Music Production

If you have a computer, and you’re a musician, chances are you can use it to make music. The specs of the computer hardware doesn’t necessarily need to be top technology, but the rule of thumb is that better computing power will afford you better audio editing and processing capabilities. Besides hardware, we also need software to help us make the music, and one of the well-known software (that’s also light on the computer) is Propellerhead Reason.

Reason is a Virtual Studio type of software, as opposed to a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) type of software (such as Pro Tools and Cubase). The main difference in Reason that categorizes it as a Virtual Studio program is that it doesn’t record audio. Reason consist of soft-synths – virtual instruments that you control using MIDI data to make the sound, store it, and play it back.

But this is where Reason excels. Because it doesn’t focus on recording audio, what it does focus on is its collection of powerful soft-synths that allow you a wide sonical palette to cover all sorts of musical avenues from jazz, to dance, to trip-hop – you name it, Reason can get it! Though it is safe to say that Reason is more geared towards the electronic music crowd, such as glitch, chiptune, trance, and other loop/programming based music.

You make music in Reason by using Devices (which are the soft-synths). These devices are categorized into two types, instrument devices and effect devices (which is pretty self explanatory). The instrument devices include the famous soft-synths such as the Dr. Rex Loop Player, to use and manipulate loops; ReDrum, the drum machine that can play samples from presets or load your own sounds from ReFills; the Combinator, a powerful device to combine other devices to make instruments that don’t even exist in real life! Using Reason, you get a powerful program that you can tailor to your musical needs. The only limit is your imagination (and your computer’s processing power – of which Reason is surprisingly light for such a powerful audio synthesis program).

That’s all for the introduction on Reason. I hope this article can make you understand what Reason is a little bit better (in case you’ve been wondering for some time now).

Endy Daniyanto is an aspiring singer-songwriter who produces his own music from the comfort of his modest home studio. Read more tips and tutorials on how to produce your own music at his website: http://music.endydaniyanto.net/ezine

Kevin Teasley & Lamont Sydnor – Reason artists

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