Salad Bar continues to grow
Salad Bar’s patches will cover all kinds of music styles showing you the very best Soundcells has to offer. It’s a great refill to get to know Soundcells’ work, introducing you to their signature dimension in designing sound.
• Over 140 combinator patches (currently 23 ‘Salad Bar Only’ ones).
• 8 different folders: Atmospheres & Textures, Bass, Keys, Leads, Miscellaneous, Pads, Rhythmic, SaladBar_exclusive.
• The modules folder contains the basic synth and NNXT patches which were used for the combinator sounds.
• 160 well balanced patches for Thor, Malstroem, Subtractor, NNXT and ReDrum.
• 40 new rex loops.
• 8 tracks in RNS format – inspiring with highl ‘tutorialesque’ value.
Happy midsummer everyone!
Btw do not forget to check out some nice new Refills over at Propellerheads, some nice free stuff to spice up your next song with >>
Cheers Ola
Reason Refill review: Synthetic Kits by Nucleus Soundlab
Time for a new review, this time I have had the opportunity to review the recently released Synthetic Kits refill from Nucleus Soundlab.
This is what Nucleus says about the refill: Synthetic Kits uses Thor, Malstrom and Subtractor to go beyond the tired, old x0x electronic drum sounds. Instead of retreading that synthesis ground, Synthetic Kits continues on to create kits based on FM synthesis, formants, granular and more! These kits will work extremely well in a variety of genres – EBM, trance, filmscore, ambient and even pop.
And I must say that this is a refill well worth investing in, the Combinator kits included are very tight, new thinking and good sounding. If you are making electro, synthpop, ambient or electronic music you will definitely find several Combinator patches that will fit nicely into your songs and add that extra spice. The only thing that disturbs me a little is that most of the patches are auto-triggered, which means that they more or less acts like a rex-file – in essence a little hands-on is needed if you want them to follow your specific needs.
The Combinator patches are as mentioned well designed and I especially enjoy the handling of the bass in the patches. It is quite easy to add specific FX sounds and beats, but adding a well tailored bass that so easily fits with electronic compositions is what makes this refill very attractive. There are also specific sounds for Malström and Subtractor in the refill, but it is the Combinator patches you pay for.
Something that is very useful is that these kits are composed out of pure Reason synths, and you are able to tweak them into totally new sounds in any way you like based on the fact that there are fully-mapped Combinator and Thor knobs. I have done some extensive experimenting with the patches and they are working properly all the way.
Rating: ☻☻☻☻☺
If the refill had been bigger it would have received five smilies.
News from Nucleus:
Pure Synthesis Refill Bundle Released + Demo Links
Nucleus SoundLab is proud to announce the Pure Synthesis Refill Bundle. Pure Synthesis contains not a single sample, but instead pushes advanced synthesis in the Reason environment to the absolute limit! Read on for more info on each individual Refill included in the bundle.
Demo links:
Synthetic KIts Demo
Pantheon Demo
Filter Research Demo
New fat refill from eXode >> DOWNLOAD ASAP"""
Propellerhead has released the Massive Synthesis 0.99b ReFill by eXode MSX.
Features :
– 650 Combinator Instrument Patches.
– 50 Combinator Effect Devices.
– 250 Malström Patches.
– 380 Subtractor Patches.
– 1000 Thor Patches.
– 70 patches (total) for the RV7000 and Scream4.
– Included packages are: Analogital, Control Synthesis (previously unreleased), Electric Bass (previously unreleased), Mjolnir, Moog ReFill (previously commercial), Moog Tribute ReFill, Sonic Waves (previously Wave Soundscapes Vol.1 and Vol.2), Thor Padding (previously unreleased), Trance ReFill (previously commercial), Voltage Controlled Vol.1, 2 and 3.
The Massive Synthesis is a free download for registered Reason users.
New Refill from Nucleus with free demo refill
Here’s what they are saying about it:
Pantheon takes Refill quality to a whole new level. There are no compromises. Each one of the 164 Combinators inside Pantheon is unique, with a widely varied signal path. Further, all Combinator rotaries and buttons are assigned to unique destinations. And finally, each Thor patch *inside* each Combinator has its rotaries and buttons fully mapped! We have even saved all Thor patches separately so you can more easily build them into your own Combinators. There has never before been a Refill with this many powerful, creative modulation possibilities at your fingertips.
Some of the patches you’ll find inside Pantheon range from physically-modelled drumkits; dirty filter FM basses; majestic pads; heavily sequenced chord patterns; pristine belltone layers; futuristic lead arpeggios and much more. Electronic musicians of all stripes will find Pantheon instantly inspiring, and infinitely tweakable. Details:
- 164 unique Combinators.
