Treat Your Rex Drum Loop As If It Were A Kit

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Treat Your Rex Drum Loop As If It Were A Kit main

In this Reason tip, we are going to look at how you can treat a Rex Drum Loop as if it were a drum kit. Each hit type will be routed to its own track. Then, it can be processed independently of the rest of the loop.

Often, the loop that you’re working with can be treated as a whole. However, sometimes this isn’t the case. Being able to zone in on a specific drum and ‘fix’ it independently of the rest of the kit is sometimes the only way to get what you want. Let’s get into it!

A Rex Drum Loop As A Drum Kit:

Dr.OctoRex allows you to choose which output each individual slice is sent to. So,  you can go through your loop, a slice at a time, and group all of the kicks to one output and then snares to another, etc etc. Which in turn allows you to have separate mixer channels for each individual hit type. 

Device Creation:

Press F6 to go into rack view:

  • Create a Dr.OctoRex player
  • Load a drum loop.
  • Listen to your loop to see how many different kit parts there are. The loop I used has three, a kick, a snare, and some hats.
  • The create the extra mix channels, one for each of the kit parts.

The Dr.OctoRex Cable Routing:

Now we need to do a little routing, press TAB to flip the rack around.
Treat Your Rex Drum Loop As If It Were A Kit back of the rack

  • Connect Dr.OctoRex  1 & 2 to one mix channel Inputs and then name the channel Kicks.
  • Then, Connect Dr.OctoRex  3 & 4 to one mix channel Inputs, then name the channel Snares.
  • Finally, Connect Dr.OctoRex  5 & 6 to one mix channel Inputs and name the channel Hats.
  • If you have a loop with toms you can use 7 & 8.

The Rex Drum Loop Slice Routing:

All we need to do now is to tell Dr.OctoRex to route the slices of the loop to specific outputs. Press TAB to go back to the front rack view:

Note: We’ll leave the L and R connections on the back of the Dr.OctoRex in place for now, as it makes it easier to audition each slice.

To audition a slice; click a slice while holding the Alt key, pressing the Alt key while your cursor is over the slices will cause your cursor to change to a speaker icon.

routing of the slices

  • Audition each slice to determine which hit type it is and what output it needs sending to.
  • Click directly on a slice to highlight it then use the OUTPUT knob to choose which output to send it to.
  • Repeat for each slice.

NOTE: To make it easier on myself I will often go through each slice looking for kicks, selecting the outputs as I find each kick. I then go through the whole loop again looking for, and routing, the snares, etc. Although you have to go through the loop several times, it requires less deliberation and also reduces the likelihood of mistakes. If it cuts out thinking, then I’m all over it!

If you have 8 loops loaded into your Dr.OctoRex, you can then repeat the Slice Routing steps for each of the 8 loops. Done. You can disconnect the default L and R connections if you want and then delete the mix channel that the Dr.OctoRex was originally connected to.

You can now process the individual drum parts in any way you want.