How to Create Custom Kits And Patterns In Reason 6:
I thought it was time to give Reason 6 a bit of attention, so I thought I’d walk you through the creation of a custom kit and drum pattern using Kong and Reason’s internal sequencer. Here we’ll be looking at producing drum sounds using Kong’s analog modelling modules and layering these sounds with samples.
I’ll also show you how to use effects processing to add punch to the individual sounds and the entire drum mix. You won’t need any other software apart from Reason 6 to follow this tutorial and create your own pattern.
Step 1 – Start With a Clean Slate
Whenever I’m working on a totally custom kit or patch for any Reason device I like to start with a totally blank canvas. This simply involves loading up a standard Kong and initialising it so that you are not influenced by any pre-loaded sounds. This method also allows a much clearer workflow.
Initializing Kong
Once Kong is loaded up right click anywhere on it’s interface and select initialise device. This will clear the deck and get rid of any loaded samples, pad assignments and effects routings. We are now good to go.
The blank Kong is ready for action.
Step 2 – Kicks and Snares
Let’s start with the bare bones of our beat. To me this is the kick and the snare, get this right in an electronic beat and the rest should be plain sailing. I decided to go with a 4/4 kick drum at 124 BPM. I knew I wanted a typically analog sound but I decided that layering one of Kong’s Analog modules with a sample would be a good move.
The Analog modelling module I used ended recreating an 808 style kick sound. I produced this by using only a small amount of bend, a very low noise mix and relatively long decay. You can see and hear the settings I used for this initial sound below.
The first kick plays back
I felt the kick needed a little more bite and introduced this by layering a brighter sample with it. This was achieved by using a nano sampler on the next available pad. The two kick pads were then linked so the initial pattern triggered both sounds. Linking is achieved easily by clicking the small ‘Q’ in the link section and selecting the pads you would like to include in your ‘link group’.
The second kick is added
You can hear the result below. This worked well and added a lot more bite and impact to the sound. At this point I was happy to push on and add some snares to the mix. Download audio file (2b.mp3)
The two kicks mixed
Kong’s pad linking system
I pretty much followed the same method that I applied with the kick here. I used a snappy analog sounding snare, courtesy of Kong’s Analog snare module and layered this with a punchier snare sample. The pads were then linked so that my pattern played on both samples.
The snares are mixed and added to the beat
It’s worth pointing out that some processing was used not he individual sounds. A little compression was added where needed but most importantly the second sample in each group was high passed with a filter insert to ensure no low frequencies were clashing.
Step 3 – Hats and Shakers
Again I took a similar approach with some of the high end percussion. I opted for a TR-909 style hat sample to begin with and then layered this with a brighter, punchier open hat sound generated by the analog modelled hat module.
The high hat samples and analog modules are mixed
The layering and grouping process was repeated here and the sounds were slightly panned to create a subtle stereo image. This also created slight separation between the two sounds.
I used a Nurse Rex loop player to introduce an interesting cross rhythm next. A simple shaker loop was loaded and triggered every bar. I then enhanced the loop using Kong’s excellent tape echo effect. The new high end percussion mix can be heard below.
A percussion loop from the Nurse Rex player adds pace
Next up it was time for a bit of decorative percussion. I went ahead and delved into the Reason factory sound bank for this section. I navigated my way to the electronic effects area and loaded three sounds that I thought might work in the mix.
These three sounds were spread across three consecutive pads and their levels were roughly mixed. I then programmed a simple part using all three pads. The whole thing worked very well and very little needed to be done to the pattern.
Three percussion sounds are mapped to three pads
I did add some reverb to the last percussion part used to introduce a little extra space to the sequence. This also created a fill of sorts. At this stage the pattern was in place and only needed a few finishing touches.
Effects are added to a few of the percussion parts
To make sure everything was in place and the dynamics were behaving themselves I decided to use a few processors.
