Anyone using Reason should already be sufficiently versed in the work that Ed Bauman has done. If not, then this is the perfect time to get acquainted. Simply put, he’s one of the gurus. And he has recently released a ReFill for version 4 and up, titled “88MPH Vol. 1” (a new volume 2 will be available late 2011 and volume 3 available early 2012). This ReFill packs in 51 Combinators of 80’s sounds; sounds which he used to recreate with utter realism some of the best hits of the 80’s. From Prince’s “1999” to Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” he is the man who can’t get his perfect recreations (“Re-Covers,” to use a term he coined) posted on YouTube because the video service can’t recognize his tunes from the original. That’s just how good he is!
Anyone using Reason should already be sufficiently versed in the work that Ed Bauman has done. If not, then this is the perfect time to get acquainted. Simply put, he’s one of the gurus. And he has recently released a ReFill for version 4 and up, titled 88MPH Vol. 1 (a new volume 2 will be available late 2011 and volume 3 available early 2012). This ReFill packs in 51 Combinators of 80’s sounds; sounds which he used to recreate with utter realism some of the best hits of the 80’s. From Prince’s “1999” to Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” he is the man who gets grief from YouTube because his perfect recreations (“Re-Covers,” to use a term he coined) fool the video service into thinking they are the original. That’s just how good he is!
So here, I’m going to take a quick look at his ReFill, and also post a demo video I created using the ReFill. I would highly recommend if you are into the sounds coming out of the 80’s or if you want to learn a little more about how to program those sounds, that you pick up this ReFill. It won’t disappoint you.
Ed was also gracious enough to allow me to provide a free Combinator from the ReFill. Since Blondie’s Heart of Glass has always been a great disco classic near and dear to my heart, I thought I would provide one of the sounds taken from that song. You can download the Combinator patch file here: E4TV_Bland E Herd a Class Pulsing Synth. Thank you Ed!
Ed’s 88MPH Vol 1 Free Combinator Synth Patch
First, here’s what Ed posted about his ReFill:
These are all Combinators with all 4 Combinator knobs and buttons mapped to various parameters. Usually Combinator knob 4 is mapped to volume for convenient live use. The remaining knobs and buttons control anything from filter frequency to reverb amount, reverb time, chorus speed, octave settings, and more. Pitch wheel and mod wheel are mapped as well. About 90% of the ReFill is custom Thor and Subtractor patches, with the remaining 10% made up of NN-XT patches which rely on the Orkester and Factory Soundbank for samples.
Each and every patch has enormous potential, from the default load-in setting to drastic changes when you alter the programmed parameters… try low octave power drones, and for patches with delay try playing staccato notes in tempo, move the pitch wheel and mod wheel, etc. When you load in a new patch, about 80% of the time all the knobs are at either 0%, 50%, or 100%. At first load-in you’ll find the patch to be exactly as I used it in my ReCover, so you can simply deviate from there.
This ReFill is a collection of 51 Combinator patches only; sequencer content is NOT provided. Requires Reason version 4.0 or higher due to extensive use of Combinator and Thor devices. There is not a VSTi version available and it will not natively work with any DAW (though you can of course use ReWire with your DAW of choice in conjunction with Reason/Record): this is a Reason/Record product only.
So the basic idea is that Ed provides you with all the sounds from the original songs, but not the sequencer information. Which means that we can bring the flavor of the 80’s into today’s music, and create our own tracks with them. I did that here:
Here’s a video that Ed put together to promote the ReFill:
And here’s the little demo I put together to showcase a few sounds from Ed’s Refill. Remember that this is just a taste of his refill. Ed is a meticulous programmer, and each Combinator is worth its weight in gold if you ask me. So please support his work:
I hope this gives you a good idea of what’s included in the ReFill and what can be done with these sounds. And might I suggest also having a look at his “Reasonable Help 2010” ReFill, in which you get 50 patches that help teach you how to design sounds and develop better patches. It’s a great tool for the medium or advanced level Reason user. I wrote a review of that ReFill back in January 2010.
A huge thanks to Ed for putting this package together. You truly are an inspiration to all of us Reason users. Please keep doing what you’re doing my friend. You can purchase Ed’s 88MPH Vol.1 ReFill here: http://baumanproductions.com/88mph.html
When you get a creative spurt, don’t dismiss it! Make sure you embrace it, accept it, harness it, and get it out of you immediately. Most importantly, learn to understand it’s happening (or when it’s about to happen), and let it ride for as long as you can. I can tell you this because from experience you will have dry spells and they tend to last longer than the creative spells. So it’s important to read the signs and act on them.
When you get a creative spurt, don’t dismiss it! Make sure you embrace it, accept it, harness it, and get it out of you immediately. Most importantly, learn to understand it’s happening (or when it’s about to happen), and let it ride for as long as you can. I can tell you this because from experience you will have dry spells and they tend to last longer than the creative spells. So it’s important to read the signs and act on them.
You can download the project files here: 7-Songs-in-7-Days. There are 2 song files zipped up. Note that they are a “.reason” format, which means you need Reason 6 in order to open them. But even if you don’t have Reason 6, you can follow along with the project below, watch the video and adjust it for previous versions of Reason. You’ll probably also learn more by doing it this way. The first song is “7-songs” which is outlined in the videos below, and the second is “Crease Kink” which I threw in there in case you want to remix it or play around with it. Have some fun with it, but remember that I own the rights to it. So if you use it, please let me know and I’ll showcase it here (to date no one has yet to do something with one of my files, but there’s always hope). 🙂
Usually when I’m in a dry spell, I tend to notice it pretty quickly. And when I do, I immediately shift gears and work on a different project. For example, recently I was creating nothing. It happened about 3 months ago. So shifting focus, I started working on designing sounds — LOTS of sounds. Rather than sit at my computer with a blank canvas open or hacking away at nonsense, I shifted focus. This does two things:
It gets your mind out of the clouds and away from the blank slate.
It usually rejuvinates you and lets you recharge your batteries. Kind of like a holiday. We all need them from time to time to rest and clear the mind.
When I got back (and after producing my latest Pureffects ReFill), I was more creative than I’d ever been. And this is all just a long-winded way of saying I brought on a new challenge for myself. Let’s create 7 songs in 7 days. Not an easy challenge, to be sure, but a very fun challenge nonetheless. And though not every song is spot on, most I’m happy about, and with a few modifications, I could say they are finished.
The Main Sequencer after adding some of the elements you’ll learn in this creative project.
First: The Songs
So first, here’s the songs in order of creation (day by day). Skip all of this if you just want to get to some of the good tricks that I used inside them. You’ll find some of those tricks down below. Otherwise, please have a listen and comment. One can never have too much feedback.
Day 1: Friday October 14, 2011 – Crease Kink (Glitchcore)
Now for a few tricks. I thought I would show a few ways I went about creating some of these songs. It’s not really a formula, but it’s a way I used to start off these songs and keep going in order to create so many in such a short time. There are, of course, a million and one ways to create songs. This hopefully will show you a few techniques that might inspire you to jump into a new direction with your own music. I hope so.
