Join us as we delve into the hidden mysteries of the Kong drum machine.

We’ve covered the mechanics of Reason’s Kong drum machine in the dim and distant past, but I’ve recently been exploring some of the interesting sound creation features of its integrated synth and sample modules, and wanted to share.

Boss Drum

Kong is Reason’s primary drum instrument, coexisting happily with the classic Redrum drum machine. Kong is much like an MPC or Maschine drum program, with a 4x4 pad grid triggering independent channels, each with its own synth or sampler‑based module and effects chain. Redrum, on the other hand, is modelled after classic beatboxes with an internal pattern‑based sequencer.

You’d be forgiven for assuming Kong is a simple sample‑based drum kit. However, if you click the Show Drum & FX button at the bottom to reveal the inner workings of each pad, you’ll see there’s a lot more going on.

It’s quite easy to miss the complexity and versatility of Kong’s design when looking at its primary (and slightly drab) view in the Rack. There’s a generic settings panel for the selected pad over to the left, and some complicated looking options over on the right. You’d be forgiven for assuming Kong is a simple sample‑based drum kit. However, if you click the Show Drum & FX button at the bottom to reveal the inner workings of each pad you’ll see there’s a lot more going on.

Each pad can be powered by one of nine different sound modules, some sample‑based and some synths. Each channel also has two insert FX slots that can be populated from the pool of nine effects modules. Two additional slots house Bus and Master FX modules. Seasoned Reasonistas will probably be familiar with this not‑so‑secret part of Kong, but did you know there are two additional mini‑synth modules that can be used in any pad, or that you can set up trigger variations for many of the modules?

Inner Voices

If you drop a sample onto a Kong pad it automatically loads into a mini‑sampler instrument called NN‑Nano. But any pad can instead run a drum‑synth module. These are chosen from the Drum Module pop‑up menu at the top left of Kong’s foldout instrument panel (Screen 1 above). In fact the modular setup of each drum channel and its FX slots can be saved as a preset file, called a .drum file in Reason. These can be loaded from the file browser in the pad settings area, or dragged onto a pad. Reason’s Factory Sounds Refill has plenty of examples in the Kong Sounds and Samples folder.

At the top of the drum module list you’ll see the two sample‑based engines: NN‑Nano, and Nurse Rex Loop Player. Nurse Rex can load and trigger REX loops and slices: we covered the cool things you can do with this, like quickly juggling and resequencing breaks, back in the June 2017 issue of SOS. The rest of the list comprises drum synths. There are three physical‑modelling engines that dynamically recreate the sound of bass drums, snares and toms. Then there are four synths that model classic analogue drum‑machine voices, offering kicks, snares, hats and toms.

We could probably dive into a rabbit hole going over the details of these fantastic sub‑modules, but I promised ‘secret’ features and I’m going to assume you’ve spent some time playing with these already.

Supporting Roles

At the top of the FX slot selectors you’ll find two modules separated into their own section. These aren’t FX at all: they are in fact sound‑generating synth modules called the Support Generators, as they are mainly meant to supplement the primary drum modules. You can however use them without a drum module. They remind me of the percussion/drum‑synth voices found in classic old Reaktor groovebox patches.

Tone is a sine‑wave oscillator with a wide pitch range and a Shaper control that dials in more harmonics (and I think is probably a wave folder). There’s a simple Attack/Decay envelope which appropriately has a percussive decay slope that can go down to very short times. The other section is for pitch mod; apply a pitch envelope with instant attack and variable decay as set by the Bend Dec knob. The other knob, Bend, sets the depth of this pitch sweep.

With settings in the vicinity of those in Screen 1 you can get some lovely fat classic kicks, with the satisfaction that you made them yourself. Layering the tight, punchy sound of this synth with the softer dusty tones from the analogue bass‑drum synth is extra effective. I like to add a little of the Overdrive FX module with the resonance turned right down. If you place this in the Bus FX slot and dial up the bus send from the pad parameters you get a parallel processing structure. This keeps the clean, clicky punch of the original with nice warm saturation. If you run it in the usual way as an insert it can lose its impact and sound tubby.

There’s loads more the Tone module can do. With some knob twiddling you can reach other classic synth drum sounds, blocks, taps, tweets and zaps. It’s essentially what would typically be the ‘body’ part of an analogue drum voice, which would be blended with a noise source. You can see this approach used in the primary analogue drum modules.

Make Noise

The Noise module has a similar layout to Tone, but uses a white noise source as its starting point. The Pitch control sounds like it is controlling a band‑pass filter that this noise passes through. In place of the bend controls you have Sweep and Reso, which apply an envelope and resonance to the filter. The Click knob controls the level of an extra transient sound that provides some attack.

Noise can be used to create a range of classic synth snare sounds, and can be deployed in tandem with the Tone generator as in Screen 2. Of course you can add it to any of the other modules to add some of that Roland snap. (The Rattler effect is also good for this). Again, this module is quite versatile and responds to velocity, getting brighter for louder notes. With a little application of short delay you can even get close to a crude synth clap or fingersnap.

Hit Types

The other little known trick up Kong’s sleeve is the Hit Type system. This feature is used in conjunction with Drum Assignments, allowing you to trigger a single sound module differently from different pads. Back in our 2017 Kong sample chopping tutorial we looked at how this can be used by the Nurse Rex module to configure different pads to trigger specific sections or hits within a sliced loop. Other modules use Hit Types to vary their sounds dynamically.

Analogue drum machines old and new often share synth circuits between more than one sound. A typical example would be the hi‑hat, where the closed and open hat sounds use the same voice but with different decay times. You can model this behaviour in Kong using the Synth Hi‑Hat module. In Screen 3 I’ve chosen this module on pad 7, then used the Drum Assignment grid on the right of Kong to also assign pads 9 and 11 to this channel. You can see that these pads (which map to the cluster of three black keys in the C1 octave of a MIDI controller) now all have 7 on them.

At the bottom right of Kong’s panel you’ll see the Hit Type section. When you select a pad that’s assigned to a module that supports Hit Types, this section will show different variations. For the Synth Hi‑Hat module this is Closed, Semi‑Closed, Semi‑Open and Open. I’ve set each of my three hat pads to a different variation (skipping Semi‑Closed), and can now play authentic analogue hats. The three sounds auto‑choke (as they are the same source) and share a single signal path.

For further experimentation I’d also highly recommend exploring using this technique with the Physical Snare Drum, where you can hit different parts of the virtual drum. NN‑Nano has its own implementation of this feature too, with four different sample slots corresponding to the Hit Types. Each hit can have multiple velocity layers too. And you probably spotted that the Tone and Noise mini‑modules have a Hit Type selector on their panels, so you can set up variation or accent pads for the main module with the supporting generators only triggered by some.