More and more recently I’ve been pulling my phone out on the go and adding to a Notes file I keep called “Short Form Video Ideas” for the Reason Studios’ YouTube channel. It’s a funny thing about creativity of any kind, once you start getting ideas it creates a wave of additional ideas! One of the recent ideas I wrote down simply said “Explain why pedal tones are awesome.” Last week I was watching an episode of Ted Lasso which had this super emotional piano score underneath and I realized that it was the pedal tone that was making the music so powerful. Right then I knew what I must do: Make that video ASAP!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2g2G5fUY8Q

I say it in the video: I love pedal tones and they had a profound impact on my creative instincts when I was getting into music. Hopefully people who haven’t tried messing around with them will after watching this latest video!

While making that video I built a little Combinator to make the Key-Split possible to play chords with one hand and pedal tones with my other hand. After I made it I realized people might want me to share it so I added some Combinator custom controls that adjust both Radical Pianos at the same time inside the Combinator. One thing to note: if you change the key from C to some other note, you might want to adjust the key range of the devices inside the Combinator just like I do in the video. I’ve even put a cheat-sheet on the Combi panel itself to show you what the 5th interval pedal tone would be for any key.

And of course, once the video dropped people didn’t just want the Combinator. They wanted the song idea I started in the video too! So I’ve included that in this download as well. Enjoy and hopefully you make some great music as a result. If you do make something using pedal tones or if you develop my song starter, share it with us. We love hearing what you do!

Download the giveaway

 

/ryan