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Get into the heart of hip hop’s DNA with Reason sample-based beat capabilities.

In this tutorial, Chris Reed shows you how to chop samples, prep them for various Reason instruments, and play seamlessly using a MIDI keyboard or piano roll.

Transcript

Intro

You want to learn how to sample like that? I got the perfect video for you. What’s up, everybody, my name is Chris Reed, and this is how to sample in Reason.

Step 1: preparing your sample

Preparing your sample is very easy in Reason, depending on which instrument you’re going to use.

Preparing a sample with Mimic

For example, if you’re going to use Mimic, preparing your sample can be as simple as finding the sample you want, dragging and dropping it into Mimic, and then choosing Slice mode. Your sample has already been prepared — you can dial down the sensitivity, and that will give you less slices to be able to choose from, or you can increase the sensitivity, giving you more slices based on the transience of the sample.

Preparing a sample in the sequencer

Another way that you can prepare your sample is by dragging and dropping it into the sequencer, and here you can get a little more strategic on how you actually prepare your sample. Double-click on this sample, and you will see similar slices as what we saw in Mimic — you can highlight each of these slices by hitting “C,” deleting them, and then you can choose which snap value you want, and that will determine how many slices you have for this sample.

If I choose quarter notes and then I select my pencil tool, I can then add in slices by quarter notes — these slices are going to be equally divided by quarter notes.

Bouncing to a REX loop

From here, I just need to right-click and hit “Bounce as a REX Loop.” Once I have created that REX Loop Player, I can then play the sample by using run, or by playing the different sample chops on my MIDI keyboard.

Choosing the right sampler: pros and cons

There are multiple samplers inside of Reason that I can use in order to find the right one to create my beat. Let’s go through some of the pros and cons of each sampler.

Kong

You could choose Kong — now, even though Kong is a drum designer and typically is used for drums, it just has that MPC look and feel that calls out to the inner sampler inside of all of us. You can remedy the time-consuming nature of setting up Kong by creating an empty patch where you could just load in your REX file into the first pad, and then that way it will already be set up amongst the 16 pads that you trigger in Kong.

So Kong would be a great sampler to use if you want to use those built-in effects, and if you like using the Chunk Trigger function, where it will actually break up the sample in certain chunks, depending on how many pads you want to use — then that would be the go-to for why you would use Kong.

NN19

The next sampler that we have is the NN19 — now, the NN19 is the classic sampler; while you can do multi-samples with it, it’s a little limited, and it’s very simplistic in how you do the keyboard mapping. The NN19 is a great instrument if you want to quickly drop in a sample and just do a pitch sampling — if you don’t need to have chops, or if you don’t need to do time-stretching, and you just want to get a sample playing quickly, then the NN19 is a good bet for you.

NN-XT

Next up is the NN-XT, the big brother of the NN19 — while the NN19 has a very small sample info display, the NN-XT has a larger sample info display, and that’s good because you have the availability to do advanced keyboard mapping and sample grouping.

I would use the NN-XT if I already have my samples chopped, because then I can drag the slices into the NN-XT and then I can automap them chromatically, and be able to play them on my MIDI keyboard. So if you already have your samples chopped, or if you know you’re just going to be playing the sample at different pitches, then you could use the NN-XT.

Dr. Octo Rex Loop Player

Next up we have the Dr. Octo Rex Loop Player. Dr. Octo Rex Loop Player is another great instrument if you already have a REX file, because you can just drag and drop that REX file into the instrument and be able to play on your MIDI keyboard, and/or play the REX file exactly how it is.

It does have eight different slots that you can load in different REX files, so you can have multiple REX files loaded into one instrument and be able to choose which variation, or which sample, you want to work with.

Mimic’s time-stretching

Lastly, we have Mimic, and the major pro of Mimic is its time-stretching capabilities. You can drag in your sample and be able to pitch that sample up or down, and using the different time-stretching modes, you will be able to speed up or slow down that sample and get it to sound exactly how you want it to sound — unlike the other samplers, where if you change the pitch, you also change how fast your sample is being played.

So those are some of the pros and cons of the different samplers that are inside of Reason. Now let’s actually take a listen to how we could use some of those samplers, with some beats that we’ve created in Reason.

