 If you have been following along, we are presenting variations on an analog style patch inspired by a certain classic synth whose name starts with the letter 'M'. Hint: it rhymes with 'tube'. This classic synth had a noise oscillator on it, so this week we add the noise oscillator to our Thor patch. It vaguely resembles a clarinet, albeit one with a lot of breath noise. Note to clarinet students: breath noise is NOT desirable when you are playing a real clarinet. This is not a supposed to sound like a real clarinet. It sounds like a square wave synth oscillator with some air added to it. Clarinet or no, enjoy. 
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 Building on last weeks patch, we present another one in the same family, but using the analog square waveform. Same responsiveness and analog warmth, different feel. This sound sounds a little like an accordion - a fitting tribute to Cleveland native Frank Yankovic. Yip! Yip! And all we did was change the oscillator waveform. Hope you like it.
 I've been interested in classic analog sounds lately. You know the kind - the ones that our favorite EWI players always seem to use and the ones that sound so fat and satisfying. I like the sounds on the EWI4000s - I think these sounds are pretty big and full, but alas, the synth on the EWI4000s is VERY particular to the wind controlled instrument for various reasons. Until I come up with a 'proper' emulation (which would probably need a Combinator and more than a few Thors) I thought having some basic Thor patches that come close would be in order. This patch is the culmination of many hours of experimenting with creating a basic Thor patch that is 'preset' for breath control. Expect to see a series of Thor patches in the coming weeks based on this one patch. Anyway, this is a big fat patch that I really like to play.
 Yet Another Brecker Lead - one from the master! I never get tired of watching the Brecker video above. Michael Brecker was an undisputed master of the EWI and did a lot of innovative things with the instrument. I thought I would attempt to recreate the lead sound (that comes in around 2:30) from this video using just Thor. I think I got around 90% there. Hope you dig it. This patch has a hint of a muted trumpet (courtesy of the wavetable oscillator) and you can control the balance of this and the synthy sound with Rotary 1.
 I'm working on a new project, and am creating a bunch of fairly standard Oberheim style patches. Here is one of them - well, actually a work in progress. It uses the State Variable filter in Thor to give it that Oberheim sound.
 This is a classic 'synvox' sound like you might hear in one of those 80's electronic bands. I used to love this sound when I was young. Anyway, this sounds great layered behind another sound - it really adds some depth and breathiness to the sound. Just put it in a Combinator with another sound and mix it in accordingly, or play it stand - alone.
A long standing bug affecting Breath Control in Thor has been fixed!  The BugAn alert reader informed me of a strange 'ripping' or 'staticy' sound he was hearing in some Thor patches. Intrigued, I was able to isolate the problem and replicate it. Interestingly enough, he was right! When you map Breath to, really anything, in Thor there was a strange 'stepping' sound. Now, this was only noticeble if the filter cutoff was low and the gain was cranked pretty high, but it was there nonetheless. Not only that, it carried over to Breath routed to the CV outs in Thor (so anything controlled with the output CV sounded stepped as well). Also, when the same breath control data was remapped to mod wheel it went away, and the transitions were smooth. As far as I could tell, this bug goes all the way back to Reason 4. The FixWell, it took some convincing, but the Props have fixed this in 5.0.1! The audio quality of Breath control in Thor is now greatly improved! From the release notes: "Automation of aftertouch, expression and breath are now smoothed in Thor." Here are some before and after examples of what this sounded like. You can hear the stepping in this sample from Reason 5.0.0, it almost sounds like a geiger counter in the background:
This one is perfectly smooth (Reason 5.0.1), the way it should be:
Here is the patch I used to test this, so you can try it out on your own system if you haven't yet downloaded the update. You'll have to turn up the volume, and it works best when you use low breath values. Translation - blow very softly into your wind controller of choice.
This is reason #76 why I love this software. The Props actually listen to their customers and fix problems as they arise.
My recommendation: If you care about your sound (and who doesn't?) upgrade to Reason 5.0.1 and/or Record 1.5.1. Not only do you get this fix, but you get all the other various fixes that go along with this maintenance release. Thanks, Props, for making Reason work even better with wind controllers!  I thought of doing something silly for Thanksgiving, like a super hi tech turkey gobble, but then I came to my senses. I'll be sharing some (old fashioned? vintage? classic?) synth sounds that I'm creating for a project I'm working on. This is an Oberheim style trumpet-y sound. Actually, it doesn't sound like a trumpet at all, but in the higher register it kind of reminded me of one, so there you go. Luckily, the State Variable filter in Thor is modeled after the Oberheim filters, so you can get an Oberheim style sound pretty easily. Just remember - State Variable = OB, Low Pass Ladder = Moog. You can have a lot of fun with this patch just by changing the oscillator waveforms around. (I'll be posting regular mp3 files along with the flash enabled player for our iPhone and iPad friends).
There are many sonic possibilities in the Wavetable oscillator in Thor. For us wind controller players, it offers some dynamic sounds when combined with Breath. We'll create a new sound from scratch in this tutorial. First, you have to know what the Wavetable oscillator is and what it does. For more than you ever wanted to know about the Wavetable oscillator, I direct you to Propellerheads excellent tutorial series 'Discovering Reason'. Read these, first: Thor Demystified 11: The Wavetable oscillator part 1 Thor Demystified 12: The Wavetable oscillator part 2 Wavetable oscillator - what is it? The Wavetable oscillator is a sound source with a bunch of waveforms you can select. Each waveform is actually a whole bunch of waveforms stuck together one after another. You use the Position knob to select which waveform out of the group to hear. That's about it, and not really that interesting until you start to sweep through the waves (or table, get it?), using an envelope, such as Mod Env, Global Env, or LFO such as LFO1 or LFO2 in Thor. You can learn a whole lot about sweeping through the waves in the links above, so I won't get that into it too much. Today we are going to concentrate on sweeping through the waves using Breath. This lets us control the actual tone of the sound using Breath, which I think goes a little beyond using a filter, because we can completely alter the tonal characteristics of the sound. So let's get started.  The band I'm in has an arrangement of 'When I Fall in Love' that has the trumpet player playing about three choruses straight at a dirge-like tempo. To help him out, we decided I could play a chorus on EWI. Keeping with my explorations of the Wavetable Oscillator in Thor, this is what I came up with. It's a combination of the 'Multi Sax' and 'Multi Trombone' waveforms that use breath to sweep between the different waveforms in each wave table to give something a little more interesting than just a straight saw tooth sound. I also use a fixed square wave in there which comes out in the soft sections. Enjoy.
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