I actually used a Scream 4 to lightly compress and saturate the entire output of Kong. This was achieved by inserting the unit directly after Kong in the rack and using the ‘Tape’ pre-set. Only light compression and drive were used here but the overall effect is increased cohesion and perceived level.
Scream 4 is put in place to control dynamics and add saturation
Finally I used the limiter in the mastering section to ensure that there were no wayward transients popping out of the mix. I tried not to apply too much processing at this stage as I wanted to retain the dynamics I’d worked so hard to create in the previous steps.
The final mastering limiter
One more adjustment that I made was to use the ‘Explode’ function that’s found in the tool bar menu. When this executed with your single drum part selected all the individual parts will be separated onto their own tracks. This is extremely useful for sequencing and auditioning each part.
The drum parts are exploded for easy access in the sequencer
The final treated drum part
This simple electronic beat was now complete and using Kong the process had been simple and enjoyable. Try a similar process yourself and move away from pre-set kits and loops.
Bob Moog’s Birthday: Learn Synthesis, Benefit Swag, Apps, and a Playable Google Doodle [Videos]:
Sound technology pioneer Bob Moog’s birthday is May 23, and just about the whole Web will be in on the celebration. Play Google like a Minimoog: Google’s Doodle, the image you see on their homepage, is one of their best yet: it’s a fully interactive, playable Minimoog synthesizer. You can even record and playback little musical sketches and share with friends. Since the Earth is round, Google Japan gets an early scoop. (Yes, the Moog sun will rise first on the land of Roland, Yamaha, and KORG.)
Bonus (for Web nerds): this all uses the Web Audio API, which promises to bring real sound into the browser. Check out the technical details on html5audio.org, but if you love synths, and you use the Internet, this is good news. Get swag, save cash, benefit the Moog Foundation: Rags and riches will be on sale for your shopping pleasure, including a benefit for the Moog Foundation on Moog-logo merchandise and clothes, with 50% of proceeds going to the Foundation’s educational and historical mission, which goes far beyond just Bob Moog to synthesis in general. That one-day birthday sale includes the lovely new Moog travel mug (I need one, after mine sadly broke in the mail to Germany), and a huge knob on a t-shirt (nice). See image, below.
Moog Music is also discounting their iOS apps, in case you missed discount pricing on their superb Animoog synth. I Want My Moog TV. But let’s get back to the man himself, with a series of videos shared by the folks at Moog Music.
From an 80s BBC TV special, here’s Bob Moog demonstrating the synthesizer:
Moog Music are painting their spiritual father and founder’s image on their offices in North Carolina; see a timelapse of this gorgeous mural:
And in the sweetest gesture for the day:
To #celebratebob on what would have been his his 78th birthday local Asheville piano teacher, Kim Roney, brought two of her pupils to the Moog Store to perform a song in celebration of Bob Moog’s life and legacy. Bob Moog is still inspiring creative exploration in children of all ages. Thank you Dr. Moog, Happy Birthday! How has Bob Moog inspired you? #celebratebob
Finally, here’s a five-part series on synthesis fundamentals that uses the Moog Voyager. That seems, perhaps, the best way to celebrate Bob Moog’s legacy: it’s a chance to learn ideas about sound that can allow you to unlock the world of electronic music. With that knowledge, you can use any synthesis, anywhere, with or without a Moog logo on it – or use your imagination to invent the next great music technology, something Bob Moog I’m sure would have loved to see you build.
Moog Music Inc. is proud to present Dr. Joseph Akins’ five part series on the fundamentals of synthesizer programming. Dr. Akins is an associate professor at Middle Tennessee State University and strives to teach his students a complete understanding of synthesizers and computers as tools for modern music production. In this five part series Dr. Akins uses a Voyager to teach the process through which a synthesizer’s sound is generated and the techniques needed to program your own sounds and sonic experiments. In part one of this five part series Dr. Akins gives a brief history of synthesizers, goes over basic synthesizer theory, and overviews basic signal flow.
GarageBand for iPad Hands-on: Why It’s Ideal for Beginners, What You May Not Know:
Let’s get this out of the way: musicians are not a “niche” group. Recording has done some damage to the popular practice of live music, but still, you’ll find an astonishing number of people play instruments and sing. (New pop culture phenomena like Glee, the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, and the resurgent TV talent show have helped, too.)
What’s “niche” is conventional music production software. While it’s a fast-growing segment, music making software remains elusive and befuddling to a whole lot of musicians. GarageBand for Mac was one answer to what software for the remaining group should look like. But pick up GarageBand for iOS, and you experience software that comes even closer to that vision. It’s simply one of the best-designed music tools for iOS, and would be so whether or not it carried the Apple name. It’s not the perfect tool for every iPad owner, necessarily, but it’s perhaps the best window into what a tablet can be for music. It realizes that original idea of GarageBand better than anything we’ve seen yet.
GarageBand has had just over a year on the iPad, and has gotten a significant revision. That’s left time to dive deeper into its features, for me, testing on the very first iPad and working now with the additional features Apple added more recently. Here’s why it could be worth trying (including if you’re an advanced iOS user or even music developer), why you might recommend it to beginners, and a few things about it that you might not know as far as more sophisticated functionality. (I’ll focus on the iPad functionality primarily, because for me it was the ideal form factor with which to produce music.)
GarageBand features a combination of familiar, accessible UI features and useful tools for quick sketching and recording. Underneath the hood, you can often get more sophisticated with things like key and chords, for those who do know what they’re doing musically. It’s not the only tool you’ll need, but for beginners, it could mean a window to other tools on iPad and desktop. And for more advanced users, it has some unexpected treasures.
I’ve spent some time with the software design. Here’s what makes I feel it special:
Design Strengths
I am your density. Density of touch controls is essential to design. Some iOS apps, while powerful, have so many controls that they can be tough on fat fingers and confusing to beginners. Others go to the opposite extreme, becoming so oversimplified that it’s hard to make the music you produce sound like your own (fine for toys or games, but not for creative software). Editing on GarageBand for iPad never feels awkward. Switching between editing modes can be a little disorienting at first, but the interface on each screen is crystal clear. The interface details (like woodgrain) that seem sometimes out of place on desktop also look perfect here, and they manage to add detail and texture without being distracting. It feels naturally touchable. I still prefer hooking up a MIDI keyboard, but the touch instruments in GarageBand, and the editing interfaces, also feel natural. It really is possible to sketch out an idea with touch, at least in a broad sense. That immediacy is perfect for something that’s mobile, and for making music software feel like something you can touch directly. It overcomes the feeling both in desktop software and many iPad apps that the software is somehow at arm’s length. It’s the most familiar to conventional musicians. Without being condescending to its users, GarageBand for iPad makes choices immediate and visually obvious. Rather than puzzling through a foreign interface, you find crisp text and images of familiar instruments, microphones, and other eminently musical metaphors. That extends to musical vocabulary on synth controls, keys and scales, and the like. People who have at least a little background in music will understand how to use this app, and without having to either learn a futuristic, alien UI (fun as those are) or be specifically versed in electronic music technology. There are a couple of confusing icons – the “Instruments” icon looks like you’re tying up a boat with a knot more than a patch cord – but by and large, this is a familiar interface.
Smart Guitar is an excellent view of some of the layers of usage possible in GarageBand – and a view of what other iPad apps could explore. In “Notes” mode, you play it almost like a conventional guitar, one string at a time, with frets and bends as expected.
In “Chords” mode, this view is simplified.
Switch on Autoplay, and you can select some fairly nice-sounding guitar licks. You’ve seen that in plug-ins before, but in the “take it on a bus and sketch songwriting ideas” context of the iPad, and coupled with touch, it can be useful even if you know the guitar.
At first, this setup can feel constraining, but tucked into a menu are options for adjusting song parameters. From there, you can choose to edit chords.
