Drum Samples with Redrum
Propellerheads have had their flagship drum samples manipulator, Redrum, included in the last few versions of Reason, and it’s been a hit in the music production universe. Anybody using Reason will attest to this.
There are ten drum channels in one instance of Redrum, each one with multiple modulation filters and options, such as velocity and panning. Along with panning, another regular is the level rotary knob, which simply controls the level or volume. You can mix and match the volume of all ten drum samples until you have a good internal balance. The master level then controls the volume of every drum sound inside Redrum as it pertains to the global project as a whole. What a great way to mix micro and macro with such ease, huh?
Looking at the channel strips available in Redrum, we can see that some knobs and levels are more self-explanatory than certain others. One of the more straightforward controls is the length. What does the length control pertain to? It affects the length of any of the drum samples. If you find that one of the hi-hats has an unnecessary reverb tail, you can cut it off by lowering the length (turn the knob to the left). This will help you sculpt samples creatively.
Going a bit further in our analysis, we’re presented with the Pan control. This really speaks for itself; it pans the drum samples! In an early mixing stage, you can organize your drums as they pertain to panning – and quite easily so. Another great feature of Redrum is that everything is on the same screen. Have you ever gotten frustrated going through twenty different menus looking for something? Not with Redrum – it’s all on the same page. While it can be confusing to some people that have not used it extensively, it quickly becomes a necessity – something you won’t be able to forget when trying different programs out in the future.
You might think that picking out ten different drum samples by yourself every time will be a tiresome task, you could be right. It all really depends on the person and how much patience you have at that point in time. But relax! There is something that will help you. Redrum comes with many pre-selected and pre-matched samples ready for your picking, and they are included in the factory Refills that are included with the sound libraries that comes with Reason. These samples have all been selected because they complement each other, so it’s unlikely that you’ll have to go looking much further.
At any point, there are sixteen button-type inputs at the bottom of the Redrum. This is where you can click in the drum samples you want, and while you can never see all patterns at the same time here, you can export the patterns to the main sequencer to keep track of them there. This is very close to the way things work in the real world, and Redrum (in fact, Reason in general) has a workflow that will prepare budding audio engineers and music producers for the hardware world very well.
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