Before I start, let me first say that a lot of the time, I’ll create all the sounds from scratch using the Reason synths. But for the sake of efficiency, and in order to create a song every day, I opted for the approach of using patches in the Factory Sound Bank (FSB) for all the instrumentation, and my Pureffects ReFill for some of the effects. Since I had already created thousands of effects patches (and some in the FSB as well), why not put them to good use. In this respect, it was a bit of a novel approach for me, but one that was very rewarding.
Let’s start by looking at the videos on how I started out a song. This gets you about 50% done in less than an hour.
Of course, after these tutorials, there is still work to be done. Mainly some EQ work on the various elements, continuing with the arrangement in the sequencer, throwing in additional elements to spruce it up a little, adding compression here and there, gluing the track together with a Reverb or two, adding a mastering suite to open up the track, and finally using the Master Bus Compressor from the main mixer (if you choose). But this is where I’m going to leave you for now. If you want to pursue these tracks, I have put two in the Download up at the top of the tutorial. Feel free to work on those and come up with your own mix. If you do, please share it with us so we can have a listen.
Starting off with a few Drums
Let’s start at the beginning. Usually the first thing is to start with your drums. That’s a normal starting point for most tracks. So we’ll start with a Redrum. Now normally, you have an idea in mind before you start a track. But I seldom work that way. In truth, I usually lay down a few drum sounds in a pattern in the Redrum and wait until I hear it. I then start to get a certain idea of how to shape the sound and where it’s going to go. In this respect, the song becomes a combination of what I hear first, and then I make decisions on how to shape it as its playing. This is usually backwards from the way most people would compose. But it’s worked for me in the past. So I’m going to do the same thing here.
Once you create a redrum, open up the assorted kick drums in the FSB, and add one into the first channel. I usually keep them playing as I’m selecting them so I can get a feel for what I’m going to use as a Kick drum. Once that’s done, I flip to the back of the rack and send the Gate Out from Channel 1 into the Gate In on channel 2. I do the same thing between channels 2 & 3. Then flip to the front of the rack and select Drum Channel 1. Lay down a pattern (usually I lay down a 64 step pattern to take full advantage of all the steps in the Redrum, and to have something that sounds like it has a lot of changes throughout). Since I’ve connected the Gate channel 1 to channels 2 & 3, I can layer the kick with 2 other kick sounds, but I only have to enter 1 pattern in the Redrum. This speeds up the workflow a little (and is why you should get familiar with your CV connections!).
So now add two more kick drums in Channels 2 & 3. Once this is done, I shape the levels, length & pitch of all 3 drums together. It’s at this point that I start to get a feel for how things work together. If something isn’t working right, I’ll either change one of the samples, or adjust those parameters.
Next, I add 2 Snare drums in channels 4 & 5 and use the same gate CV trick between the two. This means I need to create a snare pattern on channel 4.
And finally I’ll create 2 Hi Hats on channels 8 & 9 – and set the button to have exclusive sounds between those two channels. This way I can set up an open hi hat on 8 and a closed hi hat on 9. Though, I don’t always use open / closed Hi Hats. But it’s there if you want.
Now create 2 additional mix channels and put them under the first mix channel for the Redrum. Label each Mix Channel Kick, Snare and Hi Hat. Create 3 Spider merger/splitters and use them to merge the sounds from each single channel through them and back into their respective mix channels. This way you end up with 3 channels for the 3 different drums. You’ll see why we do this in a minute.
And now copy the Redrum pattern to the track. Go to the track and using the Tools window (F8), go to the “Explode” function and explode the drum clip to their own lanes (you may want to delete the old lane and label the 3 different clips so that you know what’s what. I’ve done this enough times to know that the order is the Hi Hats at the top, the Snare Drum in the middle, and the Kick drum on the bottom. Easy enough.
So why separate mix channels? The reason is because you want to be able to process each drum differently. And this ensures that we can do this with a minimum of fuss. So first off, select the Kick mix channel, right click, and go to Effects > Pulveriser. The device is automatically routed inside the Mix Channel’s “Insert FX” section — if you’re new to Reason 6, this might be confusing at first. But think of each Mix Channel as having its own built-in Combinator where you can place effects and even route / program them as you would a normal Combinator. It keeps your rack clean and makes working with effects easier. Trust me on this.
With the Pulveriser, I’m going to set up a nice beefy Kick — watch the video for how this is done. After that, I’m going to have a little bit of fun by varying the pitch somewhat on 2 out of 3 of the kicks. Flip to the back and you’ll see that the Pulveriser can not only be used to beef up the kicks, but we can steal some of it’s modulation to affect the pitch on those kicks as well. So use the Tremor / Follower outputs and send them into the Pitch inputs of 2 kick drum channels on the Redrum. It’s a nice idea also because it doesn’t require any extra devices to set up.
Now I’m not going to go into processing for the snares and kicks, but I think you get the idea now. Don’t be afraid to add a few effects, and when done, you can also add an EQ to each drum individually to cut the low end and boost certain frequencies a bit. That’s one method to work with the drums. Now on to the Bass.
Working the Bass into the Mix
Now we move on to the bass. Again, this is just one of the methods I used to come up with this song challenge. It’s nothing fancy. Start out by adding a Bass instrument and ensure you have a bass that you like. Something with a long sustain so our notes can ring through. Don’t worry if the notes sound too long. We’ll adjust their note lengths in a minute. For now, just find a bass sound in the FSB that works with the drums and that gives you some degree of pleasure when you hear it.
Now go to the sequencer and draw in a 4-8 bar bassline. Again, don’t get too caught up in the composition. You can always change it later. Just something simple. This will be the driving sound for the song, for the most part. At least that’s what it is for me.
Now Loop the clip. This is so that you can audition the effect we’re going to add. And also so that we can switch out the bass with another bass instrument if we don’t like it. I do both of these things. I also add another one or two basses and copy the clip to those other instruments. This way we have a nice thick layered bass; just as the drums are layered.
For the effect, my go-to device is an Alligator. This is because it really is a nice way to add some movement and also since I’ve created a bazillion Alligator patches, I can audition them as they play through. Once I find one I like, I keep it. And since I usually have at least 2 bass instruments, I have the lower bass line kept as the sub bass without any effects, and the higher basses utilize the Alligator. In this way, you end up with a nice lush line playing through your song.
Another Fun Audio/Alligator Trick: Introducing some Pad-like Elements.
Here’s something fun that I’ve been toying with in most of these songs. It involves adding one or two audio channels, and then dropping a short melodic sample into the audio track. Then I’ll take the sample and stretch it the entire length of the song (or beyond, depending how the waveform looks). The idea is to have the audio act as a Pad sound for the entire length of the song. And since you’re stretching it out beyond recognition, you end up with a real twist on the sample.
Once you do this, make sure to lower the level significantly. The idea is to have the sound running in the background so it’s audible, but doesn’t take over the drums or bass. A nice subtle sound.
