73 – Pounding The Pulveriser (Part 2)
In this next installment of exploring the Pulveriser, I’ll go a little deeper and see how we can use it for more than just Parallel Compression. We can see how we can use it to warm or destroy a sound, and explore some of the CV / audio routing possibilities to get much more out of the device. And while it’s great on drum sounds and good to beef things up, it can be downright scary when used in a glitch environment. So let’s take a deeper look.
72 – Pounding The Pulveriser (Part 1)
Now there’s a word with some power behind it: PULVERISE! Let’s pulverise our sound. New in Reason 6 is this wonderful Distortion-Compression-Tremolo-Follower-Filter-Parallel Processor — And oh yeah, it’s got a Lag feature too! Suffice it to say this thing is vintage goodness, and it can do an awful lot to your sound, whether you just want to warm things up a bit, or set your sound to completely self-destruct. Let’s push it to the limit and see where it takes us.
One of the best things you can do to learn, improve, contribute, and generally be creative is to enter your music in contests. Usually there are several contests through magazines, online music forums, bandcamp, soundcloud, and the like. I would strongly urge you to look up some of them and enter into the contests you feel are appropriate for your style of music.
There’s a wealth of great information out there on recreating the sounds of old computer chips, like the Commodore 64 or old SID chips and video console chips, and using these sounds to create tunes (Chiptune). I honestly knew very little about the subject until I, along with several other very talented folks, were asked to put together some fresh new sounds for the Reason 6 Factory Sound Bank (FSB). So here I’m going to explore and explain how I created a few of these sounds, and show you that you can definitely recreate some convincing Chiptune sounds using nothing but Reason and a little experimentation.
69 – All about the Alligator (Part 2)
Let’s continue with the Alligator and find a few other tricks that it can perform. In the first part, I looked at how the Alligator works, and provided a few ideas for how to work with it. In this part, I’m going to get a little more practical and show a few new ideas you can incorporate into your tunes. Hopefully this will provide you with some new creative inspiration.
68 – All about the Alligator (Part 1)
In this tutorial I’m going to talk about the new Alligator device in Reason 6. I think no other device has mystified so many since the RPG-8, and a lot of people have reluctance to really dive into it, thinking it’s mainly built for electronic musicians. Truth is that it’s a very easy device to work with, and it has applications for all kinds of instruments and all kinds of genres. So don’t be intimidated by all the knobs and levers. It’s a veritable evil laboratory, but getting it under control is easier than you think, and that’s the focus here.
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.
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).
65 – Thor Crossfading Techniques
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.
64 – Creative Thor Synth Tricks
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 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.
After working with the Thor step sequencer, and in honor of Music Making Month at Propellerhead Software, I posted a challenge on TSOR (The Sound of Reason): Create an entire song without the main sequencer in Reason. So here is my attempt at a song without a Sequencer. And I’m here to say, it can definitely be done!
In this next installment of exploring the Pulveriser, I’ll go a little deeper and see how we can use it for more than just Parallel Compression. We can see how we can use it to warm or destroy a sound, and explore some of the CV / audio routing possibilities to get much more out of the device. And while it’s great on drum sounds and good to beef things up, it can be downright scary when used in a glitch environment. So let’s take a deeper look.
It’s wonderful to be a part of something that truly makes a difference in our little music community, and I was lucky enough to contribute to a ReFill that helps out a true legend in the Reason world, James Bernard. The Bernard Childcare Trust is a ReFill where the proceeds go directly to helping out the 4 Bernard children. The family suffered a tragic loss in July 2011, when Nicole Bernard, wife to James and mother to the children, passed away. Please help out by purchasing this ReFill.
Now there’s a word with some power behind it: PULVERISE! Let’s pulverise our sound. New in Reason 6 is this wonderful Distortion-Compression-Tremolo-Follower-Filter-Parallel Processor — And oh yeah, it’s got a Lag feature too! Suffice it to say this thing is vintage goodness, and it can do an awful lot to your sound, whether you just want to warm things up a bit, or set your sound to completely self-destruct. Let’s push it to the limit and see where it takes us.
Here’s an interesting patch that I submitted to the productspecialist@propellerheads.se email in response to their first video in the “Reason Sound Design” series, a new series put out by the Propellerheads to help us all learn a little more about the Combinators inside the Factory Sound Bank, and allow the user community to submit their patches. I love it when they launch a new series!
One of the best things you can do to learn, improve, contribute, and generally be creative is to enter your music in contests. Usually there are several contests through magazines, online music forums, bandcamp, soundcloud, and the like. I would strongly urge you to look up some of them and enter into the contests you feel are appropriate for your style of music.
There’s a wealth of great information out there on recreating the sounds of old computer chips, like the Commodore 64 or old SID chips and video console chips, and using these sounds to create tunes (Chiptune). I honestly knew very little about the subject until I, along with several other very talented folks, were asked to put together some fresh new sounds for the Reason 6 Factory Sound Bank (FSB). So here I’m going to explore and explain how I created a few of these sounds, and show you that you can definitely recreate some convincing Chiptune sounds using nothing but Reason and a little experimentation.
Let’s continue with the Alligator and find a few other tricks that it can perform. In the first part, I looked at how the Alligator works, and provided a few ideas for how to work with it. In this part, I’m going to get a little more practical and show a few new ideas you can incorporate into your tunes. Hopefully this will provide you with some new creative inspiration.
In this tutorial I’m going to talk about the new Alligator device in Reason 6. I think no other device has mystified so many since the RPG-8, and a lot of people have reluctance to really dive into it, thinking it’s mainly built for electronic musicians. Truth is that it’s a very easy device to work with, and it has applications for all kinds of instruments and all kinds of genres. So don’t be intimidated by all the knobs and levers. It’s a veritable evil laboratory, but getting it under control is easier than you think, and that’s the focus here.
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!
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.
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