A quick tune born from more Reason tinkering/learning (and extra time on my hands). Another all rhythm section all the time piece for the most part (it’s my speciality after all). It started off with just some dinking with bass, drums and Rhodes piano (the MKII version) and filled out from there. Picked up the acoustic drum upgrade for Reason (the one area that Reason falls down out of the box) and the excellent (and 100% free!) ElectroMechanical ReFill (get it!) of old vintage analog keyboards. Since I had acoustic drums and old keys at my disposal, I tried to eschew my usual standard operation procedure of everything all lushed up with layers of sounds and effects. A bad habit of mine.

The main issue I ran into is that I didn’t slap on the good headphones until it was final mix time and I realized that the sampling that was done on the Rhodes nicely retained the distortion that you get on the lower registers. I didn’t want to used this phased voicing for it (trying to be a bit more organic/honest with this one) but it covers up the fuzz that made the mix sound shitty since the piano is so prominent in the mix. Ditto with the sample of the highest tom on the drum kit. Very organic, very authentic, and due to the lack of screaming guitar/synth solos, made the mix sound like it was clipping all over the place. The high tom buzz is still there due to me being tired of screwing with it.

So for roll call, it’s drums, bass, the aforementioned Rhodes MKII doing main harmony, a Clavinet pokes it’s head in a few times, a Hammond Model A doing light textural duties, and a “Fleckstone” model Wurlitzer EP 100. Acoustic rhythm guitar programmed in Logic via ReWire shuttled back into reason via sample. ReWire is a bit of a pain in the ass. It requires re-cabling everything in Reason for seamless interaction and burns quite a bit of CPU at the same time. I didn’t put a lot of thought into the guitar part since it was experiment I wanted to “get on with” so the guitar samples were imported back into reason via the NN-XT sampler rather than being lovingly obsessed over.

So, it’s mostly a little jam with drums, bass, the guitarist playing Rhodes, the keyboardist playing old keys and a roadie chiming in on an acoustic guitar. It’s kind of short due to lack of vocals (please, god, send me a melody type person/singer) but would make a snappy little song given the right filling out. I’m just an arranger so it’s the best I can do.

As for the lame title, the Pop is a tribute to the bursts of distortion I encountered in mixing the vintage instruments and the Rhodeo is a (not so) clever play on words w/r/t the Rhodes being the anchor to the whole thing. Thank you, I’ll be here all week, don’t forget to tip your server.

[rhodeo-pop.mp3]

Not bothering with an RPS/Published Reason Song of this one since the samples would make it too big, the Reason rack is not that interesting, and use of the samples make it necessary to start the song from the beginning every time. Need to work that one out.

Cheers.