Why Player when you can one finger piano? As the tools get more sophisticated and also more plentiful, the job of making things happen gets easier and easier. There was a time when if a Reason User wanted to play chords with a single finger, then a Reason User had to MacGyver an instrument with things close to hand. #Truestory…
The one finger piano is a prime example of a MacGyver’d device. Like the Percussive Notch Filtered Reece Bass, the one finger piano was something I made long ago and forgot all about. So, what does it do? Well, you press a key on your MIDI keyboard then the one finger piano delivers a chord. The mod wheel on your keyboard is utilised to choose whether the chord is major or minor. Simple.
The Reason Users Pre-Player One Finger Piano:
Although there are quite a few steps involved in making one, it’s not that difficult to do. If you want to have a go with one but don’t feel like bashing through a tutorial, grab the download below. We understand! For those that are going to have a go, let’s get stuck in!
Assembling The Piano In the Reason Rack:
- Create a new combinator.
- Inside the combinator create a 14:2 mixer.
- In the Combinator create 6 NN-XT’s.
- Name your NN-XT’s; Root, Major, 5th, Minor, High Octave, and Low Octave.
- Naming things in this way helps you when it is time to use the Programmer.
- Choose your NN-XT patch, we chose: B GrandPiano 1.0.sxt from the Factory Soundbank.
- Drag the same patch onto each of the remaining 5 NN-XT devices.
- Ensure that each of the NN-XT’s is connected to a channel of the 14:2 mixer.
Note: I specifically chose this patch because the Mod Wheel was not already in use by the piano patch.
Programming The Combinator:
Programming the combinator is a 2 step process. Step 1 is setting up the one finger chord function, step 2 is setting up the major/minor performance switch and setting up buttons for switching the octaves on and off.
Programming step 1: We are going to set up a simple 3 note chord and the octaves.
- Open up the programmer of the combinator.
- In the programmer, click through each of the named NN-XT’s (Root through to Low Octave) and enter the correct values into the Transp box.
- When you click on a device it will be highlighted as shown above.
- To enter a value, click in the box and then drag your mouse up for positive values and down for negative ones.
- The correct values for each are;
- Root: Leave as is.
- Major: 4.
- 5th: 7.
- Minor: 3.
- High Octave: 12.
- Low Octave: -12.
Programming step 2: We’ll now use the programmer to set up the Mod Wheel to toggle between minor and major and also set up a couple of buttons on the combinator to turn the octaves on and off. The switching is achieved through connecting the mod wheel to the mute buttons in the 14:2 mixer, for both the major and also minor NN-XTs.
The above picture shows ALL of the programming required for step 2. Your work is now done!
Further Optional One Finger Piano Additions:
You can now spice up your creation with a few of your favourite things. We threw in a couple of stock effects and then programmed the combinator to allow us some control over them. The screenshots below detail how each effect is set up. If you don’t fancy setting this up but you do want to spice things up, you can utilise inserts and also send fx.
The Reverb:
The Chorus:
The EQ Booster:
