Reason 4

Date: 4/3/10
Duration: 7hours

Having heard many accolades for the REASON software in the past, I decided to buy it make use of its excellent features. Having never used the program properly I decided to browse through the manual then went on youtube and other websites (including official Properllerhead website) for some tutorials on how to use the program.

After opening Reason I first placed a mixer which automatically connects its output to the external hardware. I got interested in Reason because people told me it was a excellent program for drums and general beat making so I decided to insert the Redrum rack.

After inserting the rack I loaded up some more drum samples, factory presets as well as custom patches and refill packages that came bundled with the software (bought on ebay). I played around with the sounds using the controller keyboard and went about tweaking few things and programming the on board sequencer with some drum beats.

I then went about adding reverb and delay lines as aux sends on the sends of the Redrum as well as on the mixer sends. All returns were fed back into the mixer where it could be "mixed" with the rest of the audio.

After deciding on a particular drums sounds that I liked I went about processing them and shifting their sounds for creative purposes. I had 3 snare samples with varying degree of reverb added and one of the snare samples triggered another sample using the gating patches found on the back of the rack (accessed by pressing the tab key). I added delay to one of the snare and added reverb to the overall drum mix but I didn't want reverb on the lower frequencies (kick drum) so I placed a parametric EQ after the auxiliary send and before the reverb unit to remove the lower band frequencies.
I also used a distortion rack on the hi-hat cymbal and one of the snare for more 'bite' and for it to cut through better in the drum mix.

(above shows all the routing except the reverb unit which couldn't fit in the window)

After I was happy with the sound of the drumkit that I created, I programmed the sequencer to play some varying drum beats and then I hit the record button. While recording I toggled between different banks so it seamlessly switched between the drum beats. After I had some beats down I decided to add some piano on top (sounded too bland as a drum sounds on its own). I loaded up the sampler and placed it on the rack. I tweaked the levels a bit and hit play and played over it several times and decided on what I was going to play.
Having not planned from the start I was going to play anything over the drums, the beats were all over the place but I managed (hopefully) to play something over but since I couldn't find the quantise button inside Reason, its left as played by me.

Here is the finished product (not really finished):