By editing chord configurations, you can set up a touchable sketchpad for song ideas – without having to feel like you can’t use the chord progressions you want. (In other words, no, you’re not as you might initially think limited to root-position I – IV – V. And this is a strength of various applications for the iPad for the serious musician. It’s also a nice gateway for people who are learning.)
Now, for a few details you might not know.
A showcase for the iPad’s tech
Initially, some third-party developers worried that Apple’s entry into iPad apps would crowd out independent developers. Instead, I feel GarageBand can be an effective showcase – and, given its price, it’s also a good entry for those of you curious about iPad music making, which could lead to other apps. You would hope Apple would lead in tech adoption, and in this case, they gladly do:
It supports high DPI. If you do have a third-generation iPad (“the new iPad”), it should look especially nice. (I’m still on an original iPad; happily, it doesn’t look too shabby there, either.)
It has some powerful wireless Jam Session features. You can communicate over Bluetooth or local WiFi with up to four total iOS devices. One device acts as a “bandleader,” and then other gadgets – including the iPhone – can synchronize to tempo, play position, and play controls. Smart instruments also follow shared chords, though you can play outside those chords if you like. You can also elect to turn off bandleader control.
The coolest feature of sync, and the one that’s something new in “multiplayer” music making, is the ability to collect recordings on the “bandleader” device automatically. This suggests some real collaborative possibilities for music making that go beyond just syncing tempo, and it’s something I hope we see on desktop soon, too.
You can use USB keyboards and the like, via Core MIDI support. So, cool as those smart instruments are with touch, you can also play conventionally. Some of the “smart” features are even supported via MIDI.
You can use GarageBand with other iPad apps, thanks to Audio Copy/Paste. That could make GarageBand an ideal iOS hub for a studio of other third-party instruments and tools. It does work in just one direction – you can paste materials into GarageBand, but not out again – but that makes some sense, with GarageBand as your main “host” or editor tool.
I hope to get together with some other iPad owners in June to document how the wireless features work in video, and perhaps show off some of those Copy/Paste workflows; stay tuned.
Playability
The Instruments are an important feature for GarageBand. They won’t suit everyone – people wanting to make specific kinds of music should take a look through the diversity of what’s available for iOS in synths, instruments, and the like. But they do cover some basics. There are also some unique “smart” playability features.
Advanced articulations: try playing with some of the different instruments, and you’ll discover some nice features. Multi-touch gestures will often unlock certain instrumental techniques. The stringed instruments will respond when you play on the neck or use different voicings. Sections, as in grouped strings, will add swells or pizzicato, depending on how you play. These are features you’d expect of an advanced sample library, but not necessarily an iPad app – and it’s nice to be able to use your fingers on the screen to play them.
The Smart Strings instrument is well worth a play-through.
Also, while non-electronic genres definitely get a lot of love from GarageBand from the amps to instrument models, fans of electronic or dance music (or electro nuts, if you like) get plenty of synth bass and keyboard instruments. That’s what you’d expect from software that shares lineage with Logic, and it almost strikes me as a challenge to produce an electronic track entirely on GarageBand. (I’ll see what I can do; I’ve got a lot of travel coming up!)
My favorite current feature is the arpeggiator in the keyboard, which is a must on a touchscreen instrument.
Above, synth and keyboard features.
In fact, while it’s also one of the more innovative features, I think my only disappointment is with the smart drum instruments. It’s a fascinating feature, letting you add different rhythmic parts by complexity, but it often falls a bit short of coming up with something genuinely musical, sounding a bit more like the auto-accompaniment it is. I think this really speaks to the demands we make of rhythm. It’s usable, it just may have you going back to editing to produce something original (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
It’s a fascinating simplification of drum part arrangement, but the Smart Drums may just need more patterns or some other groove control. Still, it’s a decent starting point for a song idea.
Guitar and string parts, in contrast, do really shine; they cover relatively stock gestures, but that could be perfect when you’re sketching out a new song idea. You can always fill in more elaborate parts later when you work on a more complete track, more likely then in a studio or on a desktop machine.