- 235 Thor patches.
- 28 Subtractor and Malstrom patches
- 9 .rps demo songs.
- All Combinator and Thor rotaries/buttons uniquely mapped.
- Detailed design documentation for each patch.
Demo refill can be found here >>
KORG Polysix – Free Reason Refill from Lizard
Lizard has released yet another Refill for Reason – his previous releases has been highly acclaimed and I have used them a lot myself. I have not tried this one and judging from the ad below I am not sure what we are supposed to expect from this one.
This synthesizer was released in 1981, and features six voice polyphony (as if anyone didn’t guess that by its name), a 5 octave keyboard (61 keys, not touch sensitive), 32 programmable memory slots, 1 VCO per voice, 24 dB/octave VCF’s & normal ADSR controlled VCA, a cool arpeggiator and a quite useful effect section. The VCO is square, PW or PWM with controls for octave(pitch) and speed. The VCF has controls for cutoff, resonance, EG (envelope generator) intensity and keyboard tracking.
The Polysix is full of knobs and buttons, that gives you instant access to all of the parameters and effects. It was the last Korg to have that, since its successor the Poly-61 introduced DCO’s and digital programming. No more hands on knobs when playing, and more tedious programming. The Polysix have 3 different play modes. Normal – as any polyphonic synth, Unison – makes all 6 voices play the same note, and Chord – memorizes a played chord and transposes this when a key in the desired pitch is played.
It also has a sub oscillator, like many single VCO synths, that adds depth to the sound. They say it sounds fatter and warmer then the 2 DCO Poly-61, although this synth has twice the number of oscillators.
The Polysix have SSM chips for its filters and envelopes, and some say this explains its warm sound. It also has a special self-tuning function. In unison mode the six voices are adjusted a little bit out of tune from each other, giving you a real fat monophonic lead sound. There are separate wheels for pitch bend and modulation. The Polysix was one of the last Korgs to have this instead of the (in my opinion) cheaper joystick.
Combinator HQ advertisement below:
This is a refill have been reluctant to release for a long time. There have been several reaons behind not doing so but primarily I felt it didn’t offer much that Thor couldn’t do. It was in partial completion stage when R4 was introduced and I had decided to shelve it at that time. And quite honestly, there are a few P6 refills out there already. The community risked being poly-ed out.
However this set of samples was dear to me since the Polysix was the very first synth I owned when I purchased it way back in 1983. In review of this work, I felt that it made a conscious effort to capture some of the abilities that the original unit had including unision/mono mode and chord memory. As it may not have a huge impact in the average refill library, it does offer authenticity, programing examples and a few interesting layered patches.
So now it’s out there. I also had a few patches in there that were R4 and decided to omit them. This one I believe to be R3 freindly containing no devices that are native to the newest version of Reason. This has variances on 60+ sampled patches. Over 150 Combis in all. Hope it has some value to some one.
Propellehead announces new high quality refills
New ReFill downloads in the PropShop
Welcome to visit the new Third Party ReFill page! This new PropShop section contains downloadable ReFills, hand picked for their sound and quality, taking advantage of all the sonic possibilities of Reason.
The Refills introduced this month are:
• EMU Proteus 1 2 3 – All the great sounds from EMUs classic range of rack modules.
• Old World – Color your music with strings, winds, melodic and percussion instruments from around the globe.
• Vintage Pro – 30 classic keyboards; Arp 2600, OB-Xa, and a Hammond B3 to name a few. Includes 384 Combinators!
• The Wizard II – Mind-twisting ambient and electronic sounds. Buzzes, beeps, textures and drones are offered in this other-worldly ReFill.
• Electrified! – Features the sounds of $30,000 worth of vintage and modern guitars and amps. Exceptionally responsive!
• Pure Acoustic Special Edition – Vibrant and natural acoustic guitars, from soft mellow fingerstyle to buzzy and edgy picked guitar.
• Flatpack 3 – The third episode in the award-winning Flatpack series, for electronic music producers and sound designers. Now available as download.
We will keep adding more exciting titles every month so don’t forget to check back!
New fat free Reason Refills
From Combinator HQ of course 
Dave909’s Thor Sounds Vol. 1
Dave909 is very gracious to allow us to host his first refill of thor sounds here on CombinatorHQ. this is a wonderful collection of sounds that blend nicely into anyone’s electronic music production. This refill contains 110 patches that range from Arps, Bass, Leads, FX, Sequences and more! At only 140k, its a small refill that’s packs a punch. Download it today!
