.70 A Holiday Gift from Reason Patch-A-Day

I'm going to take a week or two off from Reason Patch-A-Day to spend time with my family, recharge, and maybe even make a little music if I'm lucky. To try to make up for my absence I thought I'd provide you with a holiday gift: my collection of Solar Bells patches.

So, what exactly are the Solar Bells? Basically, they were my very first few attempts at creating my own sounds in Reason, and were named Solar Bells because I was stuck for ideas of what to call them, and eventually settled on just naming them after planets. When I ran out of planets to name my patches, I switched to moons, then started in on the various, proposed names for the planet that astronomers think is spinning out in the darkness past Pluto (Charon, Makemake, etc).

The unofficial requirement for being a Solar Bell is just that the patch has to be a lead or stab synth sound created using Reason's Subtractor. Given my love of the Subtractor, there will likely be follow-up patches posted here on Reason Patch-A-Day, but at this time, all of the Solar Bells that I've created over the years are provided below.

• Callisto ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Charon ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Europa ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Ganymede ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Helene ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Iapetus ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Io ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Jupiter ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Makemake ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Mars ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Mercury ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Mimas ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Naiad ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Neptune ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Planet X ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Pluto ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Pluto Bells ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Polydeuces ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Saturn ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Titan ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Uranus ( Subtractor Patch )
  
• Venus ( Subtractor Patch )
  

I hope you have a warm, restful and relaxing holiday season. Regardless of your faith, this is a time of year that all people seem to recognize as one to promote peace and kindness, so I hope you can encounter some of that in your daily travels, and take those ideals with you into the new year.

I'll be back soon. Thanks for reading.

.69 Atmosphere

As I mentioned way back in post #8, Simple Smear, most of my Combinators are fairly simple plug-ins, focused on very specific, often subtle effects. Even Getting Lo-Fi and Interesting, which have a more obvious sonic character, are intended to play only a small piece of an overall sound, "stacked" with other effects. Today's patch, Atmosphere, continues in that tradition with a subtle effect meant to give your instruments a bit more... well... atmosphere.

• Atmosphere ( Combinator | RNS File )
  

The included RNS file uses the Thor patch Ancient Tongue and a bit of automation to show the effect that Atmosphere has on an instrument.

.68 Reason's Thor: Tip Of The Tongue

YAGVPN*

• Tip Of The Tongue ( Thor Patch | RNS File )
  

* Yet Another Grumbling, Vague Pad Noise

.67 Unhealthy Intentions

Here's another pad created using Reason's Thor.

• Unhealthy Intentions ( Thor Patch | RNS File )
  

.66 Ice Age

Given that another winter storm is rolling in and blanketing everything with a fresh layer of snow, it's only fitting that I post a couple of Thor patches that make me think of a time when the world was covered only with ice.

• Ice Age ( Thor Patch | RNS File )
  
• New Ice Age ( Thor Patch | RNS File )
  

Like the Dire Premonition pad I posted at the beginning of the week, the Ice Age patches seem to really benefit from split channels and panning. A delay on one of the channels, to further distant its sound from the other channel, can give the pad even more flavor as you can see in the included RNS.

And, like Ominous Clouds, posted last week, the Ice Age patches seem to sound better as monophonic synths. Complete chords tend to cause clipping, so keep it simple and you're more likely to have satisfying results.

.65 Someone Is In The House

I swear, the title of the patch was not meant to be clever, in that obnoxious, obvious way that seems so popular with patch names these days. If I were trying to be clever, it probably would have been called "Someone Is In Da Hizouse" or something equally annoying. No, I actually gave it that name because of its deep, booming sound, not because it would make a good four-on-the-floor bass kick hit.

• Someone Is In The House ( Malstrom Patch | RNS File )
  

.64 Reason's Subtractor: 70's Horror Piano

Having seen my fair share of cheesy (and sometimes scary) 70s horror films, when I put this patch together, I thought instantly of those minimalistic pieces that would be used to try to unnerve the audience. I think you know what I'm talking about... those bare piano notes played, slightly out of tune, to signify that something strange was going on.

Then, while putting the example RNS file together, something really strange did happen. It became, in a way, a completely different sound. After noodling around with a few notes here and there, trying out different octaves, I thought "I should toss a Matrix on this, randomize the pattern, and see what it sounds like" and the sound became something a little different, but immediately familiar.

