Redrum: Mixing up styles and kits

So at this point, you've started to get a solid feel for how to put a beat together. The goal for today is to get really familiar with the different drum kits available in Reason and to start to see how you can use different types of sounds to make different styles of beats.

Your assignment today is to make three different drum beats in the following styles:

- Hard (think hip-hop, slaps, or rock) - try looking in Abstract HipHop, Electronic, Hardcore, Hip Hop, Heavy, or Rock folders. Glitch also has some cool sounds.
- Danceable (think techno or club music - like 94.9 style) - try looking in Electronic, House, RnB or Techno.
- Smooth (think jazzy or R&B) - try Brush Kits, Dub Kits, or Tight Kits

1. Open Reason and create a new session (File>New)
2. Create three Redrum drum machines.
3. Load a different drum kit into each one
4. Make a different beat on each Redrum. (Remember that you can turn each Redrum on/off by clicking on the Run button.)


Couple things to think about:

• What kinds of sounds do you hear in different styles of music? Do you hear booming bass in jazz?
  
• A tempo that is good for one style of beat might not be good for another style. Try changing the tempo when you work with each Redrum. Which is usually faster, a hip hop song or a dance song?
• Try pressing the Shuffle button and see how that affects the feel of the beat.
  

Quiz Review: 8/25-8/29

Here are the most important things we talked about this week. Be sure that you know about them before we take our Friday quiz. If you're not sure, ask the instructor...

Vocabulary Terms
Beats
Bars
Tempo
Notes
Mixer

Different types of notes

• How do you count them?
• How many 16th notes fit into a quarter note?
  

Parts of the Drum Kit

• What are the three most important pieces?
  
• What beats do you usually hear the snare/clap on? What about the bass drum?
  

Reason

• How do you create a Redrum drum machine?
• What button do you press to work with a certain sound?
  
• How do you load different drum kits into the Redrum?
  

Making a beat with 2 different patterns

1. Open Reason
2. If you don't see a mixer: go to the CREATE menu and select a Mixer 14:2
3. Set Tempo to 82 bpm
4. CREATE: Redrum Drum Machine
5. Click on the Folder Icon in the bottom left hand corner of the Redrum.
6. From there click on the Reason Factory Sound Bank:Redrum Drum Kits:RnB Kits: RnB Kit 01
7. Push SELECT on Sound 2 (Sd_SupaDu). Click on Boxes 5 and 13
8. Push SELECT on Sound 1 (Bd_SupaDu). Click on Boxes 1,2,4,7,8,10,11,15 and 16
9. Push SELECT on Sound 8 (HH2_SupaD). Click on all the boxes!
10. Push SELECT on Sound 4 (Sh_SupaDu). Click on Boxes 3,7,11, and 15.
11. Now Click on Pattern 2 and create your own beat with a Clap or Snare, Bass Drum, Hi Hat, and One other sound.
12. Remember! start with a Clap (clp) or Snare (sn) on boxes 5 and 13!
13. And put your Bass Drum on 1 and a few other boxes.
14. Put your Hi Hat (HH) anywhere.
15. Put your Other Sound anywhere.
16. SAVE YOUR BEAT!!!!!!!

Parts of the Drum Kit

So now we've started to get into making our own beats it's important to understand a little bit about what the different sounds are and what role they play in making a drum beat.

Take a look at the picture of a standard drum kit below:

Now, out of all the different parts, the three most important ones are:

1. the Snare
2. the Bass Drum (aka "Kick")
3. the Hi Hat

These three instruments hold down the core of the beat, while all the others just add extra excitement at certain times. In general...

The Snare holds the beat steady. That's why it usually hits steadily on the 2 and the 4. In hip hop, a clap or snap can serve the same purpose.

The Bass Drum defines the rhythm and tells you when to nod your head! That's why you almost always hear the Bass on the first beat of the bar ("the 1")

The Hi Hat accents the rhythm and adds flavor to the overall feel of the beat. One important thing to know about the Hi Hat is that it can open and close. When it's closed, it makes a nice, tight sound ("tick, tick, tick"). When it's open, it makes a loud ringing sound ("TSHH!")

Let's take a look at this video of a guy playing the drums. Pay attention to which instruments he's hitting and what kinds of sounds they make. Try to count along with him (1,2,3,4) as he plays, remember: the snare hits on the 2 and the 4!

click here

Now that we know something about how real drums are played, we can use this information to put together our own beats using the Redrum...

Create a beat with the Redrum.

Click this link to create a beat using the Redrum drum machine in Reason.

Notes, notes, notes

So far, we have learned how there are (typically) 4 beats to a bar. Now lets take this a step further and talk about notes.

Notes are symbols that tell you how long to hold a musical sound.

Here is a chart that shows you different kinds of notes:


What you are looking at is one bar and the number of each type of note that will fit into one bar.

Quick review: how many beats fit into one bar? OK, so which kind of note do you think is equal to one beat?

So, then if you can count quarter notes as "1, 2, 3, 4", how do you think you can count eighth notes?

Try, "1 and, 2 and, 3 and, 4 and"

How about 16th notes? It's kind of weird, but this is what most people do:

"1 -e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a"

Feeling lost? Don't worry about it. Here's the main thing you need to understand right now:

Quarter notes happen on the beat (1,2,3,4) and you can squeeze four 16th notes into each quarter note.

With that in mind, take another look at the note chart and pay attention to where the quarter notes line up with the sixteenth notes:

Now let's see what that means for making a beat in Reason...

Week 1 Vocabulary

Here are some terms that we need to start getting familiar with:

Beat - a unit of counting musical time.

Bar - a group of beats (usually four).

Tempo - the speed of a piece of music.

Welcome to Music Production!

Welcome to the fall term of Music Production at John O'Connell!

I hope you had a great summer and are ready to put your energy into making some music. In this class, we're going to learn all about how to make music using the software program, Reason.

Whether you've got years of musical experience, or this is your first time playing a note, there are tons of cool things that you can do with Reason, from making slaps to composing a symphony. It's all just how you use the tools. Where you take it is up to you...