How to spice up your drum patterns in Reason (Propellerhead)

When you're programming your drum tracks you might often find your self using the same old patterns. Every track you write doesn't necessarily have to have the same old 'four-to-the-floor' beat going though the whole song. Why not spice things up with some variations and changes.

Having the same drum loop throughout your track can get boring, not just for you but also the listener. Changing the drums every now and then can give your tracks a little more interest and a new breath of life.

In the video below Mattias from Propellerhead Software takes us through a few tricks that he uses when programming drums. He shows us how to use ghost notes to give a basic pattern a little more interest. Using ghost notes can make your electronic drums sound a bit more human especially when you change them up every two bars or so.

Mattias also shows us how he creates a simple top loop using Reason's Dr. Octorex. using the built in highpass filter he removes all of the unwanted low end elements (primarily the kick and snare) from the percussion loop and places it over his existing drum pattern.

Reason's 'alter notes' feature is also mentioned in the video. Personally this is one of my favourite features in Reason as it can be used to instantly change MIDI data (much like a randomizer function). This is a good way to create some alterations to your beats when you're feeling a bit stuck with the creative process.

The final thing that is mentioned in the video is polyrhythms. Polyrhythms might seem confusing at first but they are a great way of giving your beats a more organic or evolving quality. A polyrhythm (or polymeter in the case of this video) is where you take two parts and play them in different time signatures. for example: if you program your kick in a traditional 4/4 measure but your hi-hats in a 5/4 measure then you can get some quite interesting results. If you're still confused about polyrhythms after watching this video then there are plenty of resources online that go a little more in depth on the subject.

One thing that wasn't mentioned in this video is adding groove to your beats. All DAWs have a groove function where you can add some swing or shuffle to your programmed beats. Giving your beats a bit of swing or shuffle is a great way to get them sounding more human. If you combine the groove feature with ghost notes (mentioned earlier) then it is possible to fool the listener into thinking that they're listening to an actual drummer rather than programmed beats.

Even though the video is created for users of Propellerhead's Reason all of the techniques mentioned can be recreated in any DAW. So next time you're working on a track pay a little more attention to your drums, if they're lifeless and uninspired them maybe try a few of these mentioned tricks. They can change a dull track into something a lot more palatable.

Time-stretch and audio quantize with Reason 7

Correcting the timing of a real instruments and percussion is a practice that many producers use in their music on a regular basis. Time-stretching and audio quantizing can be used to subtly nudge a vocal back in time, correct the timing of a dodgy bass player or even to create new glitched-out sounds from your original audio.

These features have been included in most major DAWs (Most notably Ableton Live) for quite some time now, but it was only recently that Propellerhead announced that they would be adding this to Reason 7 (released April 30th). So what's the big deal, why are people getting exited about something that they've already seen on another platform? I guess it's not the actual technology that people are interested in but the way the company has intergraded it into their software. Propellerhead are notorious for doing things a little different, and this implementation of audio quantize is no exception.

The workflow and sheer beauty of Propellerhead's Reason sets it worlds apart from the rest of the competition. The modularity of the virtual rack makes it stand out to individuals that like to experiment and get their hands dirty while writing music. Flip the rack around to reveal endless routing options with audio and CV cables that give you the flexibility to create pretty much anything you like. After you've spent half an hour messing about you will realise that Reason is truly an audio geek's paradise.

The way that time stretching is implemented into Reason isn't necessarily different to other DAWs but it does look sleeker and more intuitive. You can even bounce your sliced audio to .REX format so you can experiment even further with Reasons built in Dr.Octorex player. Fair enough, it's taken Propellerheads quite some time to add audio quantizing and time-stretching to reason but features like this are worth the wait if they're implemented as flawlessly as this.

The video below shows off what can be done with the audio quantise and time-stretch features that will be available in Reason 7.