To complete the trick, I add an Alligator to the audio channel. It’s important to remember that the Effects work on audio just as they would on MIDI clips. So adding an Alligator provides some nice movement to your pad sounds. I wouldn’t go crazy with the Alligator in this situation. Just a slight movement to the sound is all you need. So again, audition some of the Alligator patches in the FSB, or get my Pureffects Refill for a selection of 200+ Alligators. 🙂
Finally: Some Dr. OctoRex accents to really Kick it up a Notch
Lastly, let’s add some accents using a loop. You’d think a single loop can’t do much, but wait until you see this fun little trick. It’s not so much a mystery, but while the song is playing, create a Dr. OctoRex and find a loop that goes along with the song. In this experiment I wanted to find something with a hard edge, so I opened up the “Hardcore” folder in the FSB and found a loop that I thought had some possibilities. I then set about filtering it and adjusting the Octave setting, and adding the LFO for some modulation. Once this is done, copy the loop to a portion of the track (4-8 bars long) and then turn off the “Enable loop playback” button, so you don’t get double-note sounds.
Now in the sequencer you can go about altering the notes and creating some variation.
Finally, copy the Dr. OctoRex and Track. Using this copy, make some adjustments. Then combine the Dr. OctoRex and create an RPG-8 Arpeggiator to play the Combinator. Go to the sequencer and move the notes from the second Dr. OctoRex down to the Arpeggiator track. Then go back to the rack and copy the loop into all 8 slots. This is so that if the notes on the sequencer playing the RPG-8 switch the loop slot, the same loop is still playing.
From there, you can go to town switching things around in your loop. Usually changing the octave, updating some settings on the RPG-8, etc. will produce some interesting results. The nice thing is that both loops have the same groove and timing, so they will sound like they belong together. Indeed, this is where I had the most fun: playing around with settings until you find the right balance between the loops.
Don’t forget you can also edit the slices directly, or use some CV to modulate things further. Experiment and play until you make the loop your own. That’s really the key here.
The front of the rack after adding the Drums, Bass, Audio Track (Pad), and some Dr. OctoRex Loop accents.
So there you have it. One method I used to create seven songs in seven days. Now go out there and challenge yourself to create your own group of songs using your own methods, or incorporating some of the methods I outlined here. The sky is the limit. So reach for the sky!
Today let’s take a nice little look into the world of The Echo. New to Reason 6, this is one of 3 new effects which were much anticipated by the User Community (Do we all remember posts with subject lines reading “We need better effects in Reason”? I do).
Today let’s take a nice little look into the world of The Echo. New to Reason 6, this is one of 3 new effects which were much anticipated by the User Community (Do we all remember posts with subject lines reading “We need better effects in Reason”? I do).
You can download the project files here: Echo-Techniques. There are some Combinators and a .reason file showcasing the examples found below. In the .reason file, I’ve used mutes to silence all the tracks. To listen to a track, unmute it. I hope you find some of these tricks useful.
Also don’t forget that my latest Refill, Pureffects, is available with 1,250 effect patches designed specifically with Reason 6 in mind. There’s 200 Echo patches alone, and about 30 or so Echo Combinators with all kinds of interesting routing ideas. For example, ever thought about setting up Kong to “Play” the various “Delay Times” via your pads? Since there are 16 “synched” times in The Echo delay, they are perfect for mapping to the Kong pads. Yup. It’s in there. Read More about the ReFill.
Overview of The Echo
The Echo brings some nice new features into Reason. It’s an Echo / Delay device that can also phlange things around, and purports a new Algorithm to the Echo that you won’t find inside the RV7000. As with all Reason devices, it doesn’t replace anything, but instead adds something new into Reason. So it’s not meant to be a replacement for the DDL-1 or the RV7000 Echo algorithm. They all have their place inside Reason.
One of the nice things I like about the Echo is the “Keep Pitch” button. Essentially, this will keep the pitch as you adjust the Delay Time, so that you don’t get those insane squelches that you get if you were to change the Delay Time in Thor or the DDL-1 devices. This is unique to The Echo.
Another unique offering is the way in which you can control The Echo. There are 3 ways to control it:
Normal: Allows you to use The Echo as an insert or send device in any situation. The Dry / Wet knob determines the amount of Echo produced. This mode is probably the one you will be most familiar with, as it’s the way most effects are set up in Reason.
Triggered: Allows you to Trigger The Echo via the Trigger button or by sending CV to the back of The Echo device. The only thing to remember with this mode is that Any Audio being processed through The Echo will not sound unless the Triggering is enabled. Something that can be a little confusing at first. Honestly, I would have preferred if the Audio was sent through the device dry when not triggered, so that you could still hear the unprocessed audio, and then triggering allowed you to hear The audio processed through The Echo, but I’ll show you a way around that later.
Roll: This is a really nice option when you want to play a stuttering effect on the Audio. The Roll Feature will boost both the Feedback and “Wet” signal as the Roll lever is moved to the right. When this lever is all the way right, both Feedback and the Wet signal = 100%. Fully left, and both Feedback and the Wet signal are 0%. This makes it very useful as a “Freeze” or “Beat Repeat” function.
And of course you have the Color, Modulation, Ping-Pong mode, Offsets for Delay and Feedback, and Ducking. I’m not going to go into all of these features because the manual does a pretty good job of explaining them. Instead, I’m going to show you a few practical ways you can use them in your compositions.
Trick #1: Echoing Slices in a Loop via Parallel Processing
This idea uses 2 instances of the same loop to parallel process the drum beats. One will be the original unprocessed Loop, and the other will have a few slices of the same Loop run through The Echo. It’s a very simple process, but it can be a lot of fun when you’re spicing up your loops.
Start by creating a 6:2 Mixer inside a Combinator. Then create a Dr. OctoRex Loop player and initialize the device. Open up the lower section of the Dr. OctoRex and load up one of your favorite loops into slot 1. Now Duplicate the Dr. OctoRex Loop player. Flip around to the back panel (Tab), and connect the second Dr. OctoRex to Channel 2 (the first Dr. OctoRex should be connected to Channel 1). Flip back to the front, and select the Second Dr. OctoRex. Right-click and select Effects > The Echo. This will automatically connect The Echo as an insert device between the second Dr. OctoRex and the 6:2 Mixer. Perfect.
Now for the important part. Flip to the back of the Rack, and move the output of the second Dr. OctoRex from the Left / Right output to the 1/2 output instead.
Parallel Processing specific Slices in a Dr. OctoRex with The Echo (back of the Rack)
And now comes the fun part. Set both Dr. OctoRex devices to “Select Slice By Midi.” This allows you to see the slice focus as the loops are running. On the first Dr. OctoRex, select the “Slice Edit Mode” button and select the word “Level” in the Loop display area (not the “Level” knob). In the second Dr. OctoRex, select the “Slice Edit Mode” button and select the word “Out” in the Loop display area (not the “Out” knob).
Find a few key slices as the loop is played (Bass Drum is a pretty good choice in most cases), and in the second Dr. OctoRex, pencil in a quarter of the way up over these key slices. You should be hearing The Echo affecting those slices. In essence, the slices you select to be output from 1/2 (a quarter of the way up in the display) will be processed through The Echo. The reason it’s a parallel process is that the original loop is still playing simultaneously. If you don’t want the slices processed in a parallel way, go to the first Dr. OctoRex and reduce the level completely on the same slices you just sent to the Echo. You can introduce a little of the original signal back in by raising this level for the first Dr. OctoRex loop slices, or you can reduce/raise the levels in different ways to add a little variation and groove. It’s a very versatile method.
If you really want to start tweaking things, try transposing the second Dr. OctoRex loop by a few semitones or a whole Octave. If it sounds good, go with it. And when you’re done, save your creation in a Combinator.
