Beginner's Guide to Experimentation with Reason Video Lecture | Reason Tutorials: The Ultimate Guide - Video & Sound Editing

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everyone I'm James Bernard from
Propellerhead software and what we're
going to do today is cover the process
of creating a song from scratch reason
what I want to do in this video is
actually give you a little bit more
confidence in experimenting we're going
to cover some of the what ifs what if I
were to take something that I created
and twist it in a new way a lot of times
you might come up with something very
interesting having a happy accident or
so but even if you don't and you do
something you don't like you can always
get back to where you were
so let's stretch up and cover a little
bit of the what-ifs what I want to do is
we're going to start with drums so I'm
going to create a calm drum designer
we're going to select one of the factory
patches here I'm going to go into where
it says comm kits and I'm going to use
the buyer like a bush and just select
something from the first play it on our
keyboard kind of cool alright I think
that'll work for me and I'm going to
change my tempo here let's say so 140
I'm feeling kind of in a dubstep mood
today so we're going to do a dubstep
track I'm going to turn on click to a
pre count one bar and just start
recording at work all right so I've got
my hat and my kicking my snare here and
I'm just going to look at the kick and
snare track and I can see that my snare
is here
now what I want to do is let's take one
of these hits here and maybe scoot it
forward or back a little bit I'm gonna
turn snap off and I'm just gonna nudge
it slightly behind the beat you know
what that didn't really work so let's
just undo it and let it be where it was
so while this is playing I'm gonna now
go in and look for another sound and and
I don't really know what synth is going
to make the sound that I want so I'm
going to actually go and use create
instrument and I'm going to look in my
reason factory sound bank and look at my
instrument patches and I want a bass
sound so I'll go to the bass probably
want a synth bass we'll just listen to
some of the sounds that are here I think
that'll work
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now listening to this back I may want to
go in and start tweaking a little bit of
this sound to sculpt it a little bit to
what I want maybe I want to give it a
little bit more resonance try a lot of
resonance no I don't like what I just
did there so let me just hit undo maybe
I want a little bit of delay on this
we'll turn on the delay we'll take that
Thor and let's run it through now let's
say spring in distortion give it a
little bit of fuzz let me go back here
I'm just gonna undo a bunch of times and
hear what sounds like without I like it
without it so we'll keep it like that
alright so my tracks playing back and
you know the snare that's here it's cold
but I want to try sampling a snare
instead I've just using my internal mic
on our laptop here and it's already
routed from that audio input to the
sampling input I'm just gonna go to the
pad and record a simple
so now that works for me maybe I want to
pitch it up a little bit
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we'll try something else out on the base
so it's a Thor that's making a sound but
I might want to try different device and
see if I can get a different tone so
while the trash playing back I'm just
going to go to my factory soundtrack and
I'm not gonna look at all instrument
patches but I'm going to try say
Malstrom patches what I'm hearing is
actually the MIDI that I've recorded on
the track triggering the sound that I
select let's tweak that a bit that's not
really doing it for me so let me just
hit on do we get back to our source
sound here sounds exactly as it did at
the beginning so I mean we have this
ability to while the tracks still
playing completely change devices and
not miss a beