56 – Key FluX FX Processor

One week, 300 + devices, enough cables to circle the earth at least once, and a massive caffeine-induced headache, here is my “Key Flux FX Processor.” If some of the other tutorials I’ve written have yet to melt your brain, then this might actually fit the bill. Here I created a massive chaotic Reason 5 FX processor. Each effect is triggered via Midi Key on the Combinator track.

If some of the other tutorials I’ve written have not yet melted your brain, then this might actually do it. It melted mine as I was creating it and I’m only just now recovering (and not in an EditEd4TV kind of way). Here, I’m going to delve into creation of a massive chaotic Reason 5 FX processor using a Combinator. And each Effect is going to be triggered via Midi Key on the Combinator track. It’s kind of like Ned Rush’s own Extreme FX Combinator (included in the NedFX refill), and Hydlide’s FX Triggering Combinator, but ummm…. yeah…. different.

So one week, 300 + devices, 84 FX chains, enough cables to circle the earth at least once, and a massive caffeine-induced headache, here is my “Key Flux FX Processor.” Ta-da!

You can download the whole thing here: Key-Flux-FX-Processors. This contains the Reason 5.0 .rns and Combinator file enclosed in a zip package. Note that this is for Reason 5 users only. There’s several Kongs and the CV inputs on the Combinator are used. If I have some time, I might put together a version for R4, but right now, this is what I’ve got. Note also that your CPU will take a hit. If you have an older computer, you may not even be able to open it or use it. So I’ve included 2 “Lite” Combinators which have 21 FX chains in each. Of course there should be nothing stopping you from building your own, and you should give that a try.

The “Key Flux FX Processor” Combinator

First off, a bit about the way the Combinator operates. It is just a massive chaotic Effects processor that can be added after any sound source in Reason. So open the .rns file and take a look inside. I have a Thor patch that is being played by a matrix. And then the sound is processed through the Combinator. That’s straightforward enough. But if you press “play” on the Transport, you’ll notice you don’t hear any sound. If you want to hear the original sound, just bypass the FX Combinator.

Assuming you want to play the sound through the FX, make sure the Combinator is NOT bypassed, and instead play any key from C-2 to B4. There are 84 different effects tied to the first 84 midi keys. So playing each key will process your sound differently. Fun right?

  • Key C-2 to F1: These keys play 42 different FX chains, depending on which key you press.
  • Key F#1 to B4: These keys play 42 additional FX chains, which are combinations of the first 42.
The Combinator Key Mapping and Modulation Routing section showing each key mapped to a Thor device.
The Combinator Key Mapping and Modulation Routing section showing each key mapped to a Thor device. The Mod 1 Scale Amount scales the velocity so that Button 1 can act as a Global Velocity Sensitivity on/off switch.

Taking this a step further, you can do many different things based on the parameters that are set up on the Combinator controls, and this is where things differ greatly with the way this patch operates and others, like Ned Rush’s very awesome patch. Here are the Combinator controls:

