In this post I thought I would highlight some of the free stuff you can find on the web. 

First up is the Analogue Monsters Free Edition. This is great sample bank containing source material from a bunch of classic synths including:
• Alesis Andromeda A6
• Korg Mono/Poly
• Korg MS-20
• Korg Poly800 MKII
• Moog Prodigy
• Roland Juno-60
• Roland Jupiter 4
• Studio Electronics SE-1X
• Waldorf Microwave XT

I liked the Free Edition so much that I bought the full Analog Monsters ReFill. It is probably one of my favorite ReFills. It even has a great selection of Oberheim synth samples. If you are looking to get that authentic Oberheim sound (think Matrix-6, OB-8, and OB-X, it is pure joy. 

I mention this refill all the time because it is one of my favorites, both in breadth and depth, the Massive Synth Refill from exode. Too many patches to go into detail, just get it. The link takes you to the Propellerheads free refill page. Just scroll down until you find it.

Did you know that the NN-XT can load sound fonts? This is really cool because there are a ton of free sound fonts you can download. One of my favorite spots is sf2midi.com. The sounds are pretty well organized and with a little hunting and pecking (we are talking about free here, after all) you can sometimes find some pretty good samples. Obviously, they will not be at the same quality level of a sample bank you buy, but every once in a while you can stumble on something really good. I've found some flute and blown pipe sounds that layer well with other sounds.

So there you have it, three ways to expand your sound palette for free. Do you have any favorite web sites for free stuff? Let us know in the comments.

I was recently asked how to go about playing arpeggios with an EWI - based combi. I thought I would explore this topic in a little more detail. We all know that you can use an RPG-8 with a keyboard to create arpeggios, but we face a unique set of challenges when playing with a wind controller. The RPG-8 (and Matrix for that matter) works by 'playing' the synth you hook it up to. 

When playing a keyboard, you find your device, right click on it, select RPG-8 from the menu and the RPG-8 is created with everything auto routed. The thing to remember is that  you are not playing the first device any more. The RPG-8 is playing the device and you are playing the RPG-8.

As you can see in this screen shot, the RPG-8 is taking over playing the Subtractor device via the Gate and Note CV inputs. And this works great, no problem. But what happens when we hook up the RPG-8 to an EWI combi (say, from Analog Dreams)?

As you can see the Gate and Note CV are wired up and the Mod Wheel and Pitch Wheel are routed. To play this we need to select the RPG-8 in the Sequencer, not the Combinator.

At this point we have two issues:

1. Even though we are routing Note and Gate information to combi, we are not routing breath data - so depending on what we are using breath for, we may not get a sound at all. We need to route breath to the combi.
   
2. Remember the RPG-8 is monophonic and so is the wind controller. That means we can only send one note to it, so we are restricted to octave arpeggios. In a later post we'll use the Step Sequencer on Thor which will let us achieve multiple note arpeggios.
   

There are many ways to route breath control to the combinator and which one you use depends on how the combinator is wired up for breath. 

If the combi programmer is being used to send breath info to parameters:

1. Flip the rack around and route 'Breath' from the RPG-8 to CV input 1 of the combi.

2. Change 'Breath' in the Combi programmer to CV in 1. That's it.

If you are using the front panel controls on a device, you need to use the CV inputs instead.

If you are using a more intricate combinator setup, such as from 'Analog Dreams', you need to find a place to intercept the normal breath data in the combinator and insert the breath data from the RPG-8. 

In  this case the breath data starts at the Thor device and is routed to CV out 2, so all we need to do is take move the connection from CV out 2 on the Thor to the Breath out on the RPG-8:

So there you have it. This setup will let you play repeated notes in octaves with your wind controller. With a little bit of snooping around and rerouting, you can play your breath controlled sounds with the RPG-8. Just remember - the trick is to 'play' the RPG-8, and let that play the breath controlled device. 

In a later post we will explore the step sequencer on Thor and use that to create true arpeggiated patterns that will play our other breath controlled devices. 

Until then, have fun and be musical.

Longtime EWI artist Barry Caudill was kind enough to write  review of our new mini pack - Analog Dreams.

I poked around Barry's blog and found a lot of great posts about playing the sax, sax equipment and gigging that I found very insightful. I particularly liked his description of his virtual EWI rig. Check out his blog related to all things saxophone and EWI- you won't be disappointed!

