The sequencer is the area in which you write your note composition for the song. From the Window menu, hit Detach Sequencer Window in order to have it moved to a separate window.
Now look at the menu options on the top of the sequencer...
The part in the left lets you select between Song mode, which gives you picture of the whole song, Edit Mode which gives you the ability to edit specific track of the song and Block in which you create patterns of blocks as an alternative way to organize your song.
The icons on the right (corresponding to the shortcut keys QWERTYU) are as follows: selection tool, drawing tool, erasing tool, cutting tool, muting tool, zooming tool and hand tool.
The Snap area is used to quantize the sequencer, letting you draw notes only in a certain grid. The quantization options are whole Bar, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/8T (T stands for triplets), 1/16, 1/16T, 1/32, 1/32T and 1/64. If you deselect the tick on the left, you deselect the quantization which lets you draw notes whenever you want, however long you want, but you need to be more precise when doing things that way.
On the left side of the sequencer you see small images of the devices created in your rack, displayed in the same order.
The M and S buttons right from Device unmutes and unsolos all of the devices below with a single click. Lanes creates new note lane for the selected device. The next icon gives you the ability to automate parameters of a device by drawing automation clips. The same can be done by going to the rack, right clicking on the parameter desired and selecting Edit Automation.
Automating the volume knob of Thor
The next icon creates lane for pattern devices (like Redrum and the Matrix).
Blocks is used to switch on and off block mode.
On the right side of each device small image we have Mute button, Solo button and Record Enable Parameter Automation button which gives you the ability to record the automation by twisting the knob of a device from the rack either with the mouse, or by your MIDI surface when the record button has been pressed. The one on the Transport section above gives you the ability to record automation of the tempo or the time signature (discussed below).
Then we have Record Enable buttons, which will enable recording of that track when played, after the Record button (not seen on the picture) below has been pressed. We have another mute button for each of the lanes, a small meter and Delete Note Lane option. You can select a groove from the drop down menu (info about the ReGroove mixer is described later in this post). By default, no groove is selected.
We have On button switching the automation options on and off.
Below you have navigation slider. It can be moved left and right by the mouse, when not at full length.
It`s size can be changed by hold-left-clicking on the handles in its left and right ends. This can also be done with the magnifying glass icons on the left. It`s position can also be changed from the arrows on the right.
To draw in the sequencer use the pencil tool. Then use the selection tool and double click on the drawn area. You will be directed to edit mode. There you can edit either the notes / percussion hits or the automation clips of the selected device. If you do this on a drawn pattern however, instead of edit mode, you will just get a pop-up window, giving you the ability to select which pattern you want to use.
When you draw a note, you can use the selection tool to move it, adjust it`s length or change it`s velocity (from the area below). When you click on the note, you can do the same operations by the menu above, featuring Position, Length, Note and Vel options for additional precision.
When you have multiple notes, you can use the standard SHIFT or CTRL selections
(when selecting a note, then while holding SHIFT selecting another one, we have all of those in between selected as well;
with CTRL left click we can select a multiplicity of specific notes).
If you have multiple notes selected, hold shift while drawing their velocities (with the drawing tool) in the Velocity area and only those notes will be affected, rather then all of them as happens by default. Holding CTRL and left click gives you the ability to slice the velocities with a straight line.
Instead of piano notes, percussive instruments have individual channels / slices selection option.
When you use Dr. OctoRex slices, you have additional control option which selects which of the loops receives the notes. More about OctoRex in a later tutorial...
The small arrow above returns you to song mode.
When you click on Block, you enter the blocks customizing mode:
There you have the Blocks selection drop down menu, with Block 1 selected by default. You can change the name of the block by double clicking on it. Below it, you draw your patterns the same way as you do it in song mode.
When you`re ready creating your blocks, return to Song mode and then add them by drawing line in the sequencer, right from blocks.
Clicking right after the block`s name (with the selection tool) gives you a drop down menu. From it you can change the current block. Below each block you can see ghost notes, corresponding to those drawn in the block. Drawing above those channels in Song mode overwrites the notes.
There are many benefits of using blocks - the main one is that each change you make in a particular block will affect all the other instances of that block used in the song automatically. You can make many creative rearrangements using combination of blocks, the mute tool and the razor tool. Even if you don`t like using blocks, you can draw them just for labeling certain parts of your song.
Blocks can be turned off from the big blue BLOCKS button in the menu below:
On the left you have meters for audio input and output, dsp (digital sound processing) work load meter for the CPU usage, background data / sample loading meter.
Next you have the metronome which is activated by clicking the CLICK button. If the PRE (precount) button is activated as well, when you hit the record button, the metronome will produce four hits before the recording starts (otherwise, it starts right away). The knob below controls the loudness of the metronome sound.
Next you have the TAP TEMPO option which changes the tempo of the song by applied tappings on the button - quicker or slower, depending on the speed of the taps.
Next you have bars counter, clock and then tempo and time signature selectors.
They are followed by the usual rewind. fast forward, stop (if you press it once it pauses the playing, if you press it again, it returns you to initial position of the song), play and record buttons.
dub (overdub) and alt (alternative take) buttons both automatically create new note lanes - the second one creates it muted. The Rec button below them allows you to quantize your notes to the grid during recording.
The amount of the effect can be tweaked from the Tools menu (window ->show tool window).
*there are 3840 ticks in a whole note
Lastly, you have the left and right separators precise location adjuster (clicking on the L or R buttons on the right moves the current position pointer to the separator in the sequencer).
The left and right separators are used for the isolation of small loops of the song (the loop button has to be activated first).
The separators can easily be moves by CTRL-Left Click for the left separator and ALT-Left Click for the right separator. The E (song end) separator is moved by SHIFT-Left Click.
To export a loop, go to File -> Export Loop as Audio File... This will export only the part between the left and the right separators.
To export the whole song, go to File -> Export Song as Audio File... This will export everything from the beginning of the song to the E separator.
If you export
the file to a standard CD quality bit depth of 16 bits (common), while
in the recording using higher resolution samples of 24 bits, the
conversion may cause subtle tedious gritting and noise effects due to
the limited dynamics rage of the lowered resolution.
The way you can mask it is by inserting a quiet background noise called dither.
Reason dithering options are pretty straight forward - the Dither option is ticked by default.
In the right of the bottom menu we have the ReGroove mixer button.
When we press it, we get the following mixer:
What it does is introducing a degree of offbeat to your otherwise perfectly quantized sounds, giving them more of a human, rather then programmed feel. The cool part is that this is controlled externally, without affecting the midi drawn in the sequencer, meaning that you can remove the groove if you don`t like it by turning it off, without the need to painfully rearrange all of the midi information back to normal.
We have 4 banks which have 8 mixer channels each.
We apply the groove from a specific channel to a device, from the top down menu mentioned already above.
Applying groove 1 from bank A to a Redrum device. With Commit to Groove option, we can rewrite the midi data in the sequencer permanently, based on the groove. It will then be switched off automatically.
The groove effects are most noticeable applied to hi hats / shakers hitting on 16-th notes.
On the left side of the mixer we have bank selector, anchor point (telling Reason from which bar the song starts, usually it is bar 1) and global shuffle knob (it affects every channel with global shuffle turned on).
Each mixer channel has On button, Edit menu which takes you to the tool window, giving you some options for further tweaking of the groove:
Then you have groove type selection browser, groove amount slider, shuffle knob for further randomization and slide knob, which makes the sounds hit earlier or later.
The pre align knob applies quantization before the groove effect.
This concludes the basic reason sequencer tutorial.
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