  • Pitch Bend: Not intentionally mapped to any device, but may still provide some variations. I haven’t really gone through the whole thing to see where it’s mapped. Just kind of left this one hanging.
  • Mod Wheel: Changes the randomization pattern. 32 patterns are mapped to the Mod Wheel, and the patterns will only be heard if you have button 2 (Run Randomly) enabled.
  • Rotary 1: Parameter 1 – This knob is mapped to one or two parameters inside each of the effects chains. So utilizing it will definitely affect your sound in some weird and quirky way, no matter which effect is being played. I would caution, however, not to turn the knob before first listening to each of the effects. All the effects were built to have their parameters exactly where they are. But if you want to mangle things even more, you can do so with this knob. If you ever want to reset it back to the original values, just reload the Combinator again (of course, make sure you don’t overwrite the original file by saving over it after you’ve changed this Rotary to a different position. If you do so, all bets are off and your parameter will be permanently changed. Make sense?)
  • Rotary 2: Parameter 2 – Same as Rotary 1, except this knob is mapped to one or two “different” parameters than Rotary 1. It is mapped to at least one or two parameters inside each of the effects chains. So utilizing it will definitely affect your sound in some weird and quirky way, no matter which effect is being played. I would caution, however, not to turn the knob before first listening to each of the effects. All the effects were built to have their parameters exactly where they are. But if you want to mangle things even more, you can do so with this knob. If you ever want to reset it back to the original values, just reload the Combinator again (of course, make sure you don’t overwrite the original file by saving over it after you’ve changed this Rotary to a different position. If you do so, all bets are off and your parameter will be permanently changed. Make sense?)
  • Rotary 3: Master Volume – This is the master volume for all the effects. Sometimes things can get a little loud due to all the effects running, and while I tried to make sure all the effects are somewhat leveled out so they are all somewhere around the same volume, you can control the overall global volume using this knob. Careful not to set it too high, unless you are going for something specific, because it can go all the way up to 127 midi volume.
  • Rotary 4: Beat Delay Time – Changes the Beat Repeater time from very short (turned more left) to very long (turned more right). Used in conjunction with Button 4. In other words, you need to first turn on the Beat repeater for this to do anything.
  • Button 1: Velocity On – Turns on / off the Velocity sensitivity on a global level. So if you enable this button, you will essentially make the volume of each effect you play via your midi keys sensitive to the velocity at which you strike the keys.
  • Button 2: Run Randomly – This will turn on the Random pattern generator which randomly plays the Combinator keys. If you wish to change the rate, you’ll have to go into the “Random” matrix inside the Combinator and switch the resolution on any or all of the Matrix patterns. But this provides a nice way to randomly play the various effects in the combinator (kind of a last minute thought to add that into the mix).
  • Button 3: Beat Steps / MS – Switches the beat repeater delays from Steps (off) to milliseconds (on). Used in conjunction with Button 4. In other words, you need to first turn on the Beat repeater for this to do anything.
  • Button 4: Beat Repeat – Turns on the global beat repeater, so that you can add a beat repeat effect after any of the FX chains you are playing.

How was it all Built?

The biggest issue with building this thing was mostly time. Time to figure out the effects, and time to piece everything together. But the main concepts behind it are actually very easy to understand, so I’ll try to guide you on the building blocks and let you take things from there.

First thing’s first. You need to build all your effects chains. The easiest way to do that involves starting with one Spider Audio/Merger and sending the “To Devices” cable of the Combinator into the splitter side of the Spider. Then you can create as many more Spiders as you need, and endlessly split the signal to create as many FX chains as you like. When you have finished building your first Effects chain, send the outgoing audio signal back into a channel on a 14:2 mixer.

Second, you need to create one Thor per key (this is mostly so that you can make everything velocity sensitive by toying with the Midi Velocity setting via the “Mod Bus > Destination Scale Amount” on the front panel of the Thor in the Modulation Bus Routing Section (MBRS). In the above Modulation Routing image of the Combinator, you’ll see that each Thor has the following line:

Button 1 > Mod 1 Scale Amount: 0 / 100

In the Thor, you need to enter the following in the MBRS:

Midi Gate : 100 > CV Out1 : 0 >  Midi Vel

So in the first image below, you’ll see what needs to be placed in the front Thor panel:

The front panel of Thor, showing the MBRS line. Each key triggering Thor needs to have this same line.
The front panel of Thor, showing the MBRS line. Each key triggering Thor needs to have this same line.

And in the image below,  you’ll see how the CV1 output from each Thor is sent to the level CV input of each FX chain channel on the 14:2 mixer. Note that the trim knob for each “level cv input” on the mixer is set to full (127).

One of the FX 14:2 Submixers showing the CV from each Thor is used to trigger the level of each FX chain.
One of the FX 14:2 Submixers showing the CV from each Thor is used to trigger the level of each FX chain.

Once you’ve got one chain built and run through your Mixer, you can have fun duplicating this setup and repeating the process 42 times to fill up 3 mixers of chains on each channel. Then you can have some fun reworking the chains by combining the chains. For example, what I did in the above was create a bank of 28 Audio Spider Splitters / Mergers. I then wired the 14 Audio inputs from the first FX Submixer through the first 14 Spiders (on the split side). I then sent one split from each back to the channels on the first FX Submixer, and another split over to the Merger side of the spiders. Then on the other 14 splitters, do the same for the second FX Submixer, only be sure to send one split back to the merger side of the first 14 Spiders. Finally, send the merged output of the first 14 Spiders back to a new FX submixer. Bingo! You now have a new (fourth FX Submixer) with 14 new effects that basically combine the FX output from FX Submixer 1 and 2. I repeated this process to create a fifth FX Submixer (combining FX submixer 2 & 3), and a sixth FX submixer (combining FX submixer 1 & 3). You could actually create crossover mixes as well, for example, combine channel 1 from submix 1 to channel 5 of submix 2, etc. etc. But I didn’t want to seem like a complete lunatic! I mean 84 keys should be enough to keep you happy for a long time. Or at least until next week and a new tutorial right?

Wait. . . does anyone actually read this? hmmmm.

Ok, well then here’s the videos showcasing the sounds and what you can do with this little puppy:

And here’s a video that shows you how to build your own FX processor with velocity-sensitivity (not the whole thing, that would be CRAZY man! And it would take me hours upon hours to show you. No, this just shows you how to start things off and get the ball rolling. It’s really not a difficult concept to grasp, and it’s mostly repetition and legwork:

So now you have a system which utilizes the first 84 keys. But there’s a few more ideas I built into this whole thing. For instance, you have the global beat repeater which affects all the sounds and can be manipulated by turning it on/off on button 4. You have a simple random player which you can turn on/off via button 2. And don’t forget that when the random player is on, you can use the mod wheel to switch between 32 different patterns. If you don’t like the patterns, you can go in and change them using the first Matrix at the top of the set of Combinator devices (labelled “Random”). You also have two knobs to mangle the FX parameters, and a simple volume control on rotary 3. I honestly can’t think of too much more to pack into this little science experiment.

If the Combinator breaks your CPU. . .

It seems that there’s a lot of people that can’t open the main Combinator or run it because the FX chains inside are too much for their CPU to handle. To deal with this, I broke up the file into 2 discreet Combinators that each have 21 FX chains inside them. This way you can load up half the original FX chains and run just the ones you want. Hopefully this means that more people can use the FX. All the files are available in the project files at the top of the page. The FX can be run via keys C1 to G#2. This way, you can create some random playing via the Matrix (which is actually already built in – but it just makes it easier to tack on a Matrix after the whole thing and start adding some patterns in there to play the FX chains). There are now 2 Combinators and 2 .rns files included in the project files: “Key Flux FX Processor (Lite – A)” and “Key Flux FX Processor (Lite – B).”

Note: I have since updated these patches so that they contain a “Bypass” ability. In other words, if you don’t play the keys, the original unprocessed sound can still be heard. Then when you press the keys to hear the effects, the original sound is cut and the affected sound is passed through. For more information on how this is done, as well as the updated version of these effect Combinators, visit my Effects Bypass Methods article.


Your thoughts?

Reason 5 / Record 1.5 Overview

Reason 5 and Record 1.5: An overall 6 out of 10. Bottom line: The updates improve workflow, but there is nothing here which is earth-shattering, and very little that you can’t already do with Reason 4 and Record 1.0.1. Still, I’ll end up buying the upgrade because I’ve already invested $850 in the software. So what’s another $129 right?

DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion piece. This is an editorial. This is my view of the software while it is in the beta testing stages. The software is not yet finished or finalized. I take full responsibility for my opinion. But please let’s be crystal clear on this: Your rating and thoughts on the subject of the software may be completely different than mine. You may see this software as the second coming of Christ and it may bring you to the heights of orgasm. You may run out into the street totally naked yelling “This is it! Finally. It’s here! It’s here!” If that’s your thing, great. Send me a postcard from jail. I’ll be working on Reason & Record at home, as I usually am.

