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Alek Száhala's Reason 3.0 tips

People keep asking me how do I make some samples with Reason. So I decided to share few tricks I've found useful. I'll rather explain them with my bad english than upload finished patches online.

Hoovers
This is the most asked one. At first, yes. You can make very powerful sounding hoover with Reason, it isn't even very difficult. The basic Juno Alpha hoover has two basic components: Lots of oscillators and a very very wide frequency range. Both of these components can be easily emulated with basic analog synth (and as we're using Reason now, we're using subtractor). If you're using Reason 3.0, build your hoover inside a combinator, if you've got 2.x you can merge the components using spiders.

First, create a line mixer 6:2 inside a combinator, it's the easiest way to connect all the subtractors together. Next step is to create all the oscillators needed for hoover: Create a subtractor, set it's portamento around 32-90 depending how fast you want your hoover to slide. Switch also keymode to legato. Turn both oscillators on and their waveforms into sawtooth. Detune OSC1 to negative value (around 00-30) and OSC2 to positive (max +30). Also reset all the velocity parameters to zero. Now it should sound like this: Hoover with 2 OSCs.

Ok, now you've got basic trancelead sawtooth. Now it's time to create more oscillators: Make two copies of the subtractor you just created (just Copy & Paste it and press TAB to connect the cables to Line Mixer inside the combinator). Then detune both oscillators of both new subtractors to some values between -30 and +30. Use different values in every oscillator: eg.
SUB1: OSC1: +8 | OSC2: 0;
SUB2: OSC1: +12 | OSC2: -30 etc.

Well, sounds like shit doesn't it? Next phase is to widen the frequency range: Leave 3 Oscillators to 4th octave, but transpose three remaining into 2nd 3rd and 5th. Now your hoover should sound like this: Hoover with 6 OSCs.

To make it sound even wider, put a flanger between your combinator output and mixer input. Set Delay around 30-50, Feedback around -8 and Rate + Modulation amount to 50-70.

Final step is to program combinator knobs to control the oscillators. Consult Reason manual if you're not sure how to do it. I recommend Rotary 1 for controlling Filter 1 Frequencies, and Rotary 2 for Resonances. The final hoover should be something like this: Hoover with 6 OSCs and Flanger.

After this point, there is infinite ways to enchance your hoover, just use your imagination.



I'll write more when I've got more time.