The unofficial propellerhead reason tutorial site
The unofficial propellerhead reason tutorial site
The Redrum drum machine in Reason 6 is the ultimate drum computer for the Propellerhead Reason Rack (next to Kong Drumdesigner of course). As most of the devices that come with Propellerhead Reason, the redrum can be devided into a couple of smaller sections. I will go through those sections in a small introduction part and then I will start going in depth showing a couple of things that you can do with the Redrum drum machine.
This controls the complete volume of all drums that are inside this specific redrum machine. Adjusting this volume will have an effect on all the drums inside this redrum machine
The Channels
The channels control the flavor of the drum. What kind of drum it is, how loud it is, what the pitch is. Since this is the main key of setting the flavor of the drum, I will get back to this later in this tutorial.
In the left lower corner there is an option to load up and save a complete Redrum patch. Propellerhead Reason comes with a couple of nice standard redrum patches with different styles. From techno to house, to chemical beats to accoustic drums.
In this section you can also find the High Quality Interpolation knob, and the Channel 8&9 exclusive. The first one is for quality/ performance purposes. When you have a lot of stuff inside your rack and the Computer itself is having problems playing them back (it starts to stutter) you might want to turn high quality interpolation of when that happends. Otherwise, keep it on.
The channel 8 & 9 exclusion makes the 8th and 9th channel of the redrum patch play single times. As soon as channel 8 is triggered when channel 9 is still playing, the 9th channel of the redrum will then stop and channel 8 takes over.
Last part, and maybe a real important part in the redrum machine is the patterns/ steps sections. With this you can trigger the drums to play. There is however another method to control the redrum computer using the sequencer itself. Both methods have its advantages and disadvantes and it is probably up the music composer to decide which is the prefered method. But as I want to make everything more complete, I will present both techniques.
First of all, you might want to start by loading up a single patch. In the next couple of example files I will start using the dublab Heavy Kit 1 (which is located in the heavy kits section of the default Reason Factory soundbank).To start making the bassdrum to play, you will need to select the 1st channel first before entering the notes. Default the 1st channel is selected. By pressing on the steps knobs the knobs will be turned orange. This will mean that at that specific moment the drum will play.
The most simple drum session is a 4/4 signature drum track, which means there are 4 beats inside one measure. Each beat is therefor a quarter of a note (1/4). With the the first example I have added the bassdrum and parked that on each 4th note using the pattern editor.
Download RNS: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 1
Download MP3: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 1
Also keep in mind that initially the redrum will start to play when the 'RUN' button is pressed. When the patterns are being placed in the sequencer, the redrum will then automaticly start to play aswell.
To start adding the snaredrum we can select the second channel, and park a snare drum on step 5 and step 13. Which I have done with the next sample file
Download RNS: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 2
Download MP3: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 2
At this point we can start making adjustmenst in the pattern. The easiest way is to copy the patterns (by right clicking on the redrum computer, then select 'copy pattern'). Then select the second pattern by pressing the '2' on the redrum computer. And then paste the pattern (right click on the redrum computer, and select paste). Another way to do copy/ paste actions is CTRL + C (for copy) and CTRL + V (for pasting).
Then we can start making adjustmenst from there on in the second pattern. In this case I am removing the snare drum on step 13 and placing 2 new snares on step 12 and step 15.
To actually make use of the 2 different individual patterns that have been made, we head over to the sequencer. Select the "Show Pattern Lane" in the left upper part of the sequencer (when it is not yet selected) and then select pattern A1. By selecting the pencil tool we can draw our patterns on the pattern lane. When other patterns need to be made, we can select A2 in this case and draw A2 on the pattern lane.
Which I have done with the next example file.
Download RNS: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 3
Download MP3: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 3
About the drum exclusion
As I have said in the earlier part about the patches, exclusion means it will stop channel 9 as soon channel 8 kicks in and the other way around. To demonstrate this, I have added a hihat session on channel 8 and 9 and I am playing the first one with exclusion on, and the second with exclusion off.
Download RNS: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 4 With exclusion
Download MP3: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 4 With exclusion
Download RNS: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 5 Without exclusion
Download MP3: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 5 Without exclusion
As you might see at the right to the pattern section, there is a trigger that you can adjust which says hard, medium and soft. This is the velocity of the drums that are playing, where the default is medium. For instance, when we take the bassdrum (channel one) and select hard, press on step 1, we will see a Red light turned on. By selecting the medium velocity and add the notes to step 5 and step 13. Select soft and then park the notes on for instance step 8 and step 10 for some nice diverse bassdrum.
When you play the sequence you will notice that the first bassdrum will sound the hardest, while the others are just pounding more or less in the background. This technique is commonly used to emphasize certain parts inside of the drum track (in this case it is the first note of the sequence).
Download RNS: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 6 Velocity
Download MP3: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 6 Velocity
Default the redrum allows panning inside each channel. This is sometimes nice for drum alternations inside of a sequence. For instance take a Tom Tom session that kinda goes from low to high toms and from left to right. Which can have a nice impact from time to time. To use panning inside the redrum you could use the main mixer panel and pan there. Either use the channel inside the redrum and pan each channel seperatly. One tip though, don't over do this as this can make your complete song a bit more chaotic to listen to.
In the next demonstration I have added a couple of tom toms (channel 5 till channel 7) which uses panning from left to right. And this sounds as the following example file:
Download RNS: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 7 Panning
Download MP3: the Propellerhead Reason 6 redrum example file 7 Panning
This concludes this tutorial about the Redrum computer using accoustic drums. When I have the time I will add some nice tricks that you can work on using the Reason redrum computer.
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