I am posting this for the next time you hear someone say: “Reason’s patches can’t sound like “Plugin-X” or “Producer Y” or “Synth-Z” Hopefully you can easily explain why that is wrong and then, prove it. (Instead of just punching the desk and screaming “Combinatooooorrrrrr” like I do.) I want to stress the importance of using and understanding Reason’s Combinator in your workflow. It is a simple and at first, an empty tool in the reason rack. If we think of Reason’s Rack (front and back!) along with the devices and effects..it is much like a “real world” studio (In my opinion, Reason is: bigger, smarter, faster, stronger, neater, cleaner, leaner and meaner!) Anyway, when you get the basics down you will reap the benefits of the mighty combi in any and all of your projects. Now that Record was “absorbed” into Reason 6, we have this great new mixer and all of it’s channels are also represented in the rack by, you guessed it, a combinator…of sorts.
Any time you add a device or Audio track and create that new Mixer channel, you will see that you now have a rack device with: 4 Rotaries and Buttons, Insert FX and a Programmer. A familiar layout to us Combinator heads.
side note: Technically, the inside of the combinator is a rack itself…so Wut we got!?…..racks on racks on racks!! haha
I think of the combinator 3 different ways:
1. Instrument
Here is where we turn our device patches and effects into a clean self contained patch much like a nice big layered preset from an old keyboard workstation. I would guess this is the most common use of the Combinator. It could be for example, any instrument patch with some stacked effects, or multiple instruments stacked up and wrapped up clean in a combi. Perhaps it’s a Dr.Octo Rex based “percussion performance patch” with rotary and button controlled patterns and effects.
2. Insert Effect
A combinator as an insert effect may be a little less common, but then again most of us were used to having one in the rack the moment we open a new project! (the MClass Mastering Suite) The same way you build your stacked and racked instrument combis, you can build your own rack effects using multiple devices and routings. This is the way to invent and save your own vocal strips, guitar effects and so on.
3. Sub or Stem Mixer
If you like separate eq’s and effects on your kicks and snares etc.. chances are that your Mixer is getting full pretty quickly. Clean house! Throw that Redrum or Kong in a combinator, with its own 14:2 mixer then send that drum sub-mix to it’s own channel on the main mixer. Proceed to use as much or as little effects inside the combi and….think how nice that mess will look all folded up in your custom combinator..
Custom Combinator Skins
It is EASY to create your own skin! There are Combi & Kong skinning templates in the Reason folder.
If you dont have Photoshop look into something like GIMP free photo editing software.
Leave a comment