And, be sure to check out our first EWI mini-pack, Analog Dreams. Barry liked it, maybe you will too.

The Analog Dreams Mini Pack has finally escaped from the EWI Reason Sounds lab. This new set of sounds is sure to get your creative juices flowing, with a great sounding set of Analog style synth sounds. You're sure to love the sounds and the price!

Get it now from the EWI Reason Sounds Store or learn more...

I'm busy working on a new Refill project that I'm super excited about. We're going to try something new and a little different here on EWI Reason Sounds. Instead of creating one giant ReFill with a gazillion sounds, we are going to create a series of small boutique ReFills for a small price. We call them mini-packs, but there is nothing mini about the sound!

Each mini pack will contain a series of patches centered around a theme. We want each combinator to sound awesome out of the box. We want you to enjoy playing each and every patch. By keeping the number of patches small, we can really concentrate on only letting the best ones out of the lab. The benefit to you, the artist, is the price for each mini-pack will be under $10, letting you get only the sounds you want.

The first mini pack will focus on analog style sounds using actual samples from the analog hardware. I spent a lot of time making it easy to use and personalize, and the feel of these patches is just incredible. 

I sincerely hope you like it and have a lot of fun with it. Coming soon...

One thing that I have really come to appreciate about Rack Extensions is that it has given room for all sorts for niche devices that the Props would probably have never bothered with. One category of niche devices is that of CV processors, so we will be having overviews of some of our favorites coming up. As EWI players, wrangling the continuous controller data is critical to what we do. Converting it to CV and being able to manipulate it can really bring your sound design to another level. That being said, one tool I really like is the Revolt CV Processor. The main thing that I like is the big dial that shows the CV data coming into it.

To see the breath data you can hook up the breath output of an RPG-8 Arpeggiator to the CV 1 input of Revolt. Select both devices, right click and select 'Combine' to put them in a combinator. Now, just start  playing your wind controller.

I find it quite enlightening to see how I am articulating on the EWI every couple of months and I adjust the breath sensor to be more or less sensitive:

Since the display on the ReVolt goes from -127 to 127 and the EWI outputs only positive CV values, the dial will go from the middle of the display to the far right. To make it go from the far left to the far right, just set up the ReVolt as in the picture below.

• Scale: 2.05
  
• Add: -64
  
• Polarity: Bipolar

The Revolt CV Processor is $9 in the Propellerheads Rack Extensions Shop. Check it out.

This post is a real quick tip, but I have been using it lately to geneate all sorts of cool percussion patterns and grooves. If you are stuck for rhythmic ideas, or just want to add some variety to a simple drum loop, try sending some drums or percussion through an Alligator Triple Filtered Gate. Here what I will typically do:

1. Create a ReDrum
   
2. Right click on the Redrum and from the pop up menu choose Creative FX -> Alligator Triple Filtered Gate.
   
3. Click on the Redrum, then choose Edit -> Randomize Pattern.
   
4. Press Play on the Redrum.

Try turning down the Delay on the Alligator and using patterns in the 30's and above. You can make some cool grooves. Here I am just experimenting with different patterns layered on top of a basic rock beat.

And here is the Reason 6 Song file so you can see how it is all set up. Happy filtering!

This post continues a recent trend of non-EWI related tips and tricks. I know this EWI Reason Sounds, but sometimes I come across something in my own music making that others might benefit from, too. Maybe it'll help you finish a tune, or inspire you to start a tune. 

In this tip I will show you how I beefed up a Dr Octo Rex drum loop by using it to trigger pads on a Kong Drum designer.

What I wanted to do was have the snare slice trigger a snare sample on the Kong and have a kick drum slice trigger a kick sample on the Kong. This way I could layer the sounds or replace the sounds in the Rex loop. So, lets look at the back of the Kong and Dr Octo Rex.

There is only one Gate Output on the Dr Octo Rex which fires for each slice. So we can't use that unless we want to trigger a sound for every single slice in our loop. We want the kick drums slices  to trigger Pad 1 and the Snare slices to tigger Pad 2. 

However, there are multiple audio outputs on Dr Octo Rex, and we can assign individual slices to the different outputs as shown below.

Here you can see I have entered slice edit mode, and sent the kick slices to output 1-2 and the snare slices to output 3-4.