Parallel Processing Specific Slices in a Dr. OctoRex Loop with The Echo (Slice Edit Mode)
Trick #2: Using a Matrix to Trigger Echoes
This idea is very basic but shows you how to use the Trigger Mode of The Echo. The idea is to use a Spider Audio to split the signal of a Dr. OctoRex Loop, and have one split going into a Mixer Channel, and another Split processed by The Echo and then sent to another Mixer Channel. Then take a Matrix Pattern Sequencer, and send the Curve CV from the Matrix into The Echo’s Trigger CV input on the back of the device. On the front panel, Set The Echo to “Triggered” mode, and set the Matrix to “Curve” mode. Start the Main Sequencer by pressing the “Play” button, and start drawing in some steps in the Matrix curve. The steps should be draw in at full level, and you don’t need a lot of them. Start by drawing in one or two on a few key beats. You’ll start to hear how The Echo is affecting the loop, so draw in your steps by letting your ears decide where they should go.
Here’s a video that showcases how to set up the above 2 tricks. Don’t worry, it’s really not as hard as it sounds. Once you understand the concepts, you can really have some fun with these methods.
Trick #3: The Echo’s Feedback Loop
Using the built-in Feedback loop of The Echo is something that hasn’t been talked about very much since Reason 6 was released a few days ago, but I’ll bet this will be one area that will get a lot of attention in the coming weeks and months. If not, then it should. The Feedback Loop is one helluva tremendous feature. And it’s really simple to implement with a lot of possibility. The only thing I would advise when you start fiddling with the Feedback loop is to reduce the Feedback of the Echo down to zero before you start connecting devices to it. Also make sure there is no feedback offset either. Keep that knob centered at zero (0). Otherwise you can really destroy your ears if Feedback is set very high and you accidentally connect a Scream to it, for instance.
No doubt someone will eventually do this. And for that poor soul I guarantee it will end up being the last time they do it.
So now that you know the rules of the road, here’s how you set it up:
Load up a sound device, like your favorite Thor, Malstrom, Subtractor, or any Audio Track if you prefer.
Create an Echo device underneath the sound source device (or you can place it inside the Audio/Mix Channel’s “Insert Effects” section). Turn the Feedback knob down to zero. I also turn the Delay Time down to zero as well, but this isn’t necessary.
Hold your Shift Key down and under The Echo device insert your favorite Effect device from the “Effects” subfolder (to make it interesting, select a Pulveriser).
Flip to the back of the rack and connect the Pulveriser’s audio outputs to The Echo Feedback Loop audio inputs (Breakout Input). Then connect The Echo Feedback Loop audio outputs (Breakout Output) to the Pulveriser’s audio inputs.
The basic setup is complete. Now you can flip to the front of the rack and slowly raise The Echo’s feedback knob. I would probably set the knob to somewhere around 20. Then start to play with the parameters on the Pulveriser. Don’t go crazy. Just slowly introduce a few things such as some dirt, filtering and dry/wet blend. If you don’t hear anything too exciting, keep experimenting by turning up the feedback a little more, then increase the dirt and perhaps the squash settings. Try out the various filters.
You’ll start to hear how it all affects the feedback inside The Echo. And believe me, there are hours of fun found just in creating weird feedback loops. I created a lot of different feedback loops inside my Pureffects refill for Reason 6. I even fed a second Echo device through the feedback loop in one patch, and an RV7000 in another patch. Though when you feed delay effects through the Feedback Loop, you really need to mind your manners. As you can imagine, piling delays upon delays can be a recipe for disaster. Though with the right settings, you can produce some phenomenal results. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it again and again: Experiment! Experiment! Experiment!
Here’s the Video for setting up a Feedback Loop in The Echo:
Trick #4: The Zipper Effect
Here’s a little trick to create an off-the-wall sound with The LFO feature of The Echo. I personally like it for a very rapid delay which sounds somewhat like a zipper. So I’m calling it the zipper effect. It’s also very simple to set up.
The "Zipper" effect in The Echo
Here’s a short video on how this is set up:
Trick #5: Automating the Roll feature in The Echo with an LFO
This is another one of those simple ideas that can produce some nice results. Try automating the Roll in The Echo with an LFO. Any LFO will do. You can even use the Pulveriser’s Tremor feature (essentially an LFO) to control your Rolls.
A Subtractor LFO connected to The Echo's Roll CV Input
Here’s a short video on how this is set up:
Bonus Trick #6: Processing a Kong Snare Drum through The Echo
Much like Trick #1, where the Slices are independently sent out to The Echo, you can also set up a Kong Drum Kit, and send specific drums out to The Echo for processing. This video shows how you can set up a Snare Drum to be processed by a Pulveriser and an Echo, while all the other drums are sent out Dry. Once you understand these concepts, there’s no end to how you can process things with The Echo, as well as other effects devices in Reason. Have fun with it!
And here’s a really nice tutorial that Selig put together on parallel processing and sidechaining with The Echo, which I just found the other day. Really nice method to parallel process using nothing more than a single Echo. Sweet.
I hope that opens up some new ideas for those of you using The Echo. Any other ideas, please share them here. Until next time, have a blast with your new Reason 6 upgrade.
I recently read an article at the Wall Street Journal called “Better Ideas Through Failure.” In it, the writer shows a curious trend in company management to reward failure. The point is simple. The more “Epic Failures” you have, the more innovative you are. It’s not so much that you fail, but rather, it’s about learning from your mistakes. Flash forward to the Propellerhead User Forum, where every once in a while I see a post that looks like this: How do I get out of the loop?. The OP there has not finished a song in 4 years, and everyone is jumping in to give lots of very helpful advice on how the Original Poster can break out of a clear creative block. In other words, how do we become more Creative? And how do we finish a song?
I recently read an article at the Wall Street Journal called “Better Ideas Through Failure.” In it, the writer shows a curious trend in company management to reward failure. The point is simple. The more “Epic Failures” you have, the more innovative you are. It’s not so much that you fail, but rather, it’s about learning from your mistakes.
Flash forward to the Propellerhead User Forum, where every once in a while I see a post that looks like this: How do I get out of the loop?. The OP there has not finished a song in 4 years, and everyone is jumping in to give lots of very helpful advice on how the Original Poster can break out of a clear creative block. In other words, how do we become more Creative? And how do we finish a song?
So how do we do this?
Is it through our failures? Is it through a million ideas that we can provide to a poster in a forum? How do we kick-start our creativity?
One answer comes from another quote I often use. A friend of mine once said “the best gift we can give to our children is the freedom from fear.” Think about that for a second. What would you do if you feared nothing? What if you were unafraid to fail? Would that unleash a watershed of creativity inside you? I think that’s the first step.
When you don’t fear what others think, you are unafraid to do things badly. You are unafraid to take chances and it’s at this point you are the most innovative and creative in your life. You try things out you wouldn’t normally. You regain your sense of innocence you lost somewhere between the age of 5 and 25. You become liberated.
Another thing you can do that will help you in your creativity is to become a sponge. Read up on everything and anything related to what you want to achieve. If your goal is to create a song, then learn as much as you can about sound design, mastering, routing, mixing, your genres of choice, and all genres. Listen, meditate, take it all in and increase your knowledge. Use your ears 90% of the time and then make music the other 10% of the time.
Then create a set of rules and challenge yourself. For example, here’s a recent idea I had which challenged me to create an entire song using nothing but a noise oscillator in Thor. I gave myself some limitations. I could use any number of Thor Noise Oscillators in Thor, but that could be my only sound source. I could use any number of effects I wanted. I could use any filters I wanted (though I couldn’t let them self-oscillate), but that’s it. No samples (except samples created by resampling the Noise Oscillator sounds I was creating), no loops, just that little old Noise Osc.
As soon as I did that, I set about to build up my song from the ground up, creating all the sounds as I went. I was unafraid to take chances, and I started with drums, then bass (which was extraordinarily challenging with this particular oscillator), then pads, and synths, a few little sweeps here and there. By the end of it I was building something interesting, but was it a song. Hell no. It sucked! It was an epic fail. Here. Have a listen:
So I dropped that song like a rock in a pond, and went about reassessing what I was doing. I stepped back, took a few days off, and went back to the drawing board. I asked myself what I had learned. Turns out, I learned quite a lot. I learned more about the Noise Oscillator for one thing. Secondly, forcing myself to use only the Noise Oscillator, I had created some interesting Noise Oscillator samples, I had learned what was working and what wasn’t. All of this was valuable information.
This brings up another good point: Another way we can be creative is gathering the opinions of others, not just in our wins, but ESPECIALLY in our failures. Now I already know this song does not work, so you don’t need to state the obvious, but why don’t you tell me where it fails and why, and what I can do to improve it. What would you do with it? In fact, I’ve included the song in a Reason format below, so that you can open it up, pick it apart, rework it, and make it better. Want to collaborate? Here you go.
There’s a few good parts to the song. The delay on the drums towards the end I really liked. The high pitched Synth sound seems to work well, and some of the samples I created were salvageable. As for the cons, I learned that it needs more drum variation, it’s very chaotic, without cohesive transitions, and well. . . I could go on. But instead, I decided to cut my losses and take some of the good out of the song in order to start reworking it into a new song. Enter the blank slate and new approach.
Fast forward to today. I have since tried about 4 different variations, and I’m currently working on one which I think is much better than this one. It sounds nothing like the original, and it may or may not turn into a full-blown song that I post on Soundcloud. But it’s sounding better to my ears. More importantly, for every success I feel I have, there’s many more failures. And I think you need to be open to that. It’s more important to exploring ideas, pursue challenges, know when something isn’t working and when it is, and never being afraid of that “Epic Fail.” The more experience you gain, the easier it becomes to both fail and succeed.
So to answer the original poster on the Propellerhead forum, keep at it, make lots of song attempts/sounds/loops/samples, try different approaches, take all the advice of other helpful people, collaborate, and be unafraid to fail.
If you like any of the sounds in this song, I’ve put them together into a zip file, along with the actual song here: Epic-Fail. Feel free to use them and maybe come up with your own Noise Oscillator song. If you do, please tell me about it and let me have a listen. I’d love to hear what you come up with.
Since everyone seemed to enjoy the Thor tricks I posted last week, I thought I would continue with the Thor synth and show you a few more ways to work on your synth and sound design chops in Thor. This time, we’re going to discuss the art of crossfading inside Thor. And hopefully you’ll learn some new tricks along the way.
Since everyone seemed to enjoy the Thor tricks I posted last week, I thought I would continue with the Thor synth and show you a few more ways to work on your synth and sound design chops in Thor. This time, we’re going to discuss the art of crossfading inside Thor. And hopefully you’ll learn some new tricks along the way.
The idea of crossfading can be found in any DAW and you might even have a crossfader on your MIDI Controller as well; that’s just how important it can be. And when you think of crossfading, you usually think of a DJ crossing over from song to song. All of this is valid. However, there are many other ways to cross-fade, and as all good sound designers understand, crossfading can provide an unlimited supply of variety and movement to your sound.
In this series, I’m going to show you a few things you can do inside Thor to gain access to a variety of cross-fading techniques. So let’s get started.
The project files can be found here: thor-x-fade-examples. They include a set of Thors and Combinators to show the various examples I’m putting forth here. Check them out to see how the techniques below are applied.
Introduction: What’s a Crossfader?
First of all let’s define what a crossfade is. Put simply, a crossfade is a control that moves from sound “A” to sound “B,” such that when the crossover is at the middle, an equal part of both “A” and “B” can be heard. As the control starts at the leftmost position, all of “A” will be heard, while none of “B” will be heard. At the rightmost position, all of “B” will be heard and none of “A” will be heard. That’s it in a nutshell.
From an engineering or electrical perspective (which is faithfully recreated in Reason), there are two types of crossfades that can be created: “Linear” crossfade and “Equal Power” crossfade. Without going into too much discussion about these, it’s important to know that the majority of the time you will want an “Equal Power” crossfader control, as opposed to a “Linear” crossfader control. And it’s also important to know that setting up an Equal Power Crossfader in Reason takes a little more work. Linear crossfaders tend to dip in volume as the control nears the middle between sound “A” and sound “B,” which is usually not what you want. For a more in-depth explanation, you should read Kurt (Peff) Kurasaki’s great article on the subject: One Hand in the Mix: Building Crossfaders using the Combinator.
Starting off Slow: Crossfading Oscillators
When you think of designing a sound, you will always start by selecting an oscillator. Since Thor has 6 to choose from, this means we can either crossfade between two similar oscillators set differently, or crossfade between two entirely different oscillators altogether. And the great part is that Thor comes with a pre-built crossfader to do just that: The Mixer “Balance” knob.
Here’s a short video to showcase how to crossfade between oscillators:
Taking things a bit further: Crossfading Filters
The next thing we should take a look at is a way in which to crossfade filters inside Thor. When you start crossfading filters, you would select an Oscillator, and then send them into two different filters. The problem here is that if you use the number assignments to send the Oscillators into the Mixer (buttons 1, 2, and 3) and then on into the two filters (set up in Filter slot 1 and 2), you’ll soon realize that You will always have a mix of both filters in your final output. In a basic one Oscillator sent to two different filters scenario, you’ll end up duplicating the oscillator and will always hear this duplicated sound through the two filters in the final output.
The solution is to break the normal chain of events and bypass the mixer altogether. Turn off all the Oscillator assignments going into the mixer (de-select all button 1, 2, and 3 assignments between the Oscillator and Filters 1 and 2). Instead, have the Oscillator sent to both filters directly, and then use a Rotary to act as the scaling knob for these two assignments. This has the effect of controlling the direction of the oscillator going into filter 1 and filter 2 (controlling the amount of sound passed through into both filters). Doing it this way provides a usable crossfade for both filters, and puts it neatly on a Rotary; all within Thor.
The Modulation Bus Routing Section (MBRS) looks like this:
Osc1 : 100 > Filt1 In : -100 > Rotary 1
Osc1 : 100 > Filt2 In : 100 > Rotary 1
The front panel of Thor would look like this:
Crossfading Filters in Thor setup: The front panel
And here’s a video to outline how you set it all up:
Using Crossfading to Access the Oscillator’s Envelope Amount Knob
This next approach will show one way to solve a problem that has annoyed me since the inception of Thor. If you do a lot of sound design using Thor, you’ll come up against an issue with the Filter Envelope knobs. Put simply, you can’t modulate them or automate them inside Thor. It’s one of the few parameters, along with the sync Oscillator buttons and bandwidth sliders, which you can’t control using the MBRS. Of course, you can put Thor inside a Combinator and use the Combinator programming to map this parameter to a Combinator Rotary. But that’s a bit of a waste of a device.