Obviously the sound isn't exact, but I was surprised by how different a patch could sound, when used in a different way. For what it's worth, I highly recommend using Cmd-R in Matrix, if only for the opportunities that kind of experimentation can open up for you with your existing sounds.

• 70's Horror Piano ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )
  

.63 Dreary Chorus

Even darker and more ominous than yesterday's Dire Premonition patch, today's Dreary Chorus patch should give you the sinister drone you need while creating that new zombie-core dance piece you're working on. Ironically, you should be careful adding any chorus effects to this patch as it will get unmanageable very quickly.

• Dreary Chorus ( Malstrom Patch | RNS File )
  

.62 Dire Premonition Pad Using Reason's Malstrom Synth

As I mentioned a while back, the Malstrom has a well-deserved reputation for creating good, thick pad sounds, especially if you engage its Modulation sections. Today's patch, Dire Premonition, is yet another deep, rumbling pad sound, perfect for scoring your rock opera about migraines.

When you've just starting out designing your own patches, there is an urge to turn knobs until you get an obvious effect. Using the Modulation section of Malstrom, you can get patches that oscillate wildly with very little effort, so it's difficult not to crank the virtual knobs until you get something that goes absolutely crazy when you press a key on your keyboard. While it can be a lot of fun, try to restrain that urge. Very subtle settings can often yield the most interesting results, so like Reverb, turn the knobs until you hear what you want, then withdraw a bit and see how it sits in your mix.

• Dire Premonition ( Malstrom Patch | RNS File )
  

How often do you split your signals into separate mixer channels? If you've been using Reason for a long time, you might remember that the application didn't have a dedicated stereo plug-in until Reason 3.0 when the M-Class Stereo Imager was introduced. Before the Stereo Imager, if you wanted to widen (or narrow) a sound, you had to do it manually, moving around patch cables and pan positions to get the sound you wanted.

Old habits are hard to break, I guess, because if I ever find myself wanting to spread out a pad sound I still do it by flipping around the rack, splitting a synth's signal into two different channels, and then panning them both outward. I've built the Stereo Imager into some of the Combinator patches I use, but for the most part, I still do things the "old fashioned" way, even if it doesn't give me the fine control that the Stereo Imager does.

Any of you have old, probably inefficient habits that you've found hard to break in Reason's newer versions?

Repeat Post: These Patches Are Bragware!

As I mentioned in the FAQ the patches provided on the Patch-A-Day blog are "bragware" meaning that if you use a patch in one of your projects, I want to hear about it. Leave a link to where you've hosted your project in the comments section or send me an e-mail and I'll highlight your project and the patch you used here on the blog.

If you take one of the patches here and tweak it to make a new sound, I'd love to hear about that too. Send me an email at patchaday (at) earthlink.net with your patch file and I'll put it on the blog, giving you credit for your new creation.

Of course, you're also free to submit patches of your design, as Mad Wax did back in October.

.61 Subtractor Glass Hits

The Reason Patch-A-Day blog is only a few months old, but despite the seemingly endless drone patches and pads, I've also managed to post odd percussive sounds for the Subtractor synth. Today's two patches, Glass and Glass 2 continue in that tradition, creating a sound that's a bit like hitting something against glass.

• Glass ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )
  
• Glass 2 ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )
  

The Subtractor is actually a great synth for percussion. It's mono, which a lot of percussion samples tend to be, uses very little CPU power, which can be important when you're layering synth after synth in your project, and I find that you can get some nice, strong "hits" with the synth that really shine with a little distortion or compression. I'm not saying you can't use Malstrom or Thor to recreate that sub-bass kick you're after, but if you want a good results and a light load on your computer, the Subtractor is a good place to start. Example #3,412,772 of why I think there's a lot of life left in the Subtractor module.

.60 Growl Kick with Reason's Malstrom

This one is a little strange. On the one had, it's a percussive sound, but then... it isn't. Check out the RNS file to see what I mean.

• Growl Kick ( Malstrom Patch | RNS File )
  

.59 Encrypted Signal

It must be the same impulse that makes a child smash his toys, but once in a while, I can't help but see just how far I can push a patch. How far can it be pushed before it just becomes noise or a series of random chips and gurgles? What's the worst combination of waveforms you can mash together? Encrypted Signal, today's patch using the Malstrom synth, is definitely the result of that destructive impulse.

