Reason? What the heck do I do with it?

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emomusician

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I was using fruity loops to do drums with, which was not really getting me the results I wanted. A friend of mine advised me that Reason was so much better. So I saved up and bought a copy. How the heck do I do drums in it? I don't have a midi keyboard, because I never needed one with fruity. I'm so lost...
 
If u have trouble with FL surely you'll have more with REASON.

I guess its all about learning.

Dedicate a lot of time to get to know your programs,other wise you will find your self hopping around and loosing moneys.
 
I've always found Reason to be a far more versatile tool than Fruityloops, but the learning curve is also steeper... once you understand the basic concept of it though, it's quite simple and user friendly.
There are lot's of options for doing drums in Reason, but the simplest one to get you started is to use the 'ReDrum' drum machine... it acts very much like a basic hardware drum machine, you load up your 10 sounds and program various 1 bar patterns.... then down below in Reason's sequencer section you can arrange the song structure by laying out the order you want the patterns to play back.
Eventually you can get into much more detailed programming and control of the sounds, but I'd say start with ReDrum and work your way up....
Good luck!
 
ya i was in the same boat when i first got my copy of reason. i took the time to print off the entire help file and read it from beginning to end. once things are explained, it really isn' that hard to use at all. Basically just put in a mixer, then an NN-XT, then load the samples you want and edit in the notes in the sequencer.
 
nah

nah I was fine with fruity, i just couldn't get a realistic sounding track with fruity.
 
GHow do you create drums in it?

This my friend is a very simple question, with a very simple answer.....

Step 1) open reason.
Step 2) right click on the black area under the "hardware interface" (ie the thing that says "MIDI In Device")
Step 3) click "redrum drum computer" from the menu that opens
Step 4) Click the folder icon in the bottom left,
Step 5) Browse to Reason factory Sound Bank > Redrum Drum Kits and select a drum kit you want.


Now for sequencing the track thats up to you, you can use the built in redrum automation or you can write it in the sequencer window. Ill tell you this way, because its easier to describe, but learning the automation will be greatly benificial to you in the future.

Go to Window > Detatch Sequencer Window

This will open the sequencer in a seperate window.

On the top of the sequencer window ids a button with 3 little bars on it, Click that (Switch to Edit Mode)

Youll see your drum channels now, and there are blocks where you can click and draw the midi information/drum sequence

Hope this was helpful, any other questions feel free to ask, Im a reason freak :D

-C$
 
Oh yea, If you want to build your own kit in NN-XT or Redrum, or NN-19, or...... whatever tool in reason you want to use, let me know, thats alittle more involved, but i can help u out with it :)

-C$
 
awesome

makes a little more sense now. I will attempt it when i get home. I wanted to use NSKit that i downloaded off of that site. the free drum samples that are pretty nice. How would I use those with reason? I'm doing mainly like pop rock stuff (james blunt, gavin degraw).
 
Sho Nuff... :)

I'm assuming all the drum samples are wav/aiff files, so I'll start with that, and I'll do redrum first because its the easiest.

Put them all in one folder (this isnt nessicary but it helps keep your HD organized)

Open redrum in reason, there are 10 tracks in redrum, each with an "open" icon, click this and browse to the folder your kit is in.

I usually lay out Kicks first, snare, HH (open / close) toms, cymbols. but you can lay it out how ever will be easiest for you.

Are you using reason with a DAW program or just straight out of reason?

I would suggest using it with an audio prog like protools, cubase, sonar etc (I use ableton because it works best for my application) and "rewire" each drum track to its own channel within the other program.

To do this load protools/abletoon etc (only one lol :p ) then open reason.

create your drum kit, and hit tab (turns the rack around)

Now youll see the back of the reason "rack" drag the stereo outs for each individual channel of redrum to the channels on the rewire/hardware interface (top most rack Unit)

ie. channel 1 on redrum to channels 1/2 on the hw interface (stereo)

go into the DAW create 10 tracks (or how ever many you used in redrum) and change the source to reason, and pick the outs (same as the back of the rack but reversed, 1/2 go to channel 1 in the DAW) mix and effect like you normally would a regular drum kit, the only difference is you have 2 HH tracks, one open and one closed. Im downloading the NS kit now so i can look at it, and get a better idea of how you can apply it, it mightbe easier than this, but you never know :)

Let me know if this helps, I'll takew a look at the kit and try and find the easiest way to implement it for you

-C$
 
It looks like thats the best way to do it in reason, I would use multiple redrum kits to get a more realist and dynamic sound, but they sound pretty good in reason :)

-C$
 
adobe?

will adobe audition be sufficient? Thats what I use right, and it does everything I want it to.
 
emomusician said:
will adobe audition be sufficient? Thats what I use right, and it does everything I want it to.
Click to expand...

