Exporting Reason Drums to Ableton Live

A while back I downloaded a drum kit called the Tape808 from Goldbaby. It was really an exxcellent purchase – I got all those awesome authentic high quality 808 sounds I’ve been needing to beef up my productions (and for only $20!!!). The only thing was, for some reason i decided to get the drums as Reason Refills. This made it really difficult to use the drums for layering in my other program of choice, Albeton Live. Sure, you can Rewire the two programs, but its not quite the same as actually having the individual WAV hits to play with in Impulse or a Drum Rack.

Thats when I thought of this trick for getting the samples into Live quickly:

-Open the desired drum kit in Reason

-Create a drum pattern which uses every drum hit, one at a time, at evenly spaced intervals of 1/4 measure (or 1/2, just long enough for the tails to die off without running into the next hit).

-Export this loop to a WAV file.

-Open said WAV file as an Ableton Live clip

-Right click on the clip and use the “Slice to MIDI” tool to slice at the same intervals the hits were at.

And there you have it- a drum rack created quickly from the Reason drum kit! Enjoy.

Hercules DJ Console RMX Review

Overview:

This is the Hercules DJ Console RMX. Its a MIDI control surface for DJ’s with a built in 4×4 USB audio interface, and so far, it rocks.

Background:

I’ve been a bedroom producer / DJ for going on 5 years. My tool of choice is Ableton Live, but for a while now I’ve realized that my DJ skills were being severely limited by the lack of a proper DJing sound-card. I’ve been using the M-Audio Firewire Solo, which has been a great piece of equipment for me, but lacks the two separate stereo outputs required for cueing DJ mixes. I’ve played a couple of parties with my setup, but inevitably screw up a few times as I was basically “playing blind” (or rather, deaf) by not being able to listen to my tracks before I played them for the crowd. That needed to change.

I started looking for 4×4 USB soundcards, and soon realized that their were a couple of sound-cards with built-in MIDI controllers specific to DJing. I’ve been using an M-Audio Axiom 49 to control things so far, which is another great piece of equipment, but its not exactly tailored to be the ideal DJ setup. Initially I was looking at the Hercules MKII, but was turned off by its cheap build quality and cramped space. I also came really close to purchasing the Behringer BCD-3000; luckily before I bought it at Guitar Center the guy let me take it out of the box to get a feel for it. In doing so I found that all of the controls felt pretty chintzy, and one of the jog wheels was even sticky in a spot and wouldn’t turn smoothly! I’m so glad I turned this down, as compared to the RMX, the Behringer is a POS.

After many more hours of online research, I found that Hercules had a new product coming out, the DJ Console RMX, which promised “pro” quality and build. It just came out last month, so there was a dearth of reviews (besides this Dutch review that I can barely understand even with Google translator). Normally I’m a very cautious consumer, and read every review possible before shelling cash. This time though there were none available, but despite this I decided to take the plunge anyway. Someone has to be the first reviewer, right?

The EASIEST Way to Warp (most) Songs in Ableton Live 7

1) Open clip (make sure “auto-warp” isn’t set in preferences)

2) Drag clip’s start arrow to very start of first downbeat

3) Right click on that arrow -> Warp From Here (straight)

You’re Welcome,

DJ Oscillator

Beatbox Cooking

This guy, Beardy Man, is frickin amazing. I bet you can’t box a beat better than Beardy!

Immortal Technique

The sickest lyricist ever. You have to check out these videos. He spits the truth

Making Beats: Acapellas

Okay- this might be skipping ahead a bit. Say you read my previous articles on making beats and came out with something pretty sweet. Or say you didn’t read my articles but made some sweet beats anyway. Whats the next step? Add rapping! “But I can’t rhyme for shit and I have the voice of a prepubescant albino chipmunk!” you squeel? Not to fear, this is what acapellas are for.

You want the rap from some awesome song without the beat? Getting this may be a bit harder than it sounds. The easist way is to find a file where its already like that. There are many acapella’s floating around the internet- I’ve had pretty good luck using BitTorrent- try typing “acapella” into a site like Isohunt and download away (if you don’t understand this, read my article on “How to Download Anything You Want”). Another good source is Frostwire, similar to Limewire but not being sued.

But what if you can’t find the acapella for a specific song you really want? Well.. its not pretty, but there are ways…

Making Beats: Sample Sources

Okay, to make good beats you need good sounds. Drum loops, instruments, weird effects…. and theres lots of places on the net where you can find them. Here are some of my favourite sites for samples:

Oneshot Samples 

Beastie Boys Accapellas 

Okay.. now this one is THE HOLY GRAIL for drum loops man. Took me a while to find this, but it has soooooooooo many classic sampled drum breaks its not even funny. Use it wisely:

Phatso’s Place 

And yes, theres more where these came from. I’m just giving you a small taste right now so you’ll want to keep coming back again and again like a sample junkie. You’re welcome

Blogs I Heart

Yeah, thought I’d give a shout out to some nice blogs out there, ones that inspired me to make my own. Man… blogs can be addictive, I’ve got like five that I need to check every day or I feel all cold and empty inside.

Heres some music ones:

Create Digital Music- excellent computer music news

Music Thing- weird and crazy music stories

And some other ones:

Gizmodo-technology with a humerous slant

Kotaku- video games with a humerous slant

BoingBoing- random crazy stuff

I’m sure most of you have heard of at least some of these. Enjoy them anyway!

mZy b3atZz

h3r3zz my myspaze be4ts:::::::::::

Making Beats: The Prologue

Over my many years of net-surfing I’ve come across quite the collection of useful music-production websites. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that one can become an excellent producer without any formal schooling just be doing research on the internet (plus plenty of practice). Anyway, heres two of my most prized gems, sites that have helped me to be what I am today:

Illmuzik: The best online hip-hop community I’ve found thus far. It has a good collection of tutorials, articles, and interviews, but the real wealth of information lies in the forums. Another plus, the monthly “beat this” compitition.

Tweakheadz Lab: Not focused solely on hip-hop, but more on any kind of computer music production in general. A comprehensive and invaluable resource; “the guide” will take you all the way from not knowing what MIDI is to being a full-fledged production guru getting blunted in the lab with Dr. Dre and Scott Storch. <—(slight exaggeration)

So, enjoy these sites!

Soon to come: Dr. Oscillators complete guide to making a “hit” rap single!

Ah… my first real post

Although my main focus when creating music is hip-hop, I dabble in some electronica every once in a blue moon. Anyway, the techniques of creating music apply to both genres, so who’s complaining? Heres a “techno god”, BT, doing his shit. He’s remixing an Earth, Wind, and Fire song live and on the fly, using Live. This is one of my favourite programs for making music by the way, so I DEMAND that you check it out.

This video is from YouTube of course, and for those who don’t know, YouTube is the-best-thing-in-the-world