This is my view on the software as it stands right now with what information I have about it currently. This is based entirely on public knowledge of said software. If you agree with me, then great. If you disagree that’s ok too. Once this software is released, more than likely no one’s going to care about our opinions anyway. The time is now June 17th, 2010. All names have been changed to protect the innocent.

So here’s the talk of the town lately: Reason 5 / Record 1.5. And in case you don’t want to read through my rant, let me give you the lowdown right upfront:

Dr. Rufus Rex, the 8-legged animal: 5 out of 10

Bricks: 4 out of 10

That Roman Sea God (there’s always a deity involved): 6 out of 10

That live audio import thingamajig: 6 out of 10

King…. well you know.: 7.5 out of 10

. . . and more (secondary features): 7.5 out of 10

Overall: 6 out of 10

*(you did read that bit about names being changed in the disclaimer right?)*

To be fair, if you are a musician who cares nothing about Sound design or if you’re brand new to the program or you care more about making your workflow faster, then these ratings may be somewhat higher than mine. But for me, that’s it in a nutshell. Now will I purchase the upgrade. Sure. Why? Because I’ve already invested $850 in Propellerhead products and an extra $129 — even for the lackluster features — is not going to kill me. When you’ve run 14 km in a 15 km race, what’s one more mile?

I’d rather not be so nonchalant. I’d much rather be jumping for joy and bursting at the seams like I was for Thor. I’d rather be itching to get my hands on the new Kong features, but somehow that’s just not happening. We’ve seen Kong before in Live’s new drum setup. We’ve seen blocks in the form of scenes. And what is Octorex really trying to do? It feels like they took out your Grandfather’s car and are busily polishing it up to be sold as a fresh new idea. Sure, I love the vintage look of the thing, and I love how it rides. But can we kick-start it into the year 2010? To be fair, blocks is starting to grow on me. And Kong is definitely better than I expected, and it’s a very welcome addition to the software.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Reason. I even love Record. I love that I don’t even need to open up Reason anymore. Just launch Record and everything is there for me. Great. But where is the “wow”? I sure didn’t see it come to me in 5 days of anticipation when they were unveiling. It just kind of left me scratching my head.

Where is Recycle integration? I had to go out and buy it separately because I want to put some rex files together. And where are all those wonderful ideas turned into reality that we’ve all been adding to the Propellerhead feature suggestion forum? The ideas keep piling up. And this is the best they’ve got? Perhaps I have more faith in their programming skills. After all, they haven’t disappointed in the past. They did give us Thor after all. So maybe they’ve set the bar too high in the past that now they just can’t live up to their reputation? I don’t know for sure. I just know I expected so much more. And if I’m reading all the forums correctly, so did you.

Revisiting the Wishlist

So I went back to my old post (here it is if you need a refresher: My Reason/Record wishlist) and I looked to see how much of my dreams will actually come true in September. Green shows features implemented in Reason 5, Purple shows features partially implemented, and Red indicates those things which have not been implemented.

First, Record:

  1. Automatic Routing of the Reason mixer channels to the Record Main Mixer. Somewhat there with Record 1.0.1, however this could still be improved because routings through spiders/mergers and Redrum / NN-XT individual outs are not handled correctly.
  2. Comping for Midi as well. Nope. No improvements here.
  3. Split Performance Controller Data into Separate Lanes. Nope. No improvements here.
  4. Record Performance Controllers as automation. I think we got this with Record 1.0.1, so kudos!
  5. Tempo automation/changes on a per-track basis. Well, you can timestretch audio clips. So I’ll say this is halfway there.
  6. Display Masked Audio portion in the Audio Clip. Nope. No improvements here. Right now, there’s no visual indicator to show how far and wide the masked area is. It’s worthwhile to note that this is already pretty much implemented in the audio comp tracks. Now if we could bring that into the main arrange view, we’d be golden.
  7. Synch Reason / Record Favorites. Nope. No improvements here.
  8. Cut Note Events in the Clips. Nope. No improvements. Sometimes you DO want to split the notes, and sometimes you don’t. Provide us with the option to split the notes or not when splitting clips apart.
  9. Scale Transposition of Notes. Nope. And this one is not difficult to do. This is imminently more useful than chromatic transposition of the notes.
  10. Multiple Left and Right locators. Nope. No improvements here.
  11. More Training/Tutorials and videos included in the user documentation. Documentation is starting to improve. Microtutorials, James Bernard video series. Glad to see this getting better! Green light on this one.

