Continuing our story about creating some random generative musical ideas in Reason, I’m going to take the Random Sequencers we built previously and find some usefulness for them. So hold on to your hat. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Enough about Kong already. Let’s try something a little more interesting. Let’s start with a concept: Generative Music. And let’s see what we can do with it in a Reason environment. For starters, let’s see how we can extend the Thor step sequencer a little bit. Well, okay, let’s make it go absolutely NUTS!
There is always more to be discussed where Kong is concerned, and here we’ll build upon the first article about Kong control and figure out a few enhancements and other off-kilter things we can do with the Kong device. So step inside and prepare yourself for the journey.
This tutorial should prove a little enlightening for those that only think of Kong as a basic drum module. Here we’re going to twist it into the ultimate controller for everything under the sun. For starters, I’ll show how Kong can control 8 filters at once, and then I’ll move on to use Kong to control the FM Pair Oscillator in Thor. Using some of these methods, you’ll be able to control pretty much anything in Reason or Record with Kong; moving traditional device control from a basic keyboard to a Pad controller.
In this tutorial, I’m going to go all out and create a one-finger band Combinator which makes use of MIDI Key Triggering to launch an array of patterns for all my instruments. In other words, I’m going to construct a song using a single Combinator and some Reason devices. You can use this as a template for your own ideas, and simply switch out the sound generating devices and patterns to create your own track.
So here we are once again with part two in our series on key triggering our patterns. In this part, I’m going to bring both methods together so that you can switch between the two methods with the click of a button. I’m also going to add a few new tricks into the mix. And finally show you how to hook everything up to your Kong pads, in the event you want to use the pads as triggers instead of your keyboard. So let’s dig our heels in.
I’m sure most of us have used the Matrix or Thor Step Sequencer to some extent. But how often have we thought about using our keyboard to trigger those patterns? I know I’ve never given it much serious thought, since I usually sequence all the parts into the main sequencer. But this time I’m going to explore the possibility of triggering patterns from our Keyboard. This has a lot of “live play” applications.
In this tutorial, I’m going to finish up our Matrix song, and then explore the differences between the Matrix and the Thor Step Sequencer in a little more detail. It’s important to note the differences between the two and how one is not necessarily better than the other. Although I would argue that Thor’s step sequencer is much more advanced from a programming standpoint. I think the Matrix still has a lot to offer and still provides a lot of possible uses. So don’t shelve it just yet.
In this tutorial, I’m going to work with the Matrix and build a track by step sequencing. Egads! I hear the purists gasp, as they turn away in disgust. But rest assured, I’m merely presenting this as a creative idea to force you to think about alternative ways to build your songs. Take from that what you will. In the end, I hope this shows you how the Matrix, and step sequencing in general, can be a powerful ally when you compose your tracks.
Feb 012011
This patch came out of a request to have a Tremolo effect in Reason. There’s many ways you can create one. But this time I wanted to expand upon that a little bit and create a triple effect using a single Thor device. So here is a Tremolo / Pan / Frequency Modulation effect patch that you can use.
