Reason ha so many features that some of them may often be overlooked. One possible candidate for an overlooked feature is Slicing Audio at Transient Markers. Most will already know this feature but for those that don’t, it can open up all sorts of creative possibilities.
The introduction of slice markers into the Reason mixer opened the door to several new features. We can now quantize our audio as if it were MIDI, turn it into REX files and we can even quickly and easily slice up our audio at the slice markers without having to zoom in and manually cut at every point. If you have turned audio files into rex files, then most of this process will already be familiar to you.
Slicing Audio at Transient Markers:
- Double click the audio clip that you wish to slice up.
- Use the mouse to select all of the slice markers (When selected, the white triangles at the top of each marker turn from white to black)
- Right click the audio clip
- From the context menu select, Split at Slices.
That is all there is to it. You now have as many audio clips as you have slices. Being able to create REX files from your audio is great but sometimes it is desirable to keep your audio as audio. One such benefit of slicing up your audio in this way is that you can now bounce each individual slice to a new sample and put each sample onto a Kong pad, allowing you to play your samples like an instrument.
Another tip: Slice markers are not absolute. You can delete unwanted markers or move existing markers so that instead of slicing at the transients, you can now slice something musical into separate phrases for use with the Kong pads. The MPC was never this easy.
NB: To add your own markers: Select the pencil tool and click where you would like your marker to appear. You can move it after creation if you didn’t quite land it in the right spot.
More info on Reason’s features can be found at the Propellerhead Website.