EQ Magazine - September 2008 - (Page 34)

KEY ISSUES Fig. 1. Reason’s PH-90 Phaser showing the settings. Fig. 4. Some MIDI notes and controller data. Fig. 2. The Pro Tools MIDI Input and Output selector. Fig. 3. The Track View selector. SIMULATING A LESLIE by Jonathan Stars I do my musical projects in Pro Tools and use Reason for most of my software instruments. Every once in a while, I need the sound of a Hammond B3 with a Leslie. But the Reason B3 sounds always disappointed me because they use vibrato rather than that wonderful swirling speaker sound a Leslie provides. Recently, I was working on a project where the organ sound was just too exposed to get away with that cheesy vibrato. So I set about to solve the little problem, and I came up with a pretty good solution. It should work for any program that uses Reason as a sound source, and the concept should also work for other sound sources. THE REAL THING Many organ patches use vibrato to add movement to the sound. But vibrato is only a pitch change. Some even go as far as adding tremolo, which alternates between the loudness and softness of the sound. The wonderful texture of the Leslie speaker effect is the result of the Doppler Effect that occurs when the speakers rotate toward and away from the listener, and bounce off other surfaces. The real Leslie also has two speeds, and it takes a few seconds to change from one speed to the other. So to recreate that part of the effect, you need to find a way to duplicate the ramping up and down of the motor in order to make a simulation sound believable. DO IT YOURSELF Let’s start by building the B3 instrument in Reason. Go to the Create menu and choose NN-19 Digital Sampler. Then create a PH-90 Phaser. Route the left and right audio outputs from the NN-19 into the left and right inputs of the PH-90. Then, take the outputs from the PH-90 and send them into the Reason Hardware Interface—in this example I’ll use inputs 1 and 2. (I don’t use the Reason mixer because I prefer to do all my mixing in Pro Tools.) Make sure the PH-90 is switched to the On position, and use these settings: FREQ: 58 SPLIT: 64 WIDTH: 127 RATE: 45 F.MOD: 44 (F. Mod) FEEDBACK: 53 Leave the SYNC button off, and check out Figure 1 to ensure all is well. Now, go to the NN-19 and using the Patch Browser, find the ORGAN1.smp preset in the Organ folder. Click the Save Patch button (it looks like a floppy disk, and it’s the third button to the right of the patch name), and name it B3 Leslie. Also, rename the NN-19 by clicking the little For more, go to eqmag.tv. piece of tape that runs vertically on the left of the instrument and typing NN B3 in the little window. This will make it easier to find in Pro Tools. THE PRO TOOLS INSTRUMENT Back in Pro Tools, create a Stereo Instrument track, and name it B3. In the Instrument area of either the Mix or Edit window, go to the MIDI Input selector drop-down (marked Dg002,Prt11 in the red circle in Figure 2), and choose your interface. In my case, I’m choosing the Digi002 Port 1, Channel 1. In the MIDI Output selector drop-down (marked NN B3 51-2 in Figure 2), choose the NN B3 you just created. That will send your MIDI notes out to the NN B3. In the Insert section, click the arrows to create a multichannel plugin, Instrument, and choose Reason from the flyout menu. This should bring up the ReWire dialog (Figure 3). In the drop-down next to Reason, choose Mix L – Mix R, which come from inputs 1 and 2 of the Reason hardware Interface we set up earlier. You could control the rate of the PH-90 on the B3 track in Pro Tools, but I’ve developed a method that allows me to both view and work with the controller modulation more easily by using a different track. To do that, create a new mono Instrument track and name it Phaser. From the MIDI Output selector drop-down, choose 34 EQ SEPTEMBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://eqmag.tv http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - September 2008

EQ Magazine - September 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Freak Folk Todd Rundgren Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Sony Acid 6 Ableton Live 7 Portable Recorder Showdown Gadgets and Goodies Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - September 2008

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