What do you do when you are playing Reason live and need to switch patches right away – say from a horn section sound to a synth lead sound? Stop playing, turn to your computer, find the right patch or track, click it and go? What if you are auditioning sounds at home? Do you really want to be taking your hands off your wind controller every time you want to find the next sound? Why not change patches remotely from your wind controller? Luckily, changing patches from your wind controller is easy in Reason. This article will walk you through the steps to set up your wind controller to change patches in Reason. You can follow these steps to set up any other control surface as well, such as a foot controller, keyboard or MPC- style 16 pad controller. There are two ways to change patches.
How to change the device patch. You can map the previous and next patch buttons on a device to notes or buttons on your wind controller (these are the little up and down arrows next to the patch name). The easiest way is to right click the up or down arrow and select 'Edit Remote Override Mapping' from the menu. Since I am using an EWI USB, I am going to map the highest C# to select the next patch (down arrow) and the highest D to select the previous patch (up arrow). I set the Control Surface to EWI USB (see 'the Master Keyboard Demystified' for more info on Control Surfaces. I set the Control to 'Keyboard' and type in C#6 for the note. If you want to map some other control not listed in the 'Control' drop down menu, you can select 'Learn from Control Surface Input' and press, move, wiggle or otherwise activate the thing you want to use to control 'next patch' with and it should map. Press OK when you are done. Do the same thing, but using a different control for 'Select Previous Patch.' How to change the selected sequencer track. If you want to select tracks to change your patches, you want to go to 'Options->Additional Remote Overrides...' and choose Target Previous/Next Track and assign your controls. When you click the Edit button, you will get the same 'Edit Remote Override Mapping' dialog to assign your control. When you are all done, it will look something like this: That's it! You can do all sorts of things with Remote Override mappings - start and stop loops, turn fx on and off - just about anything in Reason can be mapped.
In a future post we'll trigger loops and jam over them! Got a creative way of setting up your mappings? Leave a comment and let us know.
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Something fun and ridiculous in honor of the World Cup! Impress your friends, annoy your enemies with your very own wind controller vuvuzela patch.
First of all, the kind of gig you are doing is going to influence your organization but this tutorial is for those of us who are playing in a band that plays tunes, not DJing or doing extended one man band type sets. (If you are playing in this style, let us know how you organize your sounds in the comments!). I’d like to describe the set up that has worked well for me, and maybe it will work for you. I have two kinds of patches – the first is where I have programmed a patch, layer or split for use in a particular song. These tend to be very specific - I've programmed a part from the recording and I am always going to play that same part. The second is what I call ‘floater’ patches - these are sounds I can select and drop into a tune on the fly. Maybe there is no specific ‘EWI part’ that we’ve put in the arrangement, but I want to improvise an EWI part. I’ll just select the patch and start playing. The former tend be very specific and the latter more general use. The song patches are saved in combinators with the same name as the song. This way, when the song comes around, I just click the song name and I am good to go. I don’t have to think, “Ok, for ‘Tik Tok’ load ‘analog-saw1’.” I just look for the “Tik Tok” combinator and go. The floaters are saved in combinators with descriptive names – ‘flute,’ ‘B flat power brass,’ etc. All combinators I am going to use for that band or night go in the same folder. For example, I have a folder called “Avenue Sounds” where all my gig sounds for that band are saved. Now, we need to create a new Reason song and set up our rack. The idea is, at the beginning of the night, you open up this Reason song, and don’t have to touch it for the rest of the night. Our folder structure will now pay off. Here are two ways to organize your rack, the ‘multi combinator’ approach, or the ‘one combinator’ approach. Multi combinator approach Create a rack with one combinator for each sound you want to use. Switch between sounds by selecting the track with the combinator you want. The advantage is you can set levels in a mixer for each combinator, and you can see each sound in the track view. If the sound is specific to a song - name the combinator with the name of the song. If you have a standard set list, you can arrange the sounds in the track view from top to bottom in order of how you will use them. One combinator approach Create a rack with one combinator only and select your patches with the up or down arrows or menu controls on the combinator face. You can also click and hold on the patch name to bring up a list of all the patches in the folder you are in, and since we have all our patches for the gig in one folder, it should be pretty easy to find the sounds you want. I use the multi combinator approach because I have yet to run into CPU or memory problems on my 2008 MacBook, even with 30 or so patches loaded. The one combinator approach is more CPU friendly, but less convenient in my opinion, so you have to figure the trade-offs. Keep in mind there are no hard and fast rules, this is just good way to get started at the beginning of the evening. A lot of times I'll load up a few patches on a break. At the end of the night, I save my song so all my changes are there for the next gig. Next time I'll post a step by step tutorial about how to change patches in Reason 4 using your wind controller, no matter which setup you are using. Have your own setup you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments! and now... the sound of weekThis is a reworking of 'Thoughtful Violin' from the Reason factory sound bank. I've used this on gigs and been complimented on it. Velocity controls the 'attack' sample, and breath controls volume and filter of the main violin sample. Love it? Hate it?
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