No matter what style of music you?re into, you can be sure there's a loop out there that can spice your track up a little, or even lift it to completely new heights. But handling loops and grooves equals hard work. Hours of pitching and stretching just to get a loop to fit your song's tempo and timing. And if you need to change the key, you?re in for even more work. In the end, your loops are controlling you, instead of vice versa. But help is on its way. From Propellerhead Software comes a suite of programs that gives you full creative control over your looped material! Welcome to ReCycle 2.1 ? The Ultimate Toolkit for Sampled Grooves.
ReCycle goes way beyond simply solving groove problems and cleaning up your loop act ? it's a highly creative tool that helps you make the most of your grooves. In simple terms, ReCycle lets you do with sampled loops what you can do with beats programmed from individual drum sounds ? like alter the tempo, or replace sounds and process them individually. ReCycle turns concrete-rigid loops into musical modeling clay, allowing you, the loopist, to do pretty much what you desire.
Start out with a regular audio file or sample, preferably one of a rhythmic nature. Load the groove into ReCycle, and the program will ?look? at the groove, analyze it, and break it up into its rhythmic components. Each part is called a ?slice?. The process itself is fully automated, but once the slices are there, they are yours to move, audition or delete, using the programs on-screen tools and controls. Other tools allow you to set the length, attack and decay of the slices, and to change your grooves? overall tempo or pitch, without one affecting the other! It's not magic, but it's probably as close as you can get.
The next step is of course to bring your improved groove into one of your songs. At this point, the procedures differ depending on your equipment and preferred working method:
- If you like, you can use ReCycle simply as a problem solver for loops. Load a drum loop into ReCycle, set a new tempo or pitch, and save the results as a new file. Or load up any groove, and use ReCycle's on-screen signal processors: Compressor, EQ and Transient Designer, to give it some punch and distinction. Anything you choose to do in ReCycle can be applied to your loop, and saved as a new file.
- To use your loop directly in Emagic Logic, Steinberg Cubase SX, Steinberg Nuendo or other audio sequencers supporting REX2 files, all you need to do is save your sliced-up loop as a REX2 file and import it onto an Audio Track in your sequencer. The imported loop will play back like the original, but now you can change the tempo freely, and you will have full control over the original slices! Silence, move or replace individual hits, change volume and panning ? your loop has come to life!
- To use recycled loops directly in a REX2 compatible software sampler such as the NN-XT and Dr. Rex modules in Propellerhead Software's Reason, Steinberg Halion or Emagic EXS24 (see full list below), just follow the same procedure: save your improved loop as a REX2 file containing the samples/slices, and open up the file from your sampler. Quantize it, change the tempo, retune or replace the sounds ? Total Loop Control!
- ReCycle can also export sliced loops in a other popular formats such as SoundFont2 and SampleCell II formats, along with a MIDI file to play the exported loop back with it's original timing.
To take full advantage of the program, you need an application that reads REX2 files (such as Propellerhead Reason), a SoundFont compatible application, an AKAI sampler that supports .AKP files, Digidesign SampleCell, or a program that reads Mixman TRK files.
Windows:- PC with 300 MHz or faster Pentium compatible processor
- 128 MB of RAM or more
- CD-ROM drive (for installation only)
- Windows 2000, Windows XP (or later)
- 800x600 display (or better)
- 16-bit Windows compatible audio card, preferably with an ASIO or DirectX driver
- Power Macintosh G3, G4 or G5 processor (or better)
- 128 MB of RAM or more
- CD-ROM drive (for installation only)
- Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later
- 800x600 display (or better)
