Reason 5 Signature Patches

State your name and where you are from.
[Laughing]
I'm Hank Shocklee. I'm a producer.
I'm Sharooz. I'm a producer and DJ.
I'm a sonic architect. I'm a sound designer.
My name is Printz Board.
I'm based in London.
I'm part of the Black Eyed Peas entity.
And I've contributed towards the wonderful Reason 5.
I got introduced to Reason, a friend of mine was producing and he used Reason.
I first got introduced to Reason through a friend.
And he was producing all in the box.
And I was like, "Wow!"
"So I can just have headphones and my laptop?"
"And it sounds good? Whoah"
For people such as myself who go back maybe ten, fifteen years
to when we had a stack of boxes in the studio,
it's amazing to see software recreate that in a virtual sense.
OK, this is ridiculous. I don't need my MPC anymore.
This is pretty cool. But the thing that got me really into it was, to me the Dr Rex.
Because the Dr Rex is the thing that can be anything.
Oh Rex files. Crazy.
You could do some things that you couldn't do with the S900
or even with the SP1200 with Dr Rex.
And so to me Dr Rex became the thing. So I would just make tracks with nothing but Dr Rex loops.
All the things that I was doing with Dr Rex
has become easier to do with Kong.
When I saw the initial sketches, the prototype designs,
I was like "wow!" It's simple as hell.
It's a drum machine. Fantastic, it's exactly what I like.
That's how I make my beats, with single hits, using that sort of...
I sample a lot of stuff through the MPC 60 to get that sort of 12 bit grit.
I don't really think it's ever been done properly as a plug-in.
And I think Kong's as close as it gets to it really.
I like using the basic stuff a lot of times.
I like using the factory stuff as it comes up and then freak it later.
But the advantage to Kong is that you can freak it so many ways
and have the same starting sound but end up with a sound that no one else in the world will come up with.
I love that.
I call samples now "raw data".
So you can take your raw data now and beef them up with all these little things in there.
And make it something that is completely and uniquely yours.
Propellerhead called me and said:
"Will you do something for this new secret thing that we have?"
Of course I said yes. Whatever it is I know it's gonna be crazy dope, so let's do it.
Having the opportunity to get in there, put together a bunch of original hits for it,
compose some loops using it, it's hugely exciting for me.
What I wanted to do was, I wanted to create something that gave you a little bit of the old school.
And I wanted to bring back some of the sounds we were using back then,
but update them today.
And they said "OK, well there's a few things that we would like to get from you."
"We just want to get like this, this and this." So I said "OK". I obliged.
I gave them this, this, and this... and then some.
I think it was Kristoffer I was dealing with. Kristoffer Wallman.
He laid out the basic plan for how the new addition of reason...
the new features it was gonna have.
And he just asked me if I'd be interested in making a bunch of new content.
Honestly, I think within those 16 pads, there's enough material there to
create a really quite powerful drum loop.
This is to me reminiscent of one of the kicks that I would use back in the days.
This would be just like the regular kick. Just to start out the groove.
This is more dirty.
You can almost hear a track without even pretty much having to...
I went into five different studios on the road around the world.
Switzerland, Holland, Italy, just different places.
Went in and tracked a bunch of stuff that I made into Rex files.
In London they had this great tack piano and then it was offset from the mic way across the room.
And the engineer tried to move the mics closer
and I was like, "No, no, no, leave it exactly how it is."
To me sound is everything.
I didn't want it to sound too perfect or too crazy. I just wanted it to sound unique.
I've never been one that looked for sound because I think that if you go looking for it, it's too late.
I mean, if it makes me laugh great.
I'll just play a sound and say,
"You know what, this is really weird but I like it so I'm gonna do it."
For example a crash, that's not really a crash that's a bit of white noise
but that fits really nicely in the context of the kit.
If I even did a zip, a couple of zipper things, recorded my zipper up and down.
The combination of drum loops, fills, one shots, bass-lines,
percussion, horns, guitars.
It allowed me to delve back into the days but give it the sound and the power of today.
The quality of production is getting better and better.
There's better EQs out there. There's better compressors.
As a result I think drum sounds and hits are starting to become more powerful.
Music's really no longer about using those same clichŽd sounds
so I think it's important to move ahead of the curve.
As we've seen from version 1, 2, 2.5, 3, and then 4 and the now the 5.0.
It's only going to get better.
All the producers have come together to make sounds that compliment each other really, really well I think.
It's all these different things that you can use within your collection that gives your stuff ammunition.
I love some of these patches, not just mine but some of the patches the other producers have done.
I really like Adam Beyer's sounds in there as well. I'm a huge fan of his work.
So I've been using a bunch of his presets.
I think that you have to put yourself into it now.
In the future I don't know what I'm going to do with it. And I'm glad I don't know what.
Cause that means that it's going to be something that's next.
You may come up with something totally different.