Flandersh Vibes Delivers!
Enjoy!!!!Reason: Filter Research – New Effects Refill Released
Filter Research - New Effects Refill Released ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Want to add some new effects to Propellerhead Reason? Filter Research is a new patchset now available for Reason 4 which does just that. Filter Research takes takes the modular format of the Reason Combinator, and harnesses it to create new, and truly unique effects devices. A huge variety of different effects are included: dual-filter boxes, granular glitch-machines, self-vocoding devices, huge fixed-filter banks, and crossfaded formants are just some of what you'll find inside. All are created from scratch and with the care and attention Nucleus SoundLab is known for. These Combinators are especially organized by effect type so you can find the type of sound you are looking for quickly. Then, by adding a Filter Research Combinator to a simple loop or sequence, you can create something very different, and cutting-edge. By processing the sounds you already own with Filter Research, you can create new, useful material with ease! Details: * 192 Combinators included, authored by a variety of designers - Jeremy Janzen, Tom Pritchard, Nick Hutton, Shaun Wallace and Jacob Hargrave. * All Combinators created from scratch - except for 10 Planar Filters based on the same template. * Each Combinator has all 4 knobs/buttons uniquely assigned. * PDF manual describing each Combinator. Please download the Quicktime video demo below for an idea of what Filter Research is capable of. http://www.nucleus-soundlab.com/video/filter%20research%20hi.mov (46mb HQ version) http://www.nucleus-soundlab.com/video/filter%20research%20lo.mov (20mb LQ version) If you don't have Quicktime, you can try the .AVI version. (Get VLC Player if this won't play correctly http://www.videolan.org/) http://www.nucleus-soundlab.com/video/filter%20research%20hi.avi Furthermore, you can download a free demo Refill containing 15 patches below. The demo Refill also includes the PDF manual so you can read more about the patches included in the full product. http://www.nucleus-soundlab.com/demos/Filter%20Research%20Demo.zip
New fat Reason Refill from Sonic
Massive Progressive is out! Extremely big considering its relatively low price: 250+ combinators, 130+ Thor patches, 130+ Malstrom patches, 100+ ReQuencerish patches, stunning swells and stabs and much more!
Massive Progressive is for Reason 4 and higher versions.
- Over 250 combinators subdivided in 7 categories: Arpeggios, Bass,
FX Stabs & Swells, Leads, LFO Synths & Pads, Thor Sequences, Pads. - 100+ ReQuencer style patches!
- Over 130 Malström patches.
- Over 130 Thor patches.
- 150 new and unique drum samples (kicks, snares and claps).
- Over 90 Rex loops.
Some Tips and Tricks
While using the arpeggiator combinators don’t play chords all the time. Two notes at a time often give the hottest results. Don’t forget to tweak the knobs or to use the modulation wheel. A lot of sonic secrets are hidden there.
Most rexes are meant to be used as back beats/ghost beats. Most times you wanna use the high pass filter to make them sound thinner. Also try to lower the decay values of the amp envelope and please don’t forget to tune and transpose the loops!
There are more FX samples in the refill than you can find in the combinator section. Of course you can find those in the sample section of Massive Progressive. Load them into your sampler or drum machine and tweak the sample length, the sample start and tunings for crazy results. Most FX are great for percussion purposes as well.
The LFO pads are set to get that typically progressive moving downbeat sound. Many producers use the side chain compression trick with kickdrums triggering what’s happening to the pads. This may cause dull sounding results that can’t be corrected by using extra EQ or even more compression. Try our LFO pads instead and let the end-maximizer do its job in the end (use the 4ms look ahead function). Please check the 12 RNS-demos to get an idea of what we are talking about.
There are 50 Pad combinators. All of them were programmed while a loop and a ReQuencer were running and while there were already some mastering devices set to active. We did this to come to maximum mingling results. The pads might sound less impressive compared to our Mystic Dream Pads when they’re played stand alone. They will sit perfectly in every progressive trance mix though. That is why we did it this way this time!
A great sound is often the result of tuning your samples in the right way. The root note is very safe of course, but don’t emphasize the root note too much! The kick drum gets the root note most of the times. The fifth (G in C) is a great choice for hi percussion and for claps. The fourth (F in C) is also a strong one. We call this one the sub dominant. The minor 7 (Bflat in C) works great for snares! The minor and major 3 (Eflat and E in C) are interesting but tricky ones, be carefull with those and if you use them, don’t hide them but put them upfront! Perfect tuning will make your mixes sound more transparent and stronger. You’ll need less EQing and compression when you do it like this.
DATAMASKIN