So here’s one solution to do everything within Thor. The idea is to duplicate the exact same filter in filter slots 1 and 2. Both filters have the exact same parameters, except filter 1 Envelope knob is set to zero (0) and the filter 2 Envelope knob is set to 127. From here, we can use the same crossfading filter trick we used before and set up the Rotary to cross between these two filters. In essence, the crossfade works as an envelope amount increase knob. Voila!
But this trick is not without it’s downsides. Though you can send any number of oscillators through both filters. In essence you are losing 1 filter slot (don’t forget you still have filter slot 3 if you want to add a filter into the mix). So this trick is really only useful if you have a setup where only 1 or 2 filters are needed. If you need a third filter or more, you’ll have to send the audio output to additional Thor(s) and use this additional Thor(s) filters.
Here’s what the Thor front panel looks like when we want to access the Envelope knob:
Crossfading Filters to access the Envelope Amount Knob in Thor
And here’s a video to outline how you set it all up:
One thing you might not have thought about: Crossfading LFOs
This next trick is probably one of the more interesting ways to crossfade elements in Thor. And it’s probably not thought about too much by new recruits to the Reason world. However, it’s a useful setup and can provide some more advanced modulation options. One LFO on it’s own can deliver some nice modulations, but how about mixing two LFOs together? This setup can open you up to a world of new modulations in your sound design. And it’s really not hard to accomplish at all. In this instance, you’ll want to create a second device (Subtractor, Malstrom, or another Thor) in order to access two free-running LFOs.
The essence of this design is to take a secondary LFO source, and send that into the CV1 input on the back of Thor. Once you do that, you gain access to this LFO and can combine it with Thor’s LFO2. Set up both LFOs with different waveforms, and add them to a Rotary, and you have yourself an LFO crossfade in Thor. This can then be used to modulate any parameter in Thor you can think of (Amp Envelope parameters, Oscillator FM Frequency, Filter Frequency, etc.).
The MBRS would look like the following:
LFO2 : 100 > Filt1 Freq : -100 > Rotary 1
CV In1 : 100 > Filt1 Freq : 100 > Rotary 1
And here’s a short video to show you the setup:
So that’s it in a nutshell. Crossfading various parts of Thor can be a lot of fun, and provide a very useful avenue to explore modulations, sound possibilities, and all kinds of crazy routings. What other crossfading ideas do you have? Perhaps crossfading between two Oscillators’ FM Frequency might be an interesting idea. And how about setting up another Rotary to crossfade two LFO’s which affect this FM Frequency. You can do it all inside Thor. No need to step outside too far to get it accomplished.
Good luck in all your music making. I hope this helps to inspire you next time you are designing that killer sound in Thor.
This tutorial is one that might show you a few new tricks with Thor. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of new sounds in the Reason rack, and I wanted to show off a few new things I’ve found out as I was creating inside Thor. This will also take you on a journey showing how I would come up with a simple synth lead in Thor.
This tutorial is one that might show you a few new tricks with Thor. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of new sounds in the Reason rack, and I wanted to show off a few new things I’ve found out as I was creating inside Thor. This will also take you on a journey showing how I would come up with a simple synth lead in Thor.
Trick #1: Creating a Dry / Wet control for the Kong effects using Thor’s Mod Wheel
This trick was one I stumbled upon when I was trying to figure out how to create a control which allows you to crossfade between the dry and wet control in the Kong effects device (since some of the Kong effects don’t allow you to automate the dry/wet knob directly. This method uses Thor as a pass-through for both the dry and wet signals, and then assigns them to the Mod Wheel. Once this is done, you can use the Combinator mod wheel to effectively switch between a fully dry signal (when the mod wheel is lowered), and a wet signal (when the mod wheel is raised).
This little strategy also has one other benefit: It doesn’t require you to utilize any modulation lines inside the Combinator programmer. This means that if you have a Crowded set of modulations for a particular device which uses all the Combinator modulation lines, you can still add this to the Mod Wheel of the Combinator without having to sacrifice any of those crafty modulations you’ve set up.
The general idea is that you use a Spider Audio splitter to send one split into the Kong effect, and the other split directly into 2 Thor inputs (input 1 & 2). Then you send the Main outputs of Kong into another 2 inputs on Thor (input 3 and 4). The 2 main audio outputs of Thor are then sent to a Mixer or to the final output.
Inside the Kong, you would add your effects devices in the Bus FX and Main FX slots. Set up the effects to your liking.
Then in the Thor pass-through, ensure that all the parameters are turned off or turned down (remove Osc 1, bypass filter 1, etc.). In the Modulation Bus Routing Section (MBRS), you would create 4 lines as follows:
Audio In 1 : 100 > Audio Out 1 : -100 > Mod Wheel
Audio In 2 : 100 > Audio Out 2 : -100 > Mod Wheel
Audio In 3 : 100 > Audio Out 1 : 100 > Mod Wheel
Audio In 4 : 100 > Audio Out 2 : 100 > Mod Wheel
Now when you raise the Mod wheel in the Combinator, the affected split (going into Audio in 3 and 4) on Thor, is going to be heard. When you lower the Mod Wheel, you have a dry signal.
Bear in mind in the video below, I had these splits switched around in the back of the rack (Audio in 1 and 2 were the wet splits and Audio in 3 and 4 were the dry splits). Since this was the case, I had to switch the scaling on all four Mod Wheel lines in the MBRS. So Audio in 1 and 2 had a scaling of “100” and Audio in 3 and 4 had a scaling of “-100” — it’s really the same idea, just in reverse.
Here’s the video which outlines how to use Thor as a dry/wet control for your Kong effects:
Trick #2: Creating some Movement for your Thor Sounds
This isn’t so much a trick, as it is a way to add some modulations and movement to your sound. So here’s a quick way to introduce some LFOs and Looped Mod/Global envelopes to affect the various Oscillators, Delay and Pan in Thor. Let me tell you, there’s hours, days, and months of fun to be had in Thor just by adjusting various parameters such as these.
Here’s the video outlining how to get a bit more movement from some of the parameters in Thor:
Trick #3: Gating and Transposing your Thor Sequences along the Keyboard
I have to give a big round of thanks to James Bernard for stearing me in the right direction with this. And when I found out how to do this, it was a “D’OH!” moment. As soon as he showed it to me, I felt completely stupid for not realizing how to do this in the first place.
In this method, you create a wonderful sequence to play your Thor patch, but instead of having to hit the “Run” button each time you want to hear the sequence, you trigger it from the “MIDI Key Gate,” which is a fancy way of saying, turn on the “Run” button in Thor’s step sequencer whenever you press a key on the keyboard.
Next, you set up Sequence to follow the “MIDI Note value” that is input, which again, is a fancy way to say that where you play the keyboard will determine the notes that are played in the Thor sequence.