Editability
Editing was a bit short in the first release, and in some music making apps, but here, those features have been fleshed out in a way that’s nonetheless intuitive and accessible.
A lot has been made of the comparison of the old tape four-track – like a Tascam – and the iPad. Here, you can create subs and bounce tracks together to make new tracks, so that basic workflow is possible. (In place of the four track, what you’ve got, basically, is an eight track.)
It’s also possible to non-destructively merge editor tracks.
Note editing is, of course, a major addition to GarageBand. At last, it makes this a usable production tool. You’ll also find, appropriately, different editing options for drum parts, audio, and instrumental parts.
It’s also important to note that your musical options aren’t dumbed-down. You can create custom chords, rather than being locked into certain harmonies. Triple time signatures are possible, too (3/4 and 6/8 – sorry, Elliot Carter fans, it does stop there). You also get basic options for features like swing and quantization.
The only editing feature I’d still like to see is notation. A notational view would open up GarageBand to still more conventional musicians, and a score seems a perfect editing interface on a tablet. Aside from force of habit, the score is literally designed for this form factor, making music easy to see and understand.
Sharing and workflow features:
Some people will choose to produce entirely on an iPad or iPhone, but to make that mobility an advantage, you need to be able to share directly, and for some of us, at least, you’ll want to use the mobile gadget as a satellite, coming back to your main studio for more.
You can now sync projects across iPhone and iPad, and so on, as well as back to your desktop Mac for editing in GarageBand and Logic. You can also save to an iMovie soundtrack directly on the iPad, so you can use this as an on-the-go scoring tool.
You can also share to Facebook, YouTube, and, as part of a growing trend, SoundCloud.
But most importantly, import/export support means you can make projects your own, and use your iOS device in conjunction with a desktop machine or full studio. You can import and export your own media, including MP3, AAC (up to 192 kbps), AIFF, WAV, and Mac Apple Loops. (Of course, lossless files are generally a better choice.) Just add the file to iTunes. Which devices are supported? GarageBand works on iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. You can use Jam Session on iPod touch (current models), but not third-generation iPhone or earlier and or older iPod touch models.
Conclusions
Part of the beauty of iPad music development, as the field matures, is that not every single tool tries to be all things to all people. But that doesn’t mean a tool shouldn’t feel meaty enough to be used over time.
On a variety of platforms, we’ve been waiting for a tool that can be an effective starting point. GarageBand on the iPad hits a sweet spot as far as that’s concerned. For playable instruments usable with touch – via the tablet, even if you’re crammed into a narrow seat on easyJet – it’s fantastic. Its interface is conventional enough that beginning musicians won’t feel as though they’ve just stolen a Klingon battle cruiser. But it’s also sophisticated enough that you can sketch out a song. For more advanced users, it’s still worth having around for that purpose, arranging chords and performing simple capture from other apps.
When do you outgrow it, what’s nice about the iPad is that it’s stupidly simple and affordable to add other tools. Want a more powerful song editor? Need a better groove machine / drum machine? Want to add vocal effects? You can simply turn to another app – but only to do what you really need, and only when you need it.
My only real regret is, even beginning musicians and songwriters often benefit from music notation. The absence of a score view/editor or the ability to see your music as notation seems a big omission.
Otherwise, GarageBand is a marvel – a perfect anchor from which to explore the outburst of developer creativity on this platform. In fact, far from portraying Apple as “consumer” company, it makes an excellent argument for the pro application development chops they’ve built up over the years – and could easily get people hooked enough to get into Logic Studio on a Mac laptop.
I hope we have at least opened some doors to finding new tools for users wondering what to do with their iPads (or iPhones, or iPod touches). And on that note, it’s worth revisiting the original GarageBand launch video, to see, with more distance, how Apple articulated their ideas for the app:
Ah, I remember March 2011…
Grab the app or review it yourself:
