The samples will be automatically assigned across the pads in order, and you’re ready to start playing. Select all your new samples in the Browser and drag them to Kong’s first pad (Screen 3). Now create a Kong instrument, right-click it and choose Reset Device to clear any default pad assignments and groups. The Browser will automatically navigate to the Song Samples folder where you’ll see your samples. Reason will generate audio files for each of your clips, and embed them in your Reason Song file. The samples have been cut up and named, and can now be bounced to individual files.
Finally, choose Edit / Bounce / Bounce Clips to New Samples (Screen 2). (This will keep your sample sets together if you’re working on several recordings). Next select the clips you wish to use, choose Edit / Add Labels to Clips (also available from right-click) and type a suitable name.
You’ll need to disable Snap in the Sequencer Toolbar to be able to cut exactly where you want. To do this zoom in and use the Razor Tool (R key) to separate the audio clip at appropriate places until you have a clip for each sample section you want to trigger in Kong. Let’s start with the second sample as this is a fairly straightforward situation where you can simply cut up the recording by hand. The second is a chunk of a mixed record, from which I want to grab some specific sections as ‘feature’ samples. I’ve sampled two different passages: the first is a clean drum loop that I want to chop up to use all the individual hits, and maybe use the loop as well. As you can see in Screen 1 (above), I’ve renamed Sequencer Block 1 ‘Sampling’ and kept it clear. In fact I like to use an empty Block when sampling into a track, as this effectively hides and mutes everything else in the Sequencer timeline. You can record into any track, but I’d suggest keeping a spare audio track dedicated to scratch recording or sampling. We’re not going to use the ‘In Device Sampling’ feature to capture audio here, but we may use it for editing later on. The first step is to record or import the audio you’re interested in into an audio track in the Sequencer. (In case any Propellerheads are reading: a Slice to Pads sampling feature in Kong would be killer.) One thing to note is that Reason doesn’t have the option to slice across pads in real time as you can with the MPC, Maschine or Push, but it’s still pretty fast and simple.
There are some slightly different ways to approach this technique in Reason, but all are variations of the same workflow: record some audio into an audio track, divide it into sections, then make these sections available to play individually on a Kong Drum Designer instrument. Maschine and Push have since adopted very similar features, and it’s also easy to use this production trick in Reason.
Beat-chopping is also deeply ingrained in Akai’s MPC, where you can quickly record a sample and spread individual slices across the pads. Propellerhead of course have a long history with this concept, being the developers of ReCycle: the tool for doing this in the hardware sampler era. One of the classic techniques in hip-hop production is to sample a loop or section from a record, chop it into sections, then re-trigger the sections in new ways. We look at different ways to slice audio in Reason.
Propellerhead reason 7 samples audio sequencer full#
Two sections of sampled audio: one clean drum loop, and part of a full mix.