So putting this together is a piece of cake. Assuming you have a sequence set up in Thor’s Step Sequencer, and your sequence in, set the Run Mode to “Repeat” and direction to “Forward” (or any other direction you wish). Turn off the “MIDI” light on Thor’s global panel, otherwise you get duplicated notes playing the same instrument (probably not what you intended). Finally, enter the following in the MBRS:
MIDI Gate : 100 > S. Trig
MIDI Note : 100 > S. Transp
Now when you play the sequence, it will be tracked along the keyboard and will only run when a key is pressed down.
Here’s the video that shows how this is done (building on the Thor patch I was building in the video above).
Note, if you want, you can also add Velocity information into the mix. Just add a new line in the MBRS as follows: “MIDI Vel : 100 > S. Vel.” If you do this, be sure to change the sequence edit knob to “Velocity” and ensure that all the steps for velocity are set to zero (0). You “can” set them to values higher than zero if you want, but then this will affect the velocity in tandem with the MIDI velocity from your keyboard. It’s these two values “combined together” that merge to form the final velocity value of the notes that are played.
Trick #4: Using Frequency Modulation between Oscillators
This isn’t so much a trick really, but something I like to try out once in a while. When the patch you’ve created is pretty much finished and you like the way it sounds, it never hurts to try this out. Set one Oscillator to modify the FM Frequency (in Thor’s menu list, this is shown as “Frequency (FM)”). You can often get some weird and wonderful new sounds that you didn’t know were hidden behind the scenes. Add to that a few effects like a Vocoder and some Scream “Tape” compression, package it up in a Combinator, and you just found your new lead sound. Here’s a video that shows how to do just that:
So there you go. A few interesting ways to utilize Thor and create a nice little synth lead. Let me know what you think, and also let me know if you have any other tricks along the same lines. Perhaps I can keep going with this whole Thor idea and show off a few other things you can do in an upcoming tutorial. For now, thanks for stopping by, and good luck in all your creative Reason productions.
While there has been a lot of buzz surrounding other Propellerhead news this week, a tragedy has befallen the family of our friend, James Bernard, PH Artists Relations and Reason Specialist. On July 13, 2011, James’ wife, Nicole, passed away. Nicole was 36 years old and was the mother of their four children, Ava, Chloe, Mia and Asher.
While there has been a lot of buzz surrounding other Propellerhead news this week, a tragedy has befallen the family of our friend, James Bernard, PH Artists Relations and Reason Specialist. On July 13, 2011, James’ wife, Nicole, passed away. Nicole was 36 years old and was the mother of their four children, Ava, Chloe, Mia and Asher. People in the user community are leaving their expressions of sympathy on on the Propellerhead User Forum in this thread.
A trust account for James and Nicole’s four children has been established, and people can make a tangible gesture by contributing to this fund. The button below takes you to the paypal portal for the Bernard Childcare Trust:
This article is not so much a creative experience as it is a basic concept and educational tutorial about how to create bypasses for your effect Combinators. You can use a bypass to enable the sound travelling through the effects processor to play while the effects are turned off, and then allow the effect to affect the sound when they are turned on. In essence, it’s a way to build your Combinators so that they can be more flexible, and still allow sound to pass through; letting you decide when you want the effects built inside them to take hold of your sound.
This article is not so much a creative experience as it is a basic concept and educational tutorial about how to create bypasses for your effect Combinators. You can use a bypass to enable the sound travelling through the effects processor to play while the effects are turned off, and then allow the effect to affect the sound when they are turned on. In essence, it’s a way to build your Combinators so that they can be more flexible, and still allow sound to pass through; letting you decide when you want the effects built inside them to take hold of your sound.
This may be old hat for many of you reading here, but I’ve had a few requests for some explanations on how to split signals and create chained effects. So I thought I would put together a little piece on some different bypassing methods, since that’s vital to the core of creating multi-FX processors.
You can download the project files here: Bypass-examples. This contains a few examples of different methods you can use to Bypass effects inside a Combinator. The files are all done in Reason 5, though you can still use them if you have Reason 4 as well. This zip file also includes updated versions of the 3 Key FluX FX processors I created for a recent article. This updated version allows you to still hear the unprocessed audio signal going through the Combinator when keys are not pressed. Read on to see how I set that up.
Why would you need a bypass if the Combinator already has an Enable On/Off/Bypass switch, as well as an “Enable all Effects” button. The answer is simple. The Enable switch can click and pop if you automate it or use it while the sound is running. For this reason, I never ever under any circumstances use it. Well, okay, I do use it the odd time, but only in a situation where I’ll either keep it on, off, or bypassed the entire time the song or track is playing. I never automate it to change during a track or song. If you do, you can have undesired “pop” consequences.
As for the “Bypass all effects” and “Run Pattern Devices” buttons on the front of the Combinator, the main problem with those is the lack of automation ability. Since you can’t automate them, you’re limited in how you can use them or set them up inside your track. And why limit yourself to a bypass that can’t be automated? So while these buttons are good for previewing sounds, and getting things to run on and off while I’m creating patches or testing patches, they have very little practical use for me when I’m building a song.
So here are some of the methods I use to create an FX bypass.
The Basic Button-based Bypass (say that ten times fast).
This method is probably one of the easiest and simplest of all bypasses. It allows you to build one yourself using one of the programmable Combinator buttons. We’ll start with the premise that you have created a Combinator with a 6:2 Line Mixer, added a synth (I’ll use a Thor here, but any synth or sampler will do). Then I have a Matrix playing this Thor synth. Finally, I have a simple Scream distortion unit at the end of the chain, so that the Thor synth is running through a Scream algorithm to give it some bite. This is our effect unit. And this is what we’re going to bypass.
The initial device setup from the front panel in the Rack.The initial device setup from the rear panel in the Rack.
Now for the Bypass. Add a Spider audio merger/splitter between the Mixer and the Thor device. Flip the rack around (Tab) and connect the Thor left/right outputs into the Spider’s Splitter inputs. Then send one split pair out to the Line Mixer’s channel 2, and send another split pair output to the Scream input.
The back of the Rack, showing the routing which is split to 2 separate channels on the Line Mixer (using a Spider).
Next, flip back to the front of the Rack (Tab) and open up the Combinator programmer panel. Select the Line Mixer, and enter the following into the Modulation routing section:
Button 1 > Channel 1 Level : 100 / 0
Button 1 > Channel 2 Level : 0 / 100
This sets up Button 1 on the Combinator to switch between the two channels of the Line Mixer. If you play the sequence, you can bounce back between the FX-applied version of the sound (with the button disabled), and the bypassed (original unprocessed) version of the sound (with the button enabled). If you want to switch this around and have the bypassed version the default, just reverse the min/max amount values for Channels 1 & 2 in the Combinator’s Modulation Routing section, or else flip to the back of the rack and reverse the cable pairs going into Channels 1 & 2. That’s all there is to it.
The Button 1 setup on the Combinator, showing the Line Mixer settings and Modulation Routing.
Switching Between Three Values
This is all well and good, but there may be times that you want to switch between more than 2 parameters or channels. This can get a little more tricky, but is still relatively easy to work out. The trick involves creating a second 6:2 Line Mixer. I’ll show you what I mean below.
