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June 2014 - Those who have been listening to
the first Dubroom productions in the new
2014 sound, have been recognizing very
familiar elements. At least, to those who
know their (DUB) Reggae music. Yes, there
were two releases carrying horns that unmistakably
came from Mad Professor's ARIWA SOUND
Studio's. So, what was the case? Yes, they
were the result of a purchase of Mad
Professor's REEL 2 REEL REGGAE, a loops and
sample pack that gives you enough material
to fill several albums.
Take a
Listen and pay attention to the horns:
DOWNLOAD
MP3
and
this one, now pay attention to the skank/riddim
section as well:
DOWNLOAD
MP3
These two
different horn themes are taken directly
from REEL 2 REEL REGGAE, the first -but
hopefully not last- Soundware Pack for
producers coming straight from Mad
Professor's Ariwa studio's. Even though
these two tracks are unmistakably Dubroom
productions, the horns and -in the second
track- skanks or riddim section are kind of
very much identifiable as well. They add a
touch and feel to the original Dubroom music
that kind of speaks of itself.
Presented
in both WAV and dr REX Format, the horn
themes are very flexible. A little bit of
moving slices and changing pitch and tempo
in your REX Loop player will give you many
different possibilities of creating your own
themes on your own riddims in your own
favorite chord progressions. In fact, that
is what was done in the first track
presented in this review. Definitely a
reason to check out the Sample Pack, but
that's by far not the only interesting stuff
that comes in the 515 mB Zip File.
There's something for everything, in
fact.
Whether you're looking for dry
instruments or (extremely) wet, looking for
loops or one-shot hits, guitar, drum, bass,
percussion, it doesn't really matter since
everything is there, nicely presented and
organized. There's even a folder with
patches for Soft Synths like Reason's NNXT
and TRAKTOR, to give you an instant start
even though the niceness is in the editing
and tweaking of the 24 bits audio files.
But first, let's grab a few REX Loops
that seem to match, delete and change some
slices and run them through one simple
delay, the filters on de Rex Player and one
simple standard reverb in Reason 3.0, shall
we? Listen to the following track, created
from scratch without regard to any correct
leveling and balanced dub mixing. This is
just a "plug and play" thingy,
that does not represent the works of Mad
Professor or anyone else but a little bit of
playing with loops at a most basic level. A
bit of limiting and normalizing, encoding
into MP3 and this is the result:
DOWNLOAD
MP3
One sub-bass loop, one drum loop, two REX
slices of a horn theme and one loop with
chords with just a little change in the
chord progression by simply cutting and
pasting the right chords in the right bars
to follow the bass. Just a simple delay/EQ
and a standard RV7000 Reverb in Reason 3.0
plus some sliding on the filters. Nothing
much, and already quite a sound.
Definitely inspiring to add your own
things, but you can also go much deeper and
re-construct parts of Ariwa tracks and
intro's that will sound very familiar
indeed. Don't go look for full construction
kits, though. This is not a
"click-your-mad-professor-dub-here",
because the harder you work the more
satisfying the result.
When you're
looking for sounds and inspirational loops
or foundations for your tracks, REEL TO REEL
REGGAE is definitely a must-have in your
sound-library. There are enough chords and
horns to create ten's of track and with a
little more work, even more than that.
Click HERE
to check out the Sample Pack or download a
demo that you can use for your
non-commercial productions, for free. Or check out the three musical
tracks produced only with material from Reel
to Reel Reggae Parts One and Two (with the
exception of the vocal parts).
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