Yea it should, it says on the adobe site it works with rewire so you should be all set

-C$
 
ok..

got home last night...

followed the instructions. I was able to get most of it. However, when I was trying to do my drum patterns, how do I make them "end". They would just continue on forever after the drum part had been played all i would get is silence until it got all the way to the end of the part.

then, I have a delta 66 w/ breakout box. How would I need to have that rigged up with reason/audition.
 
i'm a floops 5 user (used since 3), and I have found it to be the easist sequencer. I had a demo copy of reason once, and i've used reason to some degree in other studios. so this is my question:

In ReDrum, besides putting the "human feel" knobby thing (it's been a long while since i've used it) can you physically slide samples around (at sample values) to create a more human feel? I could never figure that out.

That ability is one of the many features I love about floops. although the stock instruments aren't nearly as cool as reason, it has a lot more functionality in my humble opinion.

any thoughts would be appreciated... :D
 
In Reason, you can slide the samples around any way you like - you don't do it within the ReDrum rack unit itself, but down in the sequencer section - you just need to make sure the 'snap to grid' function is off.
 
reason vs. fruity

If reason is not going to get me any better results, than I will continue to use it. I want to be able to write drum tracks for pop/rock songs and have them be as non computerized sounding as possible, almost as if the drummer is playing. I haven't had alot of luck getting fruity to do this that well, but it was decent. I was under the impression that reason was this magic drum making software, according to my sources. Maybe I am not using either of them correctly.
 
emomusician said:
got home last night...

followed the instructions. I was able to get most of it. However, when I was trying to do my drum patterns, how do I make them "end". They would just continue on forever after the drum part had been played all i would get is silence until it got all the way to the end of the part.

then, I have a delta 66 w/ breakout box. How would I need to have that rigged up with reason/audition.
Click to expand...

What I generally do for this is to insert an automated track that I havnt programmed anything on yet to stop it from making noise, when when I want the drum track to come back in I insert a programmed automation track again. to end the song, move the "e" slider (end of song) to the left where you want it to stop everything.

One you get used to reason, you can get pretty realistic results, IMO some of the best results are from reason. another good drum kit to use would be the Drum Kit from Hell (http://www.soundsonline.com/sophtml/details.phtml?sku=TT100) which is what Meshuggah uses when they program the drums for their CD's There is an option to get the Drum Kit from Hell add on pack which has the NNXT already programmed for it. But the NS Kit you have sounds pretty damn good from what I've tested it out for.

-C$
 
Well, unfortanately there's no 'magic' software, but having used both, I find Reason far more versatile that FL for what I like to do. I would stick with it, it can be pretty powerful... but of course, to get to the point where you can use it so that it DOESN'T sound like a bad FL knock-off, you do need to work with it a fair bit to learn the details - it's easy to set up a basic drum pattern, but it's in the meticulous fine tuning that you can start to personalize things and give life to it...
Generally I would manually create my drum tracks in the sequencer rather than relying on ReDrum patterns, although using ReDrum can be much faster...
Good luck with it :)
PS - as far as "stopping" the ReDrum patterns from repeating, try inderting a 'dummy' pattern into the sequence like D8 or something that has just silence where you want it to stop.
 
maybe

maybe I am not explaining myself well.

In FL, I create a pattern in the sequencer. basically clicking the little markers to map out a beat. I do this for every "different" pattern in the song. Then I go to the "layout" menu, where you basically piece the parts together so when one ends, the parts all go together. My problem in reason, is when I make a pattern in the sequencer.. its never ending. I pulled the "E" to where i want it to stop and it still plays like 3 secs of dead noise after that. I'm not sure what you guys mean by dummy tracks or automation. Can I do pretty much what I have explained above in reason?
 
are you writing oyur patterns in the sequencer window? or are you clicking the "lighuts" on redrum to write the pattern? if your doing it directly on the redrum, thats creating an automated pattern, that wont stop untill you press spacebar, or change the automation line in the sequencer.

You can do what your stating above, its just hard to describe.

When you open the sequencer window and click the edit button (top of the sequencer window) it should open up a grid, you can sequence your drum track in there, like you would any midi sequencer. (at least the ones Ive used) you can then copy the sequences you want duplicates of and paste them in where you want them to go, then there are no red/white/pink sequence lines, the sound should stop, unless there is something programmed in redrum that shouldnt be there. I think the confusing part about using redrum is that you can sequence in 2 different places. Youc an adjust velocity/attack in the sequencer window to make it sound more realistic and dynamic.

I hope this helped, Its hard to describe over a msg board. Hll some of its hard to describe in person, but once ytou get it it will all make sense, and your drum tracks will sound like you had a real drummer, and not a drum machine

-C$
 
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