This idea came out of a user on the Reason forum who wanted a way to switch between Oscillator 1 and Oscillator 2, and then a Combo of both Oscillators together (1&2). I’ll use a different example here where I have a switch between 2 Scream algorithms (Scream 1 and Scream 2), and then another switch which bypasses both FX and gives you access to the original unprocessed sound. It’s the same type of idea, just implemented via FX instead of Oscillators. But if you want to read about the original question that was posted, here it is: https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/showthread.php?t=139636.
The way you do this is to first set up all the various parameters (or effects devices) to create the two different sounds. Working off the original “button-based” example above, we’ll add another Scream device below the first Scream unit (hold down Shift while you create the device, so that it’s not auto-routed). Send a new split pair from the original Spider, and have that going into the input on this “Scream 2” device.
Then create a new 6:2 Line Mixer beneath the first Line Mixer. Set up both line mixers with the following routings:
Line Mixer 1 (Main Mix):
Channel 1: Left / Right input from Line Mixer 2 (below)
Channel 2: Left / Right input from one split pair of the Spider Audio Splitter.
Note: The main left / right output goes into the “From Devices” input on the Combinator.
Line Mixer 2 (FX Mix):
Channel 1: Left / Right input from Scream 1
Channel 2: Left / Right input from Scream 2
Note: The main left / right output go into Channel 1 on Line Mixer 1 (Main Mix).
In the Combinator programmer, enter the following settings for the Modulation Routing:
Line Mixer 1 (Main Mix):
Button 2 > Channel 1 Level : 100 / 0
Button 2 > Channel 2 Level : 0 / 100
Line Mixer 2 (Main Mix):
Button 1 > Channel 1 Level : 100 / 0
Button 1 > Channel 2 Level : 0 / 100
The "Triple Switch" bypass routings on the back of the Rack. It's really not as hard as it looks.
Now enable Button 1 and disable Button 2. This means the new Scream 2 device will be sounding. Note: you will first need to press each of the buttons once to “initialize” their settings. Enter some different settings on this new Scream device until you like what you hear (or load up a patch from the Factory Sound Bank).
Yes, there is a much more compact way of creating this type of scenario. It involves setting up only 2 Screams in series and then using the Combinator Modulation Routing section to enable / disable each Scream device (enabling / disabling each 3 parts of the Scream unit). But for the sake of showing how bypassing works, I’m not going to do it that way here.
With this setup, Button 1 acts as a switch between the 2 effects, and Button 2 acts as the bypass switch between those 2 effects and the original unprocessed sound. Cool right?
Bypassing FX that are on your Keys
There is another kind of bypass method that works well if you have your effects set up on keys. A perfect example of this is the “Key FluX FX Processor” Combinator I created a few articles ago. In those project files, I created a few different Combinators that were controlled by pressing the keys on your keyboard, but I failed to integrate a bypass method, so that you didn’t hear the original unprocessed sound when the keys weren’t being pressed. Essentially, you only heard a sound when the keys were pressed. So here’s a method you can use to create a bypass to hear the original unprocessed sound anytime the effects are not being played.
This method boils down to one thing: allowing the unprocessed sound to be heard when keys are not pressed. In other words, we need a way to tell Reason that when the MIDI gate is NOT triggered, let the sound pass through. When the MIDI gate IS triggered, let the effects be heard. We already have the latter part of this process set up in the patches by default. So we simply need to create a method for the former to work. Here’s how it’s done.
You need 3 things when creating this kind of bypass: A 6:2 Line Mixer, a Thor, and a Spider Audio Merger/Splitter. Add those into the Combinator. Take the left / right cable pair “To Devices” going from the Combinator into the Spider Splitter Left / Right input. Then send one split pair into Thor’s Audio In 1 & 2, and another split pair going out to the effects chain (in my Key FluX FX Processor patches, these cables would go into the first FX chain Spider Audio Merger / Splitter — to split the signal out to all the various keyed FX).
Then send the Left / Right audio output from Thor into the first channel of the 6:2 Line Mixer (in the image below, this is labelled “Bypass.” This Line Mixer’s second channel’s left / right input is coming from the end of the audio signal chain after all the effects. In other words, you need to send the final signal post FX processing into the second channel. This is the end of the audio line after the effects. The Line Mixer becomes the switcher, just like in the first example above, however, we’ve added an automatic component into the mix by adding the Thor device.
The back of the rack showing the routing between the Line Mixer, Spider Audio Splitter, and Thor.
So what is this Thor device doing to the audio. Before it can do anything, you need give it an explanation of what you want it to do to your audio (which is much easier than explaining the Theory of Relativity to a third grader). In the Modulation Bus Routing Section (MBRS), enter the following:
Audio In1 : 100 > Audio Out1 : -100 > MIDI Gate
Audio In2 : 100 > Audio Out2 : -100 > MIDI Gate
Thor's Modulation Bus Routing Section (MBRS) showing the negative MIDI gate scaling.
There you have it. The negative MIDI gate values mean that the original unprocessed sound will shine through when the keys are NOT played. They will also cut the sound when the keys ARE played. In this case, since you have the effects loaded on the keys, the FX signal will take over and you’ll hear the effects processing the sounds while those keys are played.
It’s important to note that negative values are possible in the MBRS and can sometimes be preferred over positive values. I say this because many beginners who are new to Reason may not be aware of how negative values can be beneficial. Case in point above. Also don’t forget you can program Mod Bus Amount and Scale values inside the Combinator’s Modulation Routing section (to switch values using a Rotary or Button). And last but not least, you can automate Amount/Scale value changes directly in the main sequencer. So you have lots of possibilities here.
Lastly, since not all keys have effects mapped to them, you need to do one last thing. You need to map the key range of the Thor Bypass device to the same range as the keys that have effects on them. If you don’t do this, anytime you press a key that doesn’t have an effect loaded on it, you won’t hear any sound. This is because we’ve told Thor to cut out the sound on non-mapped keys. So open up the programmer, and select the “Bypass” Thor device. In the Key Mapping section of the Combinator, enter the proper Lo and Hi Key Range (near the bottom in the image below).
Mapping the key range of the effects to the Thor Bypass device in the Combinator.
Note: Since you can’t map non-contiguous regions (two separate regions with a space between the two), you need to ensure your effects are mapped to consecutive keys along the keyboard. You can’t, for example, have A1 and A2 mapped to 2 different effects without any effects mapped to the keys in between A1 and A2. This just won’t work correctly.
Pretty simple right? That’s all there is to it.
So do you have any other interesting ways of bypassing signals in Reason. I can think of a few other innovative ways to do it using CV as well. But this should at least get you started when you begin creating your own effects devices inside a Combinator. If you have any other ideas, please share them with the group. It’s always good to get more than just my own opinion on the matter. Especially since there are so many talented Reason users out there. Until next time, have fun playing inside Reason!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
An excerpt from the scale index PDF.
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!
While there has been a lot of buzz surrounding other Propellerhead news this week, a tragedy has befallen the family of our friend, James Bernard, PH Artists Relations and Reason Specialist. On July 13, 2011, James’ wife, Nicole, passed away. Nicole was 36 years old and was the mother of their four children, Ava, Chloe, Mia and Asher. People in the user community are leaving their expressions of sympathy on on the Propellerhead User Forum in this 
