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Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Reason's Redrum: Drum Samples Made Easy

By John Gellei

Propellerheads have really done something great with their virtual drum machine, Redrum. The Redrum is a combination of easy drum samples sequencing, loading and manipulation.

There are ten drum channels in one instance of Redrum, each one with multiple modulation filters and options, such as velocity and panning. Along with panning, another regular is the level rotary knob, which simply controls the level or volume. You can mix and match the volume of all ten drum samples until you have a good internal balance. The master level then controls the volume of every drum sound inside Redrum as it pertains to the global project as a whole. What a great way to mix micro and macro with such ease, huh?

One of the most useful options present in each and every channel strip is the Length control, which can trim the tail off long samples and shorten any other samples to the extent you want. I've found this really helpful when modulating hi-hats and snares. These drum samples sometimes don't get to the point as quick as one might like, so this is one possible use for this control.

The pan option for every strip is also visible all within the same window, which gives you a great visual indication of where every instrument is at. This is just one of those things that you don't think you need until you've played with Redrum. Everything is viewable and no hidden menus need to be accessed! It's good, but there are of course draw-backs to this. People new to Reason may get confused with the layout at first.

Picking out sample after sample can be a very boring and mundane task. Wouldn't it be easier if somebody had already picked out a whole bunch of samples that go great together? Well, set your faces to stunned, because Reason includes more than a hundred different soundsets for Redrum. All the drum samples included in these Refills are chosen for their coherence. So you will rarely venture outside of these sound-packs looking for other samples. You can practically get to work right away! Focusing on the music and not sample selection can be great for creativity. Nothing is worse than spending thirty minutes looking for drum samples!

At any point, there are sixteen button-type inputs at the bottom of the Redrum. This is where you can click in the drum samples you want, and while you can never see all patterns at the same time here, you can export the patterns to the main sequencer to keep track of them there. This is very close to the way things work in the real world, and Redrum (in fact, Reason in general) has a workflow that will prepare budding audio engineers and music producers for the hardware world very well. - 18423

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