Redrum is the one-to-go
Reason Essentials device for creating powerful beats for electronic music.
The following overview will provide you with all basic information you need to create the beats you want using the built-in step sequencer.
So, lets get started. Start Reason, press F6 to maximize the rack view, right-click the empty area, go to "instruments" and choose
Redrum drum computer. This is how it looks like:
Redrum looks and works in a similar way to famous drum machines from the past but with additional functionalities that makes it a lot more flexible than it's predecessors. Let's start off our exploration by the
browser section:
The folder icon let you access the browser, the disk icon let you save your own patches and the up and down arrows scroll through different patches in a folder. Now,
Open the browser.
Go to the left column and click on the
Reason factory Sound Bank icon. The factory sound bank is a dedicated folder file that stores all programs sounds, effects and patches. You can not write in this folder but the company provides users with a software that allows users to create their own folders. This type of file is called a
Refill.
In the main browser window, double-click the
Redrum drum kits folder.
All Redrum kits are stored by categories.
A kit is an arrangement of 10 different drums sounds loaded into one instance of Redrum. It is very easy to spot a kit of your liking if you have an idea of the genre of the music you intend to create.
Pick a kit of your choice and lets move on!
Each instrument of a kit is loaded in a separate channel (2).
You can identify the sound by looking at the top section of the kit (1). Redrum also allows you to browse by channel so, if you're enjoying the kit you have but wish to change one of it's sounds, all you do is to browse on that particular channel. This section also allows you to preview a sound, mute or solo the channel and even record a
sample of your own.
Every channel is loaded with sound modifiers that allows you to shape a sound in different ways (3). You can adjust
dynamics (make a sound louder or softer), increase the difference between loud and soft sounds (
velocity), adjust the
length, the
pitch (make it higher or lower), the placement of the sound on the stereo field - left and right channels (
pan) amongst other things.
If your computer is not particularly fast you can decrease sound quality to save Ram memory and you can also link channels 8 & 9 to produce realistic hi-hat's patterns (4).
Ok, enough for sound shaping. Lets learn to program patterns.
First, we need to set an appropriate
step resolution (1). It is a very straight forward approach with fractions that correspond to their proper note values. For instance, if you set the resolution to 1/16, each step will correspond to a 16th note value. That being said, this is the default resolution for a redrum pattern, which means that you can programme a whole bar in a 4 by 4 time signature.
You will probably find the following chart very useful:
Next, you can increase or decrease the number of the available
steps to suit the needs of your pattern (2) - sometimes one bar is not enough, sometimes it is just too much...
If you are writing for more than 16 steps you'll need to switch the
edit seps slider (3) to be able to access the ones that are hidden. Always keep an eye on the step sequencer, its easy to get lost and edit the wrong step!
Lastly, you can switch between
dynamics before entering a step (4). You can wite soft, medium and loud notes, what gives you plenty of expressiveness to add to your beats.
You enter notes by simply cliking on the step sequencer. 1) select a chanel, 2) click to enter a step, 3) click again to erase it.
By right-clicking on an empty area of Redrum, a context menu displays a variety of actions that you can apply to your pattern:
1-
copy and paste patch lets you transfer a current kit to another instance of Redrum for extra tweaks for instance.
2-
copy and paste pattern lets you transfer your beats to an empty patern in redrum for further edit. This is very useful for creating variations!
3-
shift pattern lets you move a patern one step at time to the left or to the right. If you go a nice pattern on Redrum but it sounds off-beat with your song, you can use this command to align your beat to the rest of the project.
4- Short of ideas? click
randomize pattern and let Redrum do the job for you! Very useful or creating fills and complex rhythms. Randomize a pattern, tweak it to taste and you are good to go!
5- Yeah, finally! You've just happened to have a nice grooving beat and want to start recording other instruments on top of it? Click on
copy pattern to track and send it to the sequencer! Redrum let you choose how many copies of the pattern you want and the starting and ending point of the copy.
Before sending the pattern to the sequencer track, first select the start and end points by setting the
left (1) and
right (2)
loop locators the way you want on the
bar ruler. Reason only displays musical time on the ruler (4) with each number representing a bar of the song. When you click play, the
playback locator (3) scrolls with the song, showing the position of the song during playback.
Number 5 shows the redrum track and number 6 is the clip with the recording of your pattern.
When you click play, you'll notice that the pattern produces a wooshing sound and that is not correct! It happens because the redrum internal sequencer (the steps) are still playing back he pattern. You have to turn off the buton ENABLE PATTERN SECTION to stop redrum's internal sequencer.
Now, double-click the clip you just recorded.
Welcome to the edit window!
We are not going to do any edit right now, but it is nice to know how your pattern looks like in detail.
1- each row display a redrum chanel
2- notice what happens to the ruler when we zoom into the clip: 1.2 means - first bar, beat 2.
3- each rectangle represents a step (in this example, a 16th note).
4- bright colors means soft sound, darker colors means loud sound.
5- the velocity bar shows you how loud or soft a sound is in numbers.
6- each note gets its own bar on the graph.
That's enough for a day! Now, it's your turn to try our first assignment.
Let's see how good you are at writing some patterns into redrum!
