Line6 has asked me to put together a refill for their “Expand Your Reason Rack” promotional offer which features free Reason 4 Refills. Originally a collection of Thor patches was planned, but I decided to focus on a theme, specifically, Thor’s Step Sequencer. The result is a motley collection of sounds and effects patches. Some of the patches are based on previous releases, however, most are completely new sounds. For more information on downloading the patch library, please visit the Line6 Expand Your Reason Rack Page - Link Removed 3/2009

Peff 033 - Thor Step Sequencer Systems Refill

The Thor Polysonic Synthesizer features a step sequencer that offers more features and versatility than Reason’s Matrix Pattern Sequencer. The patches in this refill demonstrate a variety of applications that range from the traditional note/gate pattern source, filter and amplifier gating systems, to complex modulation routings for special effects. Included in the Refill are 16 complete Thor synthesizer patchs, four Combinator Instruments that implement the Thor step sequencer, and two Combinator effects patches that rely on the Thor sequences. 50 pre-programmed step sequences are also included - these are configured in a Combinator to drive a sound from a secondary Thor synthesizer. Also, a granular synthesis Combinator is included with grain lookup driven by a Thor step sequencer.

Thor Sequence Patch List & Descriptions

Basic Thor Step Sequence.thor – A repeating tempo synchronous pattern that generates a monophonic synth riff.

Analog Mono Bass.thor – A repeating 1 measure sequence that triggers a monophonic analog square wave bass.

Ebba Pad.thor - A polyphonic ethereal pad sound with rhythmic overtones modulated by a repeating sequencer pattern.

Filtered Snare Roll.thor – A one-shot step sequence that generates a snare drum roll.

FM Glitch Pattern.thor - This polyphonic instrument uses a 32-step pendulum pattern to modulate chorus parameters to generate audio artifacts.

Gated Table Harmonics.thor – A gated organ type of sound that relies on a repeating step sequence to trigger envelopes in a rhythmic pattern.

Metronome.thor – A four-measure repeating step sequence that generates metronome clicks.

One Finger Choral Pad.thor – One Shot step sequence that triggers a series of notes to emit a chord.

Palme Tabel.thor – A polyphonic digital pad sound based on wavetable oscillators being modulated by a repeating step sequence.

Reason4.thor - A one shot sequence that modulates formant filters to make Thor say “Reason”. Based on the “I Am Thor” patch, the step sequence was modified to change the formant filter modulations.

Revenge Filters.thor – A true stereo polyphonic synth stab sound that is gated and modulated by a repeating step sequence pattern. The filter modulation patterns for the left and right channels are different to create a moving stereo sound.

Sine World.thor – a 13 step pendulum sequence generates a series of triplet events that modulate three sine wave oscillators to create a pattern driven FM bell tone.

Sine World [Deep].thor – similar to the previous patch in tone, however the step sequence rate is randomized generating unpredictable more organic results.

Thor Kick Snare & Hats.thor – Various parameters of the step sequencer are used to trigger levels and filters to create a rhythmic drum loop.

Thor Kick Snare & Hats Formant.thor – This sequence is similar to the previous patch and features the addition of a formant filter modulated by the step sequencer.

Verity Pad.thor – This is a polyphonic pad sound that uses the step sequencer to modulate filter and wavetable parameters to generate subtle rhythmic elements.

Thor Pattern Combinator

Included in the P033 Refill are 50 Thor Step-Sequence patches. These have no sound properties programmed and are only patterns. Naturally, you can program your own patches based on the step sequences, however these are designed to work in conjunction with another Thor synthesizer wrapped in a combinator. The step-sequencer is connected via cv cables to the second instance of Thor which has a synth patch loaded. The combinator filters out MIDI events and directs them only to the pattern sequencer which in turn sends note and gate cv impulses to the sound module.

With this configuration, you can quickly scan through different combinations of step-sequences and sounds. The pattern patches are saved in a unique directory, so by simply clicking on the patch browse arrows, you can scroll through different patterns. Only one synth patch assigned to the second Thor, so you must manually select patches. Mono lead types of sounds will work best since this configuration is monophonic in nature.

The patterns are named with a dual number system. The first two digit number indicates the number of steps while the second number is a patch number. For example, TPS 08-006 has eight steps, while TPS 16-001 is a 16 step pattern. These patches are assigned with MIDI trigger and transposition enabled, so when a key is received, the sequencer will trigger and the sequence will be transposed relative to the incoming note value.

Sequence Performance Combi

This Combinator patch contains four Thor sequenced patches: A synth riff, a bass line, a drum loop, and a chord generator/pad. The four synths are driven by a RPG-8 arpeggiator which is set to 1 bar steps. When a note is received, the RPG-8 triggers the step sequencers to start and all four devices will play a musical loop until the Hold Sequence button is disabled and a note off message is received.

Why run this through an arpeggiator? The answer is that this is designed to be a real-time performance/arrangement patch. Holding down several different keys will initiate an arpeggiator sequence that changes each measure. In turn this transposes the sequencer patterns every measure. The RPG-8 is set to “Manual” mode so the transpositions will follow the order of the notes received.

For example, play the following series of notes into the patch: C, D, G, F The subsequent result will be a four measure pattern that follows the pattern of C, D, G, and finally F. With this setup, you can quickly generate a chord progression phrase that loops until a new progression is received. You can switch to another device and play over the repeating loop or tweak parameters of the individual patches to create a performance.

Sequence Performance Combi Controls

Rotary 1 - 4 These control the individual levels of the sound modules.

Free Mode switches the arpeggiator off and note transposition is immediately passed through into each Thor sequence. With this feature off, the transposition only occurs at the beginning of each measure.

Hold Sequence will latch the incoming key sequence until a new sequence is received. Disabling this button will disable the latch and the sequence will stop playing when an incoming note is released.

Granular Sampler System

Keeping in line with the theme of this refill, I’ve taken the granular synthesis patch seen in the Computer Music Magazine article and modified it with a Thor Step Sequencer to drive the sample start position. This is a cool little modification since you can program the scan behavior of the patch. For those of you who have not seen the article, this patch uses the NN-19 as a tone generator. A series of pulses from an LFO trigger the sample to playback at a very high rate to the point where voice stealing shortens the duration of the sample to a small burst. Manipulation of the sample start parameter mimics the effect of scrolling through small segments of the sample - also referred to as grains. The sample start parameter is then modulated by an external cv source. In this particular patch, the source is switchable between the Malstrom Mod A, and the Thor Step Sequencer. There are 6 examples of these patches included in the Refill, and more are on the way.

The modulation sequences work in the same manner as the Thor Pattern Combinator. Click on the show devices button to open the combi rack and find the second Thor synthesizer named “Thor Pattern Modulator” - abbreviated as “THOR P_LATOR”. Change the pattern by clicking on the patch browse buttons, or selecting a different pattern from the contextual menu. The modulation pattern is programmed on the “Curve 1″ parameter, so if you want to create your own patterns, make sure the edit knob is assigned to this setting.

Granular Sampler System Controls

Sample Start - This rotary is the key to the effect of the Granular Sampler System. Normally it should remain at zero. You can tweak this, but remember that the grain modulations are scaled from the initial value of this knob.

Filter Freq - The audio signal from the patch is routed through a Thor Filter, and this controls the cutoff frequency. Filter Resonance is modulated by the Mod Wheel

Motion Rate - This control alters the modulation rate of both the Thor sequencer and Malstrom Modulator A in both free and tempo sync modes.

Window Rate - This controls the rate of pulses triggering the NN-19. Different harmonics can be generated by adjusting this parameter to higher values.

Mod A/Thor PTN - Switches the motion modulation source between the Malstrom Modulator A and the Thor Step Sequencer.

Low / Band Pass - Switches the filter type between a Low Pass or Band Pass filter.

Motion Sync - Switches the Malstrom and Thor Step Sequencer to tempo sync mode.

Stereo Windows - This changes the spread parameter on the NN-19. As each pulse is received, the output is panned to the opposite channel creating a stereo effect.

Modifying the Granular Sampler System

As a disclaimer, this isn’t a full featured granular synth system that you might find with other products. It is limited to one voice, and it takes a bit of tweaking to get all of the settings right, and the region of sample data is limited to the range of the sample start modulation. With that said, there is the one cool aspect of this patch: you can load your own samples into it.

The NN-19 Sampler is located at the top of the combinator sub-rack. Simply click on the sample browser and navigate to an audio file to load it into the patch. As previously mentioned, there is a limitation with the sample start control, so long samples and extremely short samples do not work well. Since this is a highly experimental patch to begin with, unexpected results are part of the magic.

Another modification is to change the modulation sources to one-shot mode. This is useful for percussion sounds. With the Thor step sequence, use the forward or reverse modulation patterns and switch the sequencer to 1 shot mode. On the Malstrom Modulator A, enable one-shot mode and change the curve to type 11 for a reverse position modulation or type 12 for a forward sweep.

My next refill library, I will have a whole array of different granular combi setups.

Don Larsen, retired pro baseball player, is noted in the record books for being the only pitcher to throw a no-hitter in a World Series. As the starting pitcher on the NY Yankees roster, Don pitched his “Perfect Game” against the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 8, 1956. You can read a bit more about Don and his historical game on Wikipedia. Anyhoo, Don is an old family friend and I have some great childhood memories of parties that my father organized with Don.

Recently, Don and his wife were on one of his sports memorabilia tours, and stopped by to pay us a visit. They told me that they had a surprise for me but wouldn’t say anything specific. I thought it might be some photos they wanted digitized, but to my surprise, they brought a complete set of tapes from the radio broadcast of his world series game! Along with the tapes are a set of about thirty 12″ acetates, and an old 16mm reel of film. Besides the recording of the complete game, there’s a reel of interviews from the locker room after the game. Apparently no one else has a copy of this, and it hasn’t been heard since it originally aired in 1956.

I’ve been asked to take on the project of transferring these 50-year-old tapes to a digital format for archival purposes and possibly develop a product for release. The details of copyrights and such have yet to be discussed, but it’s a cool project for the historical aspect alone. I haven’t touched the tapes yet. I’m seeking out the advice of experts who can analyze their condition and possibly clean and restore the moldy reels. let’s hope they will playback - fingers crossed!

Brian Nottingham sent me some excel spreadsheets that contain the file names of every patch in the Reason 4.0 Factory Soundbank. One of these spreadsheets even includes comments and descriptions. This was a massive undertaking - a data entry marathon of sorts, and Brian is generously offering the list to the Reason community. Many Thanks!

Reason 4.0 Factory Sound Bank Patch List

The Patchlist Project is intended to help Reason owners work more efficiently
with regards to quick access to information about the available sounds contained
in the extensive Factory Soundbank of Reason 4.

The extensive range of patches (nearly 3000 not counting the many REX files)
makes it easy to get lost in the “rabbit hole” of endless auditioning. Having a full
patchlist with descriptions helps provide a ready “go to” document whereby you
can quickly scan and jump to a sound that may have the qualities you are looking
for, without having to load and reload the sound, especially if you forget to add it
to your Reason Favorites list within the Reason Browser.

There are two formats of the lists:
BLANK lists, where the user can personalize the comments/favorites,
DESCRIBED lists, where this user carefully auditioned and analyzed each patch with personal interpretation.

It may prove useful to see the brief descriptions of the nature of each patch.
There only difference in the two “printer version” files is that each page gets a
header row. The two files that do not have “printer version” in the filename have
header rows where appropriate, but not specific to page breaks.

Download Brian Nottingham’s Reason Patchlist files

The Ulysses project with Goh has been on hold until we can get back into Tiny Telephone, so he decided to print a new run of his first album “Daylight Savings”. Despite being swamped with another major project, I took on the responsibility of trying to deal with the layout for the production run. The tricky part of this was that it needed to go out by the end of February in order for the product to arrive for his gig on March 18th. This was somewhat important since it was a party for the SF Asian American Film Festival, and there were a lot of people planning to attend.

Nathalie Roland developed the artwork, and my cousin, Tamiko who is very talented with print jobs, offered some color suggestions to balance with Nathalie’s work. The February Deadline came around and it looked like the layout would be finished in time.

But… realized that Goh didn’t have anyone finalize the CD master. So I had half a day to work on mastering the CD. We had remastered his album a couple of years ago, and the Waveburner project was saved on my workstation. The problem was that a few bonus tracks needed to be added and balanced. I was under the gun to get the master finished, and didn’t have enough time to polish things - so i kinda effed up the final.

So on March 18th, the day of the gig, the CDs arrived about 3 hours before the show - just in the nick of time! I was happy that the finished product didn’t look like purple hell, but I was still worried about the audio. People were buying the CD at the show, and we had not even taken a test listen to make sure the replication was free of errors!

I took a listen and it’s not bad. The music is strong enough that people will forgive the inconsistent mastering. That level jump on the bonus track is obvious, but not obnoxious.

Reason 4.0’s ReGroove Mixer is an amazing way to experiment with note timing and exploring rhythmic patterns. It’s no secret that the Akai MPC series of drum machines are legendary for their feel and some even speculate that the vintage devices have more character than the new ones. Included with the Reason 4.0 Factory Soundbank are a set of MPC60 groove templates, and even the new shuffle control features settings that emulate MPC swing patterns. The MPC 3000 groove files might seem a bit redundant, but they do have a unique character.

Many years ago I created a file of MPC 3000 grooves which were very popular on this site, and with the introduction of the Reason 4.0 ReGroove mixer, I planned to revisit this project with a set of groove templates. Originally i tried importing the old files, but I encountered some problems. Recently I decided to re-record the beats and reanalyze them for groove extraction. These groove patterns are four measures long with inconsistent timings (see the previous posting: MPC Groove Template Tutorial. The original REX files are also included in the refill along with development files I used to create the set.

Included with this refill are MIDI file extractions which are 1 measure groove templates. These are slightly different and offer a different groove than the ReCycle based groove templates.

I’m still having some problems with the templates. Namely the 74% and 75% swings are not working properly, but everything up to that point works great. For now this is merely a beta version of the patches until I figure out the problem.

Download Peff 032 - MPC 3000 Groove Templates 19Mb zip archive. <– link fixed!

The Computer Music Reason 4 special edition is out and apparently available in North America. I contributed a couple of articles to this issue including one version of the granular effect combinator patch. Many thanks to Jeff Bradley, who helped with the REX loop programming article.

You can find more information on the CM site at the following link:
http://www.computermusic.co.uk/page/computermusic?entry=reason_4_the_unofficial_guide

I’ve been up in San Francisco for a couple of days working on the mixdowns of Goh’s album - which is now titled “Ulysses”. We’ve been at Tiny Telephone Studios where this project has taken an interesting twist. We’ve decided to bounce a majority of the tracks back to 24 Track tape for mixdown. Tiny Telephone specializes in full analog recording with a beautiful Studer and a Neve desk. Unfortunately this posed a potential problem for us: their pro tools system is equally as antiquated and we would be at the mercy of bouncing the hangar session (which were recorded through apogees) through the crappy mix 24 converters going to tape.

The day before we went in, I was scrambling to find someone who could either lend or rent out a set of decent converters that we could use instead of the old 888 i/0s. Through some amazing luck, I was referred to Steven Jarvis of Area51 Mastering who had 24 channels of Genex converters that I was able to rent for a few days! Steve met us at the session and even teched the system to make sure everything was clocked properly and working. It took ages to get everything going, but finally we were running and managed to transfer most of the album to tape.

We were working with Scott Solter who took the tracks and started shaping the mix into something completely different than what we originally expected - in a great way. The tape mixes had such a different feel from pro tools renders, and Scott gave us a “Bro Bounce” to 1/2″ 2 track which just sounded amazing.

Ulysses seems like an apt title for this project. The production has been a epic tale taking us all over the place and meeting bizarre freaks who still align heads and splice tape. We will be back in March or April to finish things up - hopefully. The next adventure will be finding someone who will master this project.

My NAMM report is still on hold until I can finish up a few outstanding projects. I wasn’t in the best of spirits during the week leading up to annual Music Manufacturers Convention, but I’m certainly glad I went. The first day there was not without a bit of drama, but I learned a very valuable lesson: Never use Hotels.com when you know rooms will be scarce. Basically they took my deposit and did not verify that the hotel would honor the reservation. We were stuck in Anaheim without a place to stay because Hotels.com screwed us. I will never use that service again.

Fortunately we managed to find a place about a mile from the Convention Center, but I didn’t sleep well (if at all). Josh and I were on at 10:30 AM on the first day of the show, so no one was really there to see how tired I was. Unfortunately, the Propellerheads Press Person, Sara, cornered me into doing a little Thor demonstration for the guys at Sonic State. So feel free to have a look at me somnambula-thoring.

Sonic State Close Up on Thor Polysonic Synthesizer

uhh…

I did manage to see a few cool things at the show, and hope to get the photos and reports posted soon. I’m still working on this indie-folk-yacht rock album and will hopefully finish the mixdowns this week!

The annual NAMM convention is going to be a bit different for me this year. I’m slated to present at the Propellerheads booth along with Josh Mobley (Neoverse). We’re going to have a little live demonstration of MPR4. I’ve also put together a little Live PA remix of Narrow Escape which incorporates synth patches and combinators that I’ve made for Reason 4.0. The entire song file is setup to be manipulated in Real-Time from a control surface, making it pretty fun to play with and tweak in a performance. I just need to work on my dance moves now…

Some of these patches, which include a filterbank and granular sampler, will become available pretty soon. The filterbank appears in the January Issue of Electronic Musician:

http://emusician.com/tutorials/steal_thunder/

There’s a link to download the example files and the combinator patch on the EM site. Also featured are some workflow tips with the new sequencer, RPG-8, and Regroove Mixer:

http://emusician.com/tutorials/all_more_reason/

I’ve received a lot of emails about the granular patch, and there’s some good news regarding this one. Future Publishing commissioned me to do a tutorial on the combinator, and this will be coming out in one of their Computer Music Reason special issues in the near future. Keep an eye out for that one.

Disclaimer: The one downside of having to present at NAMM, is that I may not have the time (or energy) do do my annual show report. If things Anyone attending, please come by and say “hello”. We go on first at 10:30 AM on Thursday, and you can check the schedule for our other appearance times on the Propellerhead Software website

Goh Nakamura and I have been back in the studio to do a few mixdowns of his new album. After weeks of editing and some last minute rerecording of his songs, we made it back to the Hangar. We have some drum tracks from a session recorded earlier in the year. The drums were ok, but lacked something. While in the shower this morning, I thought about a crazy idea of reamping the old tracks, and rerecording them through the same mic setup employed during our tracking session: D12, D19, and Coles and RCA Ribbons.

I mentioned this idea to Bryce, who came up with a crazy setup using an ampeg and a genelec. We setup a little submix going out to the amps and set up the microphones to capture some of the great room sound at the Hangar. The result was really cool, and gave the drums some life that was lost from being recorded in a small room.

When I get the time, I’m going to give this a try with sampled drums to see what happens. This might make for an interesting drum machine / natural ambience refill.

The Music Production with Reason 4.0 DVD has been available for about a month now directly from Groovebox Music’s website, but it’s just now making it into stores… namely the Prop Shop! This should make it easier to obtain the boxed version for people in Europe! Naturally if you don’t want to wait, the tutorial is available as a digital download directly from the publisher. I’m not sure who is carrying the boxed version here in the US, but google around for the title to find the best deals.

I have a couple of articles published in the January 2008 issue of Electronic Musician Magazine. One article discusses some of the important keyboard commands that make using the new sequencer more efficient. Some important notes about effectively using the ReGroove Mixer, and some cool RPG-8 tricks. The other article is a sound design tutorial that shows some off the features of Combinator 2 and using Thor as a filter device. I’m not sure if these will be available online, but I’ll certainly post a link up if they are made available digitally.