• Encrypted Signal ( Malstrom Patch | RNS File )
  

Of course, now that I have it, I'm not sure what can be done with it. Anyone want to take a shot at making something musical out of this thing?

.58 Ominous Clouds With Reason's Malstrom

Given the love and attention the Subtractor gets on this blog, you'd think I would turn my nose up at Malstrom or Thor. That's actually not true at all. I really appreciate what you can do with both of those other synths, and the more I learn about them, the more I grow to respect the power contained within each of these virtual instruments. I just feel, as I've stated here time and time again, that the Subtractor frequently gets overlooked in that search for the next big sound, especially by preset-surfers.

For those of you who haven't spent much time putting together your own patches, Malstrom's magic happens somewhere between the Oscillator and Modulator sections, that space between the synth's sound generation graintables and the LFOs that control their playback. Its this interaction that forms the texture of the sound.

If you're new to patch programming, load up a Malstrom patch you like and turn off the Modulation section by clicking the yellow squares located with the section titles (Mod A and Mod B, in this case), so that they become gray. Do you hear what happens to the sound? If you took the controls in Mod A, the Rate, Pitch, Index and Shift controls, and turned their knobs to the center position (the light above them will turn off if you're at absolute center), you get the same effect as turning the Modulator off, because the section hasn't been assigned anything to modulate. It takes a lot of little adjustments to give your sound movement and texture.

A good example of how this modulation can make a dramatic impact on a patch and its sound is provided in the Malstrom pad below.

• Ominous Clouds ( Malstrom Patch | RNS File )
  

Ominous Clouds seems to sound better, at least to my ears, as a monophonic synth. In the example RNS provided there are four bars of just single notes followed by another four bars of basic chords, and the chords, even as basic as they are, seem to make the patch too thick and jumbled. That doesn't mean I've sealed off that option by turning the Polyphony down. It's up to you to make those kinds of decisions about what sounds good in your tracks.

.57 Insect Week: Little Wings (Bonus)

If you thought Insect Week was over after seven days of buzzing sounds, you were mistaken! Here is a bonus bug sound for your mantis and butterfly themed compositions.

• Little Wings ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )
  

.56 Insect Week: Fly On The Wall

The automated Mod Wheel is probably more obnoxious than it should be in the example RNS file, but it gives you an idea of what you can do to make this patch squeal and gurgle when a little expression is needed. Like the rest of the patches highlighted in Insect Week (with the exception of Bug Belch), this patch is for Reason's Subtractor synth.

• Fly On The Wall ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )
  

.55 Insect Week: Brittle Bones

The least obvious bug sound provided during Insect Week, this one still makes me think of fragile exoskeletons and spindly legs.

• Brittle Bones ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )
  

.54 Insect Week: Fireflies

Not all bug patches need to be unpleasant. Play Fireflies over a four-on-the-floor beat and you have something that might sound at home on the dancefloor.

• Fireflies ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )
  

.53 Insect Week: Bug Belch

The Subtractor isn't the only synth capable of making strange, flea-like cries. With a little coaxing and dedication, even the mighty Thor can be made to sound tiny and alien.

• Bug Belch ( Thor Patch | RNS File )
  

If you've been looking at the construction of the patches presented during Insect Week, you'll see the secret to insect sounds is Noise. Use the Noise generators in the Subtractor, Thor, and even Malstrom, to create your own bug-themed patches.

.52 Insect Week: Bug Chorus

Here is yet another patch for the squeamish or entomophobic.

• Bug Chorus ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )
  

Insect Week wasn't the first appearance of my bug-themed patches on Reason: Patch-A-Day. A few weeks ago, I posted a Malstrom patch called Mandible Lullaby which would have made a great addition to this bug theme. Go back and download it if you're looking for more bug sounds.

.51 Insect Week: Bug Hiccup

Insect Week continues with another Subtractor patch!

• Bug Hiccup ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )
  

.50 Insect Week: Bug Uprising

Often when I'm making a patch, especially one that I want to give a vaguely percussive sound, I end up with something that sounds more insect-like than musical. Maybe it's just proof of some phobia I've hidden or the lingering pieces of some bad dream, but I have several patches that have this "bug" sound.

• Bug Uprising ( Subtractor Patch | RNS File )