The new year must have everyone feeling more creative. We got a Bragware Report a week ago with TheFatControlleR's Dylan & The Seven Drones, then posted the new track Forgiven from Martin Kremser, and while I was literally preparing the post for Martin's song I received an email from Nait Phoenix telling me he just finished up a new song using a couple of old Reason Patch A Day sounds.
If anyone has any comments or constructive criticism for Nait_Phoenix regarding his new track, I urge you to go to his Soundclick page and let him know what you think. Thanks for sharing, Nait! I look forward to hearing whatever else you come up with in the future.
I recently got an email from reader Martin Kremser, letting me know he used a couple of Reason Patch A Day patches on one of his new songs: Forgiven. Martin let me know he used Ba-ba-ba-bass and Iatrogenic on his latest techno song. If the results don't get you moving, you might have to see a doctor.
Provide any constructive criticism you might have by leaving a comment on Martin's Soundcloud page.
Thanks for let us know what you've been up to, Martin!
If you have a track of your own that you'd like to highlight on the blog, please send me an email with a link to your track and a description, so I can post it here. I'm always eager to hear what's being done with the patches shared here, so I'd love to hear from you.
Threads cycle pretty quickly on the Propellerhead User Forum, but a few weeks ago Ben from 3 Floor Sound was nice enough to draw a little attention to my new archive refill by pointing folks in my direction. Thank you, Ben!
The thread was short and short-lived, but was the internet equivilent of getting a bear hug, with a few people thanking me for my work on the blog and posting about their excitement in getting the refills. Thank you all for showing interest in what I've been doing!
One of the highlights of the thread, however, was a song that FatControlleR put together using patches from the Vol 1 Refill. His efforts can be found in the thread or heard here:
As I mentioned to FatControlleR privately, it's always a treat to hear what other people have done with the sounds I've created. Sometimes they sound the same, other things I can't recognize them at all. Thanks for sharing, FatControlleR! It was a lot of fun for me to hear what you've done with my patches.
I've had two very different projects consuming some of my free time and yet haven't really been able to spend much time talking about either while posting here. That said, the veil of secrecy has been lifted from one of those projects and I'm finally able to talk about it... The Bernard Childcare Trust Refill.
As you no doubt already know from other sources and posts on the internet, The Bernard Childcare Trust Refill is a new benefit refill put together by a handful of Reason fans and sound designers, including Ben from 3rd Floor Sound, DrDist/Odarminux, Ed who is better known as EditEd4TV, Rob/PhiSequence from Reason 101, and Koshdukai. Proceeds from sale of the refill go to support the children of James and Nicole Benard, who tragically lost their mother to cancer a few months ago.
With no overriding theme, the refill is filled with some interesting tools and sounds from some very capable and creative sound designers. Having been busy with the holidays, I haven't had a chance to spend much time with the completed refill, but what I have seen over the past few weeks as it has come together has been very impressive. There are a number of intriguing patches, samples, and effects from some of the most prolific figures in the Reason community. My own contributions are very meager when compared to the output of the others involved in the refill, but it was an honor to be involved, and I'm proud of what we've been able to accomplish together.
Many of you have been very generous with donations to Reason Patch A Day the last couple of weeks and I have been genuinely surprised and truly appreciative of your support. However, if you have any generosity left, I urge you to consider purchasing a copy of The Bernard Childcare Trust Refill. I can say without reservation that I can't think of any better cause, and in addition to the knowledge that you're doing something truly good, you'll also be gaining a great collection of sounds and tools.
It is time for me to take my annual, holiday leave of absence, but before I disappear for a couple of weeks I wanted to announce the availability of the Reason Patch A Day Archive Refill, Vol. 2.
As before, the Reason Patch A Day Archive Refill, Vol. 2 collects the patches and samples shared here on the Reason Patch A Day blog. The Volume 2 refill contains patches from September 25, 2010 to today with a total of 513 files, including:
54 Bass Patches
2 Instrument Combinators
3 Effect Combinators
10 Effect Patches
3 Kong Kits
77 Pad Patches
141 Percussion Patches
31 Synth Patches
33 Samples
25 Drum Loops
134 Drum Samples
Previous site donors received a handful of additional patches that were not shared on the blog and six months of updates to the Volume 1 refill. To thank site donors for their continued support, the Reason Patch A Day Archive Refill, Vol 2 contains bonus drum samples exported from the Korg iElectribe app loops provided during the last year. As the iElectribe app uses synthesis to create its sound, these samples are unique to the loops provided throughout Reason Patch A Day's last year, and have been provided in the Archive in WAV format for easy use in the NN-19, NN-XT, Redrum, or Kong devices.