What we can do now is send outputs 1-2 and 3-4 to an MClass Compressor, then use the Gain Reduction CV out to trigger the Kong. As you can see in the picture below, I have the gain reduction CV out of he MClass compressor set to trigger the pads on Kong.

If we flip the rack back around, we need to set up the Compressor. I recommend these settings: 

• Input Gain: 0
  
• Threshold; ~-36db
  
• Ratio: between 16:1 and inf
  
• Attack:0
  
• Release:
  

This is the basic setup. One thing to note is that in this configuration you will never hear the snare and kick for the loop because they go into the Compressor and don't go anywhere from there. We can get around this by adding a Spider Audio Merger/Splitter, and use one split to go to a mixer and another to go to the Comprwssor, like so:

The only thing you need to do now is layer up the kick and snare however you want. 

One advantage to doing it this way is you can arrange the slices in your track however you want and the Kong snare and kick will always follow along, since they are being triggered by the audio.

Here is a little demo of the finished patch, which I have included for you to download below. There are two caveats to this technique though. 

1. You may have to play around with the input gain and threshold parameters to get the Kong pad to trigger. 
   
2. You may have to get rid of the velocity parameters on the Kong Pad like this:
   

There you go, have fun and be musical.

Here is a Thor patch you can download. It combines two analog oscillators with a noise oscillator set really low. All oscillators are run through a State Variable 12db low pass filter. You can create a lot of new tones with this one patch. Here ar just a few ideas.

• Change the filter type to Low Pass Ladder. Do you have to make any adjustments to the filter cutoff?
  
• Change an analog oscillator to a multi oscillator.
  
• Change the waveform in the analog oscillator.
• Send the output through a Line 6 Amp Simulator for a dirty tone.
  

Hope you enjoy it!

In this installment we are going to build on the FX combinator from last time, 'Pad FX'. If you remember, we sent our dry pad sound through a Unison, stereo imager and reverb, then made combinator controls to control various parameters. We are going to add Thor's filters to this patch to add the unique character of the Low Pass Ladder and State Variable Filters to our Malstrom Pad sound.

One thing I like to do is combine various elements of different Reason devices. Subtractor sound with Thor filters? Sure. Why not use the Mod A and B modulators from Malstrom with a Thor sound?  This all possible with the right wiring. So, for this example, we are going to create a Thor patch with filters only. We will route the audio from a Malstrom to the filter. Easy. Here's how to do it.

The completed patch should like this. Save it as 'Filter'.

Next flip the rack around and route the insert FX L and R to Audio inputs 1 and 2 of the Thor. Route the Thor Audio outputs 1 and 2 to the inputs of the Unison device.

Because we are using the Thor filter now, we can turn off the filters on the Malstrom.

Now, lets play our pad sound. I'm using the Malstrom patch 'Ambient Pad 05' from Exodes Massive Synthesis Refill (free).  The Malstrom doesn't have a 24db ladder filter, but now it does thanks to Thor!

Let's see what it sounds like with the State Variable Filter in 12db Low pass mode. Nice. You can hear the 'fuzziness' added by the filter -- something you won't get with the stock Malstrom filters.

To take this up one more notch we will give our pad some motion with a variable LFO. This one will modulate the filter frequency of whatever filter we are using with LFO 2. We can control the amount with Rotary 1, and the Rate with Rotary 2. The MBRS settings are to the left. Label Rotary 1 'LFO Level' and Rotary 2 'LFO Rate'.

By setting Rotary 1 to a high value, and moving Rotary  2 in real time, we can add some motion to our chord progression. To record Rotary 2, right click on the Thor and select 'Create Track for Thor 1.' Click the record button and move the knob as you record. Agreen box will appear around Rotary 2 when you are done, indicating it is being automated.

So there you have it. A cool way to use Thor filters with any sound in the sound bank. We even added a feature to control the brightness for some real time motion. I hope this gives you some insight about modular synthesis and using the Reason devices as building blocks for new and interesting devices. And by looking over my shoulder as we make these, maybe you can get some ideas of your own. You can also see how one idea leads to another. (and another, and another...) With the advent of Rack Extensions you might even want to wire up some rack extension devices to see what sounds you can come up with.

Here is the completed Combi FX patch:

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial.