I have been working with Reason for about a year now and let me just say this about it - Reason is a desktop music revolution. It is destined to change the way we think about software synthesis, not only because of the elegance in which it was implemented, but because of the sheer power and versatility it gives us in getting what's in our heads coming out of the speakers. Reason is like having a studio full of fully functional samplers, drum machines, mixers, synths, effects units and other esoteric audio gear - at a fraction of what these pieces would normally cost you as hardware. It is absolutely amazing to me what Propellerheads has created for us - this is serious stuff and I'm going to tell you why. You've probably read about 100 different 'reviews' on Reason already and have already formed an opinion about it. I can almost hear you..."it's for making cheesy dance music - it's not truly 'professional'...or maybe "this things GREAT, but it will never replace hardware."...or possibly "i LOVE Reason - it's fabulous for making cheesy dance tunes!". Let me go out on a limb here, and say that Reason goes FAR beyond dance tunes (in fact, if I hear another one, I think I'm going to puke!). My mission is to give you some food for thought about what Reason REALLY can do, if you take the time to learn it properly. Don't try to classify it without trying out some of the techniques I'm going to tell you about. I'm going to assume you've already got a decent grasp of what Reason is about - it's devices and their functions. For my first look at Reason, I'll concentrate on some of the drum pattern tricks I used, some of which you can hear on certain songs from Artemis' 'Undone'.

Let me start with a little personal story. I absolutely love making beats using step sequencers - you know, like the ones on TR-808/909's, etc. I was working on production for Artemis (whose debut CD will be available shortly...) and was getting really frustrated with the beats I was getting using LM4 and my JV-1080 - the LM4 was very finicky and sometimes just wouldn't work and the 1080's drum sounds were, well, boring. So I was on the hunt for a sampler/drum machine that included a step sequencer - I needed something that would allow me to use my own samples, as I like to program alot of my own sounds. After about a month of pondering, reviewing and testing, I settled on the Korg Electribe S. I liked the unit - it had some great features and sounded good, but after a couple weeks I had a pretty big list of 'shortcomings' on it. Loading new samples into it was a royal pain in the ass, as was quite a few of the menu functions. In a unit at this price, I would have expected a little more elegance in it's functionality. That's Korg for ya', though. About a month after getting the Electribe, my copy of Reason came in - 2 hours later, the Electribe was on Ebay. Why, you ask? Because the Redrum is everything the Electribe is and then some. I'm not kidding here - not only did it do virtually everything the Electribe could do (minus the 'hands-on' knobs and buttons - more of which I'll get to later...), but it did it in a way that was much faster and more intuitive. Merely the fact that, in Reason, you can select any sound in a matter of seconds was reason enough to ditch the Electribe. . Those sounds can be anything in AIFF or WAV file format and you can have up to 8 of them in each instance of Redrum. Top that off with the fact that each Redrum 'channel' has controls for pitch, level, length, panning, 2 effects sends and velocity modulation for length. Several channels also offer velocity modulation with either a tone, sample start or additional pitch/bend. ALL of these control are easily and quickly automatable!

Bye, bye Electribe!

Some other cool things about the Redrum - saving and storing entire 'kits' or 'patches' is very simple - everything is saved just the way you have it whenever you save your song. You can also save the specific Redrum kit so that you can quickly pull it out for use in another song. I should also take a moment to talk about the step sequencer in Redrum, which quite nice - it allows you to determine the number of steps in each sequence (up to 64), as well as the note division for each step going from half notes on up to 128th notes, including 1/8th and 1/16th note triplets. There are also storage areas for 4 banks of 8 sequences - very cool for doing quick variations on a particular groove. There are a multitude of ways of making use of these functions - some of which include:

1. Polyrhythmic grooves - create 2 or more Redrums and set their number of steps differently. You'll get a continuous changing of the rhythm feel, especially if you use one of them to keep the main groove and use the other to add 'spice' to it. This can also be used to create the feel of odd time signatures.
2. Using 2 or more Redrums, you can get break your grooves down to their beat division and do things like triplet drum fills agains a straight 1/8th or 1/16th note beat.

Remember - you can create as many of any of the devices in Reason as you care to, up to the processing capability of your computer, so if you want to have 10 Redrums going simultaneously - go for it! Also keep in mind that any of the drum sounds in Redrum can be triggered via MIDI and recorded in Reasons sequencer - great for doing single hits or beats that defy a particular beat division, or just plain because you LIKE to do it that way.

There are many, many more reasons to dig Redrum - let these be your starting point. With a little patience and ingenuity, you'll be amazed at how un-drummachine-like your grooves will be. ONE more thing, for those that like the 'hands-on' approach - Reason has a function that will allow you to quickly as easily map any incoming midi continuous controller data to any parameter. It's as easy as right clicking on the parameter you want to control and then selecting 'Edit Midi Remote Mapping', which opens up a dialog box that will let you map the midi controller of your choice to that parameter - there's even a 'Learn' command for your convenience. Cool, huh!