Listening examples: starting with NN19

Starting off with the NN19, we have this sample. Here we’re just going to be playing different pitches with this NN19, but we can drag and drop that sample into the NN19, and we’ll be able to play the different pitches on our MIDI keyboard.

We pitched it down a half note, from C to B, and then we looped that sample a couple of times, added in some pitch bends, and this is what we got. So with the NN19, we’re using one chop of the sample, and we’re just looping that using a lower pitch.

NN-XT example

Now let’s listen to what we did with the NN-XT. For the NN-XT, we’re going to drag over our sample and we’re going to add it into the NN-XT a couple of times, and this time we’re going to change the sample start in order for us to get our different chops.

First we’re going to select all of the samples, and then we can go to Auto Map Zones Chromatically, and that will allow us to be able to play each of these samples on our MIDI keyboard, starting on C1. And from here, we’re just going to adjust the start for each of these samples until we can get the sound that we want — and here is the sample chop that we have.

Mimic example

Next up let’s take a look at Mimic. We’ll load up the instrument, reset it, and then we’ll add in our sample. For this sample we didn’t need to prepare any chops — we can use Mimic, and we can use the sensitivity to set the chops for us. Once we change from Pitch to Slice mode, we can see all of the slices that appear; we can change our sensitivity so that we get more or less slices, and then we’ll be able to place slices on our MIDI keyboard.

Here is a chop that I’ve prepared using the sensitivity knob on Mimic, and using that loop, let’s change our time-stretch to Advance — we can drop down our speed to about 43%, and then we can drop down our semitones, and we’ll be able to get this sound.

Here’s the pattern that I prepared for this track. With a little bit of automation, we’re able to drop down the EQ high cut and give us a filtered sound for the verse section of this track.

Dr. Octo Rex example

Now let’s check out the Dr. Octo Rex Loop Player. We’re going to start with this sample — we’re going to create a REX file by setting a slice on each half note, and then we’re going to bounce this as a REX file, right-click and hit “Bounce Clip to REX File.” Now we have a REX file that we can create; we have the added ability of being able to play this REX file with our MIDI keyboard.

We can change the transpose, or we can go higher; we can turn up our release on our envelope, and turn our pan down, so that way the loop will just play all the way through. Here is the pattern that we created using these sample chops.

Kong example

For our last track, we’ll use Kong. Here’s what the original sample sounds like, and since we already have that REX loop ready, all we need to do is drop in a Kong, reset the device, open up our Show Drum Effects, and choose the Dr Rex Loop Player from there. We just need to add in that REX file that we created by going to Song Samples, All Self-Contained Samples, and finding the REX loop that we want to add in.

This REX loop is already pre-sliced, so we have the availability to go in between the different slices, and we can turn on the trigger for those slices, and then we can use our hit type and set it to Slice Trigger, in order to set these pads up to play by the slice.

But there’s an even easier way to do this if your REX file doesn’t have slices that are equally distributed — then you could just use Chunk Trigger in order to set this Kong up so that we can use it to play our sample. We need to do two things: the first thing is to set up our drum assignment by changing all the pads to play on the Dr Rex one, this will ensure that each of the pads are playing from the same Dr Rex that we set up on the first pad. Secondly, we need to change our hit type to Chunk Trigger, which will be hit type number two, so we’ll set each pad to number two.

What this does is it creates chunks that will then be distributed amongst the different pads. In Chunk Trigger mode, you can select how many chunks that you want to split your REX file into — if you don’t want all 16 pads, you could separate the REX file by four pads, or any other variation of number of pads that you want to use, in order to play your sample.

So to set up this Kong, I’m going to turn down the velocity on the Dr Rex, so that way it doesn’t read how hard I’m pressing the pads — I just want them to play at the same velocity. And I will pretty much leave everything else the same, but remember, you have the availability to use all of the Kong effects, including Reverb, Tape Echo, filter, compression, EQ, and so on and so forth.

Let’s check out how we chopped up this sample. I added in this house loop from Loop Supply, as well as some of my own drums and Redrum, some bass, effects, and some vocals from Arcade.

Wrap-up

I hope that you guys have enjoyed this exploration of the different samplers inside of Reason, and some examples of how you can start sampling inside of Reason today. If you’re looking for more tutorials or more videos, make sure to check out this video next. My name is Chris Reed — until next time, peace.