Auditioning Drum Loops

About half of the time that I get busy on a beat in Reason 4, I start with a music sample instead of the drums. About half of the time that I do THAT, I like to listen to breakbeats to get ideas about how to program the drums over it. A lot of times I'll use the breakbeat with a high-pass filter applied and then match kick and snare to it.. but sometimes this method poses the following problem.

If you have a commercial library of breakbeats in WAV (instead of REX2) format, then a lot of the time they are arranged in categories of tempo e.g., beat loops of 90, 100, 110 BPM's in separate folders.



OK, so what if your sample loop is not the same tempo as the drums in a given folder? What if you think that time-stretch is for pussies the way that I do? What if the idea of adjusting the pitch of each and every loop you load causes you to ignore that dope folder of super-official WAV breakbeats? I used to do that but later came up with a fix!

First, load up an NN-XT sample-player (it's NOT a sampler and I ain't gonna call it that!) and then load a drum loop from the folder you wish to audition. Next, draw in a 2 bar clip. Go into edit mode and depending on the length of the beat loops in your folder, draw either a 1 or 2 bar note at C3 (important, because this is where Reason places the root key by default).


Now, go to your sample calculator. I use Deep Sound's but whichever you use will be fine. In my example, the music loop that I want to match is at 103.135 BPM and the drum loops I want to audition are 100 BPM. You can see from the picture that the amount by which I am supposed to adjust the pitch is + 0.53 semitones. Now it is time to adjust the beat loop that you have loaded into the NN-XT.



Again, in my example, I need to adjust the pitch of my drum loop to + 0.53 semitones. Since the NN-XT fine tune knob only adjusts to + or - 50 cents, I need to actually raise the loop UP (+) 1 semitone and then DOWN (-) .47 semitones. That will come to +.53 in the end. Now when I press play, the drum loop and the sample arrangement play at the same tempo.. but the magic comes next.



Now, press play on your sequencer transport. Highlight the zone of your sample within the NN-XT. Using the up and down arrows in the LOAD SAMPLE field, you can audition all of the loops within the tempo-appropriate breakbeat folder on the fly! Choose the one you like and CRUSH IT!

Aight, I think we're done here!