importing REX drum beats and quantizing

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Boyce
Posts: 1
Joined: 22 Jun 2021

22 Jun 2021

Hi everyone,

I hope my below question doesn't sound confusing.

Unfortunately I'm still running a very early version of Reason (Reason 2) and for years when making beats I still cant get my beats to sound right and have the right type of swing. I make House and Garage (4x4) that should have a really good shuffle but the quantizing function still doesn't give it the type of swing I want. Maybe I've been doing something wrong I don't know but I doubt it as I've followed tutorials and still can never get the end sound right. I've now managed to acquire a loop pack with the exact beats I wanted to make that have been made for the REX player. What I would like to do is open some of these beats and use them as they are but also maybe add a few extra drum sounds and then obviously begin to add the other musical sound elements over the top.

My question is if i'm opening up a finished drum beat loop that is made at 124 bpm and already has the quantize (shuffle) set when the producer made it, how do I set the quantize ratio for all other musical elements that I want to add to the song. So say I want to add piano chords. Is it a case of setting a quantize ratio for the piano to whatever sounds right over the beats or is there a specific ratio that should be used?

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Ottostrom
Posts: 845
Joined: 13 May 2016

23 Jun 2021

If the groove / swing is your main concern then you should definitely get familiar with the awesome ReGroove mixer in Reason! (hopefully it was already introduced in your version)

You can assign individual midi tracks to different ReGroove channels which gives you great control over the swing and feel.
And if you send your Rex pattern to the sequencer you can even extract a groove from it which you can then use for other tracks in your song :)

PGR
Posts: 95
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

23 Jun 2021

Ottostrom wrote:
23 Jun 2021
If the groove / swing is your main concern then you should definitely get familiar with the awesome ReGroove mixer in Reason! (hopefully it was already introduced in your version)

You can assign individual midi tracks to different ReGroove channels which gives you great control over the swing and feel.
And if you send your Rex pattern to the sequencer you can even extract a groove from it which you can then use for other tracks in your song :)
I believe the ReGroove mixer was introduced in version 4.0

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Billy+
Posts: 4157
Joined: 09 Dec 2016

23 Jun 2021

Yeah I was thinking the same, the regroove feature is in a later version than 2.....

What your looking for is a quantisation value of 32nds or 64th rather than 16th so you can nudge slightly before or after the grid. If you use quantise what's going to happen is that you snap to the nearest grid point and with 16th 8th etc your going to remove the swing, using 32nd 64th is going to snap the same but at a finer point to some degree you'll be better off not quantising the hits but moving them or playing them in manually as it's the early or late timing that is the swing....

Think of it like a real band, the drummer is the click track and the others play off the timing each will perform a little different some will anticipate better than others so the timing of each part will have a variation once the group has practice enough the timing of each will be honed and the timing will be tighter but will still include a unique groove swing and the only method to quantise is practice which helps but is never perfectly quantise to a virtual grid.

Try turning off quantisation (snap) and playing the parts, if you need to adjust then start with values in ranges of 64th then 32nd and remember the groove is the swing either side of the ridged grid.

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