So, how do you get a copy? As before, it just takes a donation of $1 or more. If you have donated in the past your donation is greatly appreciated, then and now, but I would ask you to send me a dollar or two again, if you'd like a copy of the latest refill. Remember, most of the refill has already been provided here at no cost. You're just paying for the convenience of having it all in one place, as well as getting a few bonus sounds, while also supporting my work over the last three years.
Donations can be made using the sidebar "Donate" button! Check the upper right side of the block to toss a few dollars in to support the site!
I'll see you all after the holidays! I hope that, regardless of your faith or circumstances, that you find this season warm, joyful, and filled with music.
I poked a little fun at Nikolai Bonamente (formerly 1.44 MB) during one of my recent Challenge update posts, because during last year's Challenge he managed to produce two tracks, while everyone else worked feverishly to come up with just one. My joke was that even if no one else creates a track for the challenge, we'd no doubt have a couple of tracks from Nikolai to fill our ears and time.
Well, as it turns out, not only did Nikolai manage to surpass his output from last year, but he completely blew my good-natured prediction out of the water, writing a whopping FIVE tracks during the week. This is what Nikolai had to say about his efforts over the last week:
Each song was put together roughly over the course of a weekday evening after work with a beer (or two) and a cat climbing over everything. The production isn't fabulous but as I usually compose and then try to spend some time away from the track to lose familiarity before going back to calm everything down that wasn't going to happen in the tome allowed. Most tracks were put together with Robb's PADs and standard Reason soundbank patches - with the exception of the beats on a couple of tracks being from the Rebirth 808 / 909 refill.... oh and I used Peff's fantastic square bass (free from his site) on a couple as well. Each track up on the soundcloud site has track notes regarding which PAD's were included.
Nikolai's trick of inserting comments where each patch from Reason Patch A Day appears is actually really clever and makes listening along a lot of fun.
This is the last one that was put together on Friday and I think is my favorite of the bunch - it achieves the feel I was going for early this year with Thorong-La and Glide-Plane . While both of these tracks headed off into embellishment land Nomad stays fairly minimal with lots of space and has a sort of lazy drifting lilt that it's name suggests.
An attempt to tweak some acid out of Robbs pads - I've been tooling around with the rebirth refills lately so I wanted something in that general area. This track shows examples of Robb's PADs after a fair degree of tweaking, some nice airly reverb layer percussion and my desire to try sounds that grate a little around the edges in otherwise fairly commercial sounding tracks.
This one came out of nowhere - I think I was a little um tipsy when I knocked it up. In the past I've not been a big beat head, but I'm getting closer so this track again shows experimentation with some of Robb's latest Kong patches.
The result of 20 minutes playing with the rebop rimshot and delay and reverb - I almost did a minimal track with just that oscillating around for 7 minutes. After a while I thought some more percussion and another screeching PAD would go nicely.
This was heading in the direction ambient drum and bass but then took a big swing elsewhere - another attempt to make spooky left field ambient pads dancable.
A truly Herculean effort, Nikolai! The best part is that we all have five new tunes to listen to because of it, so thanks for submitting all of these to the Challenge.
If anyone has any constructive criticism for Nikolai, please be sure to post a comment or two on his tracks via Soundcloud or leave a message for him in the comments section here.
DJ Mad Wax, fellow Denverite Reason user and blogger, left a message stating that he'd be unable to put together a new track for this year's Challenge, but he wanted to share a song he put together a while back that he felt fit the requirements.
As DJ Mad Wax explained, "Original Console Generation" uses a number of PAD sounds in his track. If he has a moment to let me know which patches he used, I'll post the list here, but this is what he had to say about the track:
I've had zero time to work on this due to work life and family stuff :/ plus my laptop is on the fritz and Reason 5 kept crashing. so I have an alternative if amenable - I'm submitting a song I did last year, but
it was finished and completed in 4 hours, one session
mastered on another day in a two hour session, no changes to the original
it uses almost exclusively Reasonpatchaday sounds, except for the drums and the main bass line.
As always, be sure to check out what DJ Mad Wax is up to over on the excellent City of Bass blog.