And now for Reason:

  1. Adding some new Effects, especially a glitch box such as “Glitch“ Nope. Not there.
  2. Having the ability to Randomize the entire Matrix or Redrum device with one click of a button. Nope. And for this one, I’m truly saddened. Especially since almost all their changes for Reason 5 are simply workflow improvements. To miss out on this one is nuts frankly.
  3. Combinator updates: More CV connections and a better subdivided menu system get a big thumbs up from me. I would still like to be able to switch the rotaries from “pot” mode to “step” mode. But that’s a minor nit-pick. Kudos again!
  4. Integrate ReCycle into Reason (or Record). Come on guys. Seriously! Big thumbs down! When is this going to happen already? Give us sampling without the ability to slice stuff up makes you look money-hungry; holding onto Recycle like an old dog clutching a tattered bone.
  5. The ability to reverse midi and audio for backward playback. Yes. Beautiful!
  6. Tap Tempo. Thank you!
  7. When in edit mode in the sequencer, providing the ability to move notes from one clip into another. Yup. This one is added in Record 1.0. Sweet. However, I’m only giving half points here because it’s not currently available in Reason. If this makes it into Reason 5, I’ll give it the green light.

So 4 out of 18 of my original requests made it in, and 3 are halfway there. A little over 1/3 of my features made it in. I don’t think that’s too bad. You be the judge. To be fair, there may be more to remove from my list once Record graduates to 2.0, and I will say that a few things which made it into this update I’m very glad to see and would have had on my list if I had given it more thought. To name a few:

  • Neptune. I really can’t wait to get my hands on this and seeing what can be done with it from a sound design perspective. Routing Thor through it and using it in an experimental way should be really interesting.
  • Kong. Although I’m less than thrilled with the implementation — It feels cluttered with all the mini-fx machines and just doesn’t look very intuitive — I’m eager to explore some routing possibilities on the back of the device. Perhaps that’s just my nature. And I am glad to see some modeling synthesis introduced. But a Guitar modeler is really what I’d like to see more than anything. Perhaps the Props are testing the waters and we’ll see this in Reason 6.0?
  • As said before, the Combinator update with new CV and easier menu system. Yes. Thank you lord. Finally.
  • Sampling. Sure. Great. But I have a field recorder, so is this really adding to my toolbox? Not really. Sure it’s handy. But I’ve already got a workflow for this. Still, it’s a feature that’s been wanted by many, so I’ll add it to the “glad to have it” pile.

In case you didn’t know. . .

And for those that didn’t know, don’t forget to read the fine print. There’s lots of little additions to the program that you may have missed when you were enthralled with the Big 5. Some of these surprised me in that they are not hyped more. The extra CVs in the Combinator are a huge deal and should be up there in lights. However, these are the features that are relegated “second class citizen” status. You should read them nonetheless: Secondary updates to Reason/Record.

Of course, don’t forget to check out the videos from the Props home page below, and  judge for yourself if these new updates are worth your money. Most of the updates are helpful to improve workflow. But bottom line is that there is nothing here which is earth-shattering, and very little that you can’t already do with Reason 4 and Record 1.0.1. My overall take is that there are three camps:

If you are a sound engineer and have invested in purchasing both Reason and Record, then it’s probably worthwhile to upgrade.

If you are a new hobbyist or musician who has only invested in Record and/or Reason, you may not need the update at all and might be better off sticking with what you have (which is already a very powerful system).

For people working on Live recording only and who only own Record, then the only advantage is Neptune. And honestly if you’re in this boat it’s probably not worthwhile.



What’s your take on the Record 1.5 and Reason 5 package?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBdy0aTW5YI&feature=related