REASON - Please Direct Reason questions here

[Faustt]

hey guys. been fooling around with reason lately and like it a lot, I can see it has huge potential. only problem is its really overwhelming.... was wondering if there was a guide or tutorial for the various devices you can put into the stack. some of those things have a *lot* of nobs. lol. the help file has a crap load of info, but its a little over my head. I play a few instruments but dont have any really experience with synths or mixers so its kinda greek to me.

if you guys could point me to a site or give any advice that would be great.

thanks!

[sgx]

The getting started manual that came with Reason is good. (Does it still come with it? I bought mine back when it was 2.0)

I'm thinking about doing some video tutorials for Reason newbs at some point. Not for at least a month though. We shall see.

[Arcana]

Did you buy Reason or are you playing with the demo? The demo does not come with the help files (for some reason).

Maybe I'll write up a short summary of the devices some time, but until then, here's a slight tip:

From top to bottom you have:

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Combinator (doesn't make sound, combines other devices)

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Mixers: a big one, and a small one.

Mixer 14:2. Contains 14 channels and contains room for up to 4 send effects. Use this for your main mixer.

Line Mixer 6:2. Contains 6 channels and contains room for up to 1 send effect. Usually used in a combinator when you want to save some space.

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Things that make sound:

Subtractor Analog Synthesizer: A substractive synthesizer.

Malstrom "Graintable" Synthesizer: A "graintable synthesizer" (the oscillators use "grains" or little samples).

NN19 Digital Sampler: A simple sampler (I think this is deprecated, use the NN-XT instead.)

NN-XT Advanced Sampler: Advanced Sampler.

Dr.REX Loop Player: A loop machine, good for drum loops.

Redrum Drum Computer: A drum machine with step sequencer.

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The MClass Mastering tools

MClass Mastering Suite: Your big combinator comtaining everything. Usually you put this between your mixer and the hardware interface.

MClass Equalizer: Parametric EQ.

MClass Stereo Imager: Stereo Expander/Imager.

MClass Compressor: A pretty standard compressor.

MClass Maximizer: A limiter/maximizer. Great for preventing clipping.

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Advanced effects:

RV-7000: An advanted reverb unit.

Scream 4: a distortion unit.

BF512: a vocoder.

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Simple Effects. The names are acronyms, which should help when you look at them.

RV-7: Reverb (it's crappy, use the RV-7000 instead)

DDL-1: Digital Delay Line for delay

D-11: Distortion (it's also crappy, use the Scream 4 instead)

ECF-42: Envelope controlled filter

CF-101: Chorus/Flanger

PF-90: Phaser

UN-16: Unison

COMP-01: Compressor (Crappy, use the MClass Compressor instead)

PEQ-2L Parametric EQ (crappy, use the MClass EQ instead)

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The Spider units can combine and split signals into one line... great for making automated CV effects and cool audio sonds.

Spider Audio Merger/Splitter: Used to merge and split audio signals.

Spider CV Merger/Splitter: Used to merge and split CV signals.

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This is kind of the miscellaneous section.

Matrix Pattern Sequencer: Really cool sequencer. Control things with CV using it. You can also use the Dr.REX and the Redrum for other ways to control using CV (most synths with an LFO also have a CV out for that).

Rebirth Input Machine: Used if you have Rebirth and want to plug it into Reason, chances are it doesn't apply to you.

Other basic Reason functions:

To make a sequencer track: create a device that makes sound.

To start drawing notes: select a track and hit Shift-TAB (or click on the Red/Yellow/Blue bars on the toolbar). This is called Edit Mode. Draw stuff in on the piano roll.

Switch-switch Pencil and Arrow: Press and hold ALT to toggle between the two tools.

To use automation: Right-click on what you want to automate and select "Edit Automation". (There are other ways to automate too, but that's the simplest one).

To edit note velocity: Click on the notes with the pencil at the velocity you want. To edit only some notes at the same time, select them with the arrow and Shift-click on the notes. Only selected notes will be edited.

If you want to learn more about knobs and stuff, the most complex devices are the sound generation devices. However zircon wrote an introduction to synthesis that applies to the Subtractor in Reason (and a bunch of its other devices, too). http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=62065

Hope that helps.

Edit: There's also a realyl good book out there called "Reason 2.5 Power!" that I learned a bunch of Reason from. Very nice way to learn and it's meant for beginners. Zircon recommended this to me a while back and it was really good. There might be a 3.0 version out now, not sure. Anyway keep an eye out for that.

[Faustt]

been playing with the demo and thinking about getting the full version

that little run down was great. nice simple terms . will need to read through that link this it this afternoon looks very informative. thanks Arcana =)

[Xaleph]

Great Reason tutorial on Combinators.

Although I already figured most of this out, I think it's very important to understand when dealing with Combinators.

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2005/08/03/combinator.html?page=1

[Arcana]

THere's a good Propellerheads tutorial on Combinators (and other Reason devices) as well, with example songs.

http://www.propellerheads.se/home/discover/index.cfm?fuseaction=displaymain

There is actually a rather large lack of Reason tutorials on the Internet. I was working on writing a Reason tutorial for n00bs, but never finished it.

[sgx]

www.combinatorhq.com has video combinator tutorials. I dunno why they would be needed though...I thought combi's were extremely simple to figure out.

[Malcos]

This has probably got to be the dumbest question on earth, ever, but I just have to ask. How do you use that favourites thing on the browser?

Yes yes, let the ridicule commence...

[sgx]

Here is how you use favorites: RTFM LOLZ.

Actually I haven't used it yet; it was weird and I haven't bothered to find out how to work it. I have made several folder shortcuts in the browser though. That is usefull enough for me.

[Arcana]

I think you just drag and drop patches into the list.

You have to do it one patch at a time, so it doesn't make it very useful to me. I usually use the folders too.

[Faustt]

There's also a realyl good book out there called "Reason 2.5 Power!" that I learned a bunch of Reason from. Very nice way to learn and it's meant for beginners. Zircon recommended this to me a while back and it was really good. There might be a 3.0 version out now, not sure. Anyway keep an eye out for that.

just bought the 3.0 version on amazon. should be a good read. thanks again.

[Nivi]

This has probably been asked before, but I'm too lazy/stupid/tired to look for it:

CAN you change tempo? I thought I heard ParagonX9 usi it in Alternate Route, but he's left everywhere now, so I can't ask him.

Did he just make the notes longer or what?

PS: Noobish questions suck.

[Hy Bound]

You can't change tempo in reason. However, if you use an alternate program and rewire it into Reason you can change tempo.

On a separate note, the most I've ever learned from reason is by looking at .rps. You can go in and look how to do a certain effect that someone has used in their song. SGX has rps and rsn files for download on his site (how about updates, eh SGX? ). I can also contribute my rps files if anyone wants them. I have done some pretty crazy stuff that I would be willing to share (Not to toot my own horn ). Good luck.

[Arcana]

Post your Reason song files here.

That thread should grow and grow and you all should contribute to it and make it awesome.

As for tempo changes, you can't in Reason unless it's automated using Rewire.

However, a lot of people get around this by cutting and pasting wave files together and various other techniques.

[Xaleph]

Reason 3.0.4 has been released and fixes some serious issues that prevented many songs to be rendered properly as well as other pretty serious issues. I highly suggest you upgrade to 3.0.4.

[sgx]

This has probably been asked before, but I'm too lazy/stupid/tired to look for it:

CAN you change tempo? I thought I heard ParagonX9 usi it in Alternate Route, but he's left everywhere now, so I can't ask him.

Did he just make the notes longer or what?

PS: Noobish questions suck.

A way to sorta get around this is to arrange at one tempo, then select the area you want to change tempo, right click, go to change events, then scales the velocity. It makes it tough to go back and edit since note snapping will most likely be off with the new tempo, but it gets the job done. We did Frame of Mind (Beyond Good and Evil) all in Reason and its got tempo changes.

[TraderJack]

I have an issue. Every time I try to open Reason or a Reason Demo version, I get an error message immediately saying "Failed to set up ReWire System properly, exiting".

I'm sure someone knows why this is happening...?

-IV

[sgx]

Maybe if you have both Reason and the demo installed, its screwing up rewire? Whenever I have rewire issues, I just go reinstalling any rewire compatible programs I have until the rewire issue is fixed.

[zircon]

No, I said 100+ machines. I tend to make very complex setups very fast.

[sgx]

Zircon needs more than 100 machines (which happens to me quite often too..congrats to me), but its not like you need to control 100 machines, so I'm not sure what the problem is. We were talking about controlling machines, not having machines.

[Arcana]

I have an issue. Every time I try to open Reason or a Reason Demo version, I get an error message immediately saying "Failed to set up ReWire System properly, exiting".

I'm sure someone knows why this is happening...?

1. Reboot.

2. Don't start Reason before starting any other rewire host, and then try to use both programs at the same time. Reason gets confused.

3. If you use a host, and the open Reason, quit Reason completely before exiting the Rewire host. Not shutting down your Rewire Slave before the host is the main cause of this problem.

[zircon]

The way Rewire works, every MACHINE will take up another MIDI channel on the list. That's the problem, at least with FLStudio. It doesn't matter how many 'audio tracks' you do or don't have.

[Arcana]

I posted about Logic and rewiring Reason a while ago, which you've already read about, Zircon... I can get 100+ devices rewired into Logic with no problem.

http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=23605&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=374

So the problem would seem to be with the host, not with Rewire.

One thing that is limiting with Rewire, though (at least in Logic) is that it doesn't seem to do automation data in the host sequencer, as far as I've tried (which hasn't been very much and was at least two months ago).

Even then, you can still sequence in Reason itself, and then route all of the audio to the hardware interface, which gets sent to FLStudio so you can do the mixdown. You won't be able to use FLStudio's sequencer to control all of the instruments, but you can still use Reason's sounds. Not nearly as good of a setup, though.

[zircon]

Right, I'm not saying its a Rewire problem, I even said "that's the problem, with FLStudio anyway". Here's how FL treats rewire.

1. You add a "Rewired" channel.

2. You select the Rewire client.. in this case Reason.

3. You hit "Show Panel". This actually loads Reason alongside FL so you can go and edit stuff.

4. To access Reason's sounds, you click on "MIDI Options" in the Rewired settings. There is a list of MIDI channels, each ONE being a Machine. So #1 is "Hardware Interface". To actually use one, you select Output from the "Map" menu, select a MIDI port, and then click "Add" (there is a "To" menu as well, but all it says is Reason 6.. no other options). So by doing that, you set an Output port to 'bus 6', and then use FLStudio's MIDI outs to actually send the MIDI data.

[TraderJack]

Haha... I always get anxious and fail to restart when I install new software. I actually hadn't restarted my system in three weeks.

One more question... I think I should be hearing sound coming from Reason... but I'm not. Is there anyway to test if I'm getting sound or not? It may be an issue with having chosen the wrong sound card driver, but I tried a few and nothing works. Thanks again.

-IV