2) into CV input 2 on the Combinator. Set the Trim knobs on both CV inputs to full 127, and switch to “Unipolar”

Note: If you have Reason 4, you can still do this trick, just send the Curve CVs from both Matrixes into Rotary 1 and Rotary 2 CV inputs, set their trim knobs to full, and on the front of the Combinator, turn Rotary 1 and 2 down to 0 (zero; fully left).

The two Matrix Triggers' Curve CV cables being sent to CV 1 & CV 2 inputs on the Combinator, respectively.
Flip to the front of the rack and in the Combinator’s Programmer, select the first Thor device in your sequence. Enter the following into the Modulation Routing:
CV in 1 > Button 1 : 0 / 1 (For those using Reason 4, change “CV in 1” to “Rotary 1”)

The first Thor Step Sequencer Triggered to start by the Curve of the Trigger 1 Matrix.
Select the Matrix 1 (Trigger 1) device and enter the following into the Modulation Routing:
CV in 2 > Pattern Select : -1 / 0 (For those using Reason 4, change “CV in 2” to “Rotary 2”)

The Trigger 1 Matrix's Pattern switched by the Trigger 2 Matrix.

Now what happens is as soon as you hit the Play button on the Transport, the second matrix triggers the pattern of the first Matrix, which kicks off the first Thor step sequencer (provided Button 1 on this Thor is set to trigger the start of the Sequencer — turning it on, which should already be set up if you downloaded the 128-step sequencer). The great thing about this setup is that it’s a “one-time” trigger setup. Every time the Matrixes come around to trigger again, Matrix 1 will be one step ahead of Matrix 2, and so the first Thor will never be triggered twice. If it were triggered twice, you’d end up with all kinds of problems with multiple CV values output and summed together. Trust me, it’s not what you want to hear coming out of your sequencer.

Ask me why the steps of both Matrixes go out of sync or lag 1 step behind each other and I couldn’t tell you. I’m just happy that they do in this instance. I’m sure somewhere down the road I’ll be doing something totally different with the Matrix and need them in sync, and get all upset because they aren’t. But not here. Here I’m happy happy happy.

Modify your Sound Source Levels via CV

Now that we have the sequencer setup properly, it’s time to add in our sounds. If you look at the song I uploaded, you’ll see that I am using Curve 1 and Curve 2 of all the “Level” Combinators to output 2 level values from each “Level” Combinator. The final output of both curves are sent to the CV input on the Mix channels of the sound devices. This way, you can use the Thor Step Sequencer as a “Level” sequencer for each sound device.

The 2 Curve Outputs: The final Merged Output is sent to the splitter side of the Spider, and then one of the splits is sent to control the level of the sound device.

The 2 Curve inputs: The CV controls the level of the sound device. Input is on the Mix Channel, and the Trim Pot is set to 100.

If you need more level controls, just duplicate the 128-step sequencer Combinator and send the Merged Curve outputs to the devices you wish. Just make sure to keep all the Step Sequencer rates the same in all Thors so that you don’t go out of sync. Not that you can’t change the rates, but things will be much easier if all the Thors in each of the Combinators move at the same time through their steps.

Using this method, you can now fade in your song and fade out your song by adjusting the steps’ curve values in the first Thor sequencer (fading in) and adjusting the steps’ curve values in the last Thor (fading out). You can also control what is heard at any point in time along the song. For instance, I added a Trance Lead “Fill” in the middle of the song by adjusting the steps of the curve that controls the Fill’s Mix Channel Level CV. If you open up this Combinator, you’ll see that all the curve CV values of all the Thor steps are 0 (zero), except for Thor 4, 5 and 6. The curves in these Thors are raised up to around 64 gradually (fading in), and then lowered back down to 0 (zero) gradually (fading out). This has the effect of bringing the fill into the soundscape in the middle of the song. At the same time, most of the other devices except the Basses are lowered during the fill. If you wanted to mute any part along the way, just make sure that the curve value is set to zero. To have it sound, bring it upward to the level you desire (any non-zero level).

Alternately, if you want to mute the sound for a given device, you can just turn off the step where you want to mute the sound (the small red square beneath the steps). However, if you mute this way, it will mute both curves, so if you are controlling 2 devices with the 2 different curves of the same Thors, you’ll end up muting both devices. To get around this, have only one curve from Thor controlling one device (put another way, use only one 128-step sequencer Combinator to control one sound device).

So that shows you how to Trigger your song, change the sound device levels over time, and mute the sounds in your song.

Adding Send Effects

Another thing I wanted to try and accomplish is adding a send effect into the Record Main Mixer and control when and where this effect gets added. If you look at my song, you’ll see a Delay device connected to “Send 2” of the Master Section. This is a nice send effect to use because it already comes equipped with a “Dry/Wet” control on Rotary 4. The crux of the biscuit is this: You need to set up a similar Dry/Wet control for any send that you want to control during the duration of your song. This way, you can use another Curve from a 128-step sequencer Combinator into the Rotary 4 CV input on the back of the Combinator, and turn the CV Trim Knob all the way up to 127. Then flip the rack around and reduce Rotary 4 to 0 (zero; all the way left).

Rotary four (dry/wet knob) is reduced to 0 (zero) shown on the left, and a "128-step sequencer curve" is sent into the Rotary 4 input on the back (with the trim knob set to 127), shown at right.

Next, you need to turn on the Send effect for the devices that will use it (you’ll see in my song that the drum and Rex Loops take advantage of this delay send effect). Now, in much the same way as the sound devices are being controlled by the other step sequencer Combinators, the level of the “wet signal” of the delay is being controlled by yet another merged Curve value from another Sequencer Combinator. It’s as easy as saying “right-click Duplicate Device and Tracks” — of course you’ll have to go into each Curve and tweak the levels of the Curve’s step values in all the Thors, but I think by now you get the gist of it.

The Send settings for my song. The delay is set to Send number 2.

Now just for the fun of it go into the Main sequencer, and delete all the tracks (Don’t delete the devices, just the tracks). Set the End marker to somewhere after 4 minutes and press Play on the Transport. Your song will play through from start to finish. You’ve now created an entire track without the Main Sequencer. I knew you could do it!

Bye Bye Main Sequencer. Asta la vista. Adios. Arivaderce!

Where do you go from here?

This tutorial touches on a few ways you can control your song via CV. It’s by no means the only way it can be done. Not by a long shot.

Another way you could control devices without the main sequencer is to send them through a 14:2 Mixer. If you place the mixer inside a Combinator, you can check the box in the Combinator programmer, to have the Mixer receive notes. Then you can send CV into the Combinator’s Gate/CV input and play the appropriate keys to Mute or Solo your tracks connected to the Mixer. You could also send the Curves from the 128-step sequencer into the Mixer’s Level CV input, much as I have done in my song. This would control your fade-ins and fade-outs.

You could also use a Matrix device inside a Combinator and string together patterns going from A1 – D8. Then map the “Pattern Select” to a Rotary and use a very long slow LFO to move the Rotary over time. The matrix can then control any number of other devices with the Note/Gate CV source, and then you can use the Curve CV to adjust levels of the device, in much the same way I have done here. The only downside to the Matrix is that you don’t have any read-out of the CV levels, as you do in Thor, and so this can be a little daunting.

I hope this creative exercise inspires you to try it out yourself. Or at least shows you a few new hints and tricks when working with the Thor Step Sequencer and CV. Now back to making more music. It is music making month after all. 😉

61 – Generative Ideas (pt. 2)

Continuing our story about creating some random generative musical ideas in Reason, I’m going to take the Random Sequencers we built previously and find some usefulness for them. So hold on to your hat. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

You can download the project files here: Generative-Ideas-Part2. The files highlight the ideas I’m covering here. Note that some of the files work for Reason 4 and some work for Reason 5. C’est la vie.

Random Glitch Box

The Front panel settings on the "Glitch Box" Combinator

The first and probably best use I can find for these random generators is as a glitch box. Surprise surprise. This one really is a no-brainer. Just fire up the 128-step sequencer, duplicate the devices, and with a little reworking we have two separate randomizations: one for the notes and the other for the gate. Then load up a sample that spans the length of the keyboard, and this will be our “Grain Sample” which will be played via the sequencer Combinator. You can put the sample player inside the Combinator and just rewire the sound source CV / Gate inputs into your device of choice. Here, I’m going to use an NN19 for the sample.

The front of the Sampler glitch Box. It's almost like a Grain sampler, when you use the sequencer this way.

The back of the Sampler. You could also randomize the "Sample Start Time" if you wanted to go further with this idea.

Random FX

Remember that gargantuan “Key Flux FX Processor” I built oh so long ago? Well how about we fire up that bad boy and take it for the ride of its life. Using the same sequencer as above, we’ll plug it into the FX processor, and let it process any of your sounds. Just sit back and watch it cycle through all the various effects randomly. I think I could sit here for hours just listening to it doing its thing.

Crafting Some Useful Leads

Though this might not make any earth-shatteringly great lead tracks, you can make your sequencer more musical by implementing the following idea. First, take the 64-step sequencer, and change the notes around so that each of the four “Thor Sequencers” are 2-steps long. Then put the first two notes of your key (here we’ll use the key of C Major to keep it simple) into the first sequencer, the next two in the second sequencer, and so on. You will end up with this configuration:

Thor Sequencer 1: Step 1 = C3; Step 2 = D3

Thor Sequencer 2: Step 1 = E3; Step 2 = F3

Thor Sequencer 3: Step 1 = G3; Step 2 = A3

Thor Sequencer 4: Step 1 = B3; Step 2 = C4

Next, we’ll map the other steps so that we can add more of specific notes from the same key. In my patch I put more C, E, and G notes in the empty steps on the first Thor sequencer, and more of the D, F, A, B notes in the empty steps of the second Thor sequencer. I then added some sharps and flats into the third Thor sequencer, and additional suspended notes (and Octave shifts — i.e.: C4 notes) into the fourth Thor sequencer.

The steps in the first "Thor Step Sequencer" showing a C3-E3-G3-C4 pattern.

Finally, in the Combinator Modulation Routing section, I mapped the Sequencer > Step Length parameter of all four thors to Rotary 3 & 4, and Button 3 & 4 respectively. The min / max values on all were 2 / 16. This way, we can use the Rotaries and Buttons to add in further steps to increase the “weight” of them into the Random sequencer. For instance, if you turn up Rotary 1, you will introduce more C, E, and G notes. This has the effect of weighting those notes more than other notes in the key. In other words, the sequencer will “pick up” and “play” those notes more than the others.

The front of the Combinator, showing the Rotaries / Buttons. Note the Step Count is mapped to Rotary 3 to add more weight to C-E-G notes.

Of course if the Combinator had more Rotary assignments, you could weight each key separately using 8 rotaries. But that’s just not the case. But if you look at my Kongtrol articles from a few weeks back, you could very easily build it using Kong (wink wink, nudge nudge).

The patch I built only uses 1 octave range, but there’s nothing stopping you from building this across multiple octaves, up to 128 steps, using my random sequencer here. Or you can use the Transpose feature to raise it to two octaves. Or you could use the RPG-8 to force octave switches, but then you’re going to be inputting values into the “Main Sequencer” in Reason, and I’m trying to stay away from doing that.

Modulation, Modulation, Modulation

Another interesting use of the random sequencer is when you start to get into modulation. With a random setup, you can use the CV output to modulate parameters on any of the Reason devices, even ones that don’t have a CV input (using the Combinator Rotaries as the CV pass-through). Included in the file is a “Mods” patch which show you how to create a random EQ generator and also use the same random sequence to affect some parameters to the Thor sound source directly (via CV1). The Thor’s CV1 is then mapped to the “Amp Pan” and “Osc 3 Position” parameters. Note that in order to get the EQ Frequency modulated, you need to send the random sequence CV to a Combinator rotary first. Then in the Combinator’s Modulation Routing section, you can map the rotary to affect the EQ Frequency. In the patch I’m providing, I set the Min / Max values to 600 / 100, which provided some nice movement to the sound.

The front of the Combinator showing the Thor sound source and EQ, Both of which are modulated with the Thor Random Step Sequencer.

The back panel showing the Note CV sent to the Spider and then sent to Rotary 1 and the Thor sound source CV 1 input.

The front panel of the Combinator with the Programmer displayed. Note that the EQ Parameter 1 Frequency is mapped to Rotary 1. This way a parameter without a CV input can be controlled via CV using the Rotary as a pass-through.

In a nutshell, if you open this patch, you can press play on the transport, which starts the sound. No modulation is affecting the EQ, Pan, or Osc 3 Position parameters yet. In order to turn on these modulations, press button 1 (Run / Reset). You will then hear the modulations taking effect. To select the amount of modulation applied, use Rotary 1. To affect the Synced Rate of the modulations, use Rotary 2.

Note: in this kind of setup, I only used the “Note CV” value from the random sequencer. The gate CV value was not needed or used. I also removed the CV visualization DDL-1 devices, so that the patch would be accessible for both Reason 4 and Reason 5 users. Note also that the CV values are inverted through the Spider so that Rotary 1 will gain more modulation when turned to the right. If the signal wasn’t inverted, turning the Rotary to the right would produce less modulation, which is counter-intuitive in my book.

Where do you go from here?

These are just a few ideas I had when I was playing around with the Random Sequencer I created. As I went from having the first initial “problem,” I ended up with several interesting sequencer patches and ideas. This just proves that if you have a single thought or problem, and you can solve it, you can end up going in a lot of different directions which lead to even more ideas and creative projects. So I guess my point is this. Find as many “problems” as you can, and then work toward solving them. Because that just might be the creative spark you need to start an imaginative wildfire.

One other place you could take this is to build an entire “generative” song, in which all parts of it are randomized. In this case, if you used the Thor sequencer here, you would end up with a song that is never the same way twice, and one which bypasses the Main Reason sequencer entirely. As a creative project, that would be quite an undertaking. But if you want creative ideas, there they are.

Another creative “generative” idea is to blend multiple LFOs together, so that you end up with a lot of variety. You could then take a third LFO and use that to apply to one of the two LFO’s rate or amount parameter. There’s all kinds of ways you can layer LFOs to come up with some pretty intricate modulation sources. But I think I’ll save that one for another article at a later date. For now, I’m pretty much done looking at Thor’s sequencer for a while. And it’s Music Making Month, so it’s time to actually make some music right?

PS: If you come across any other ideas related to this idea of “Generative” or “Random” music, please share them. I’d love to hear and take a look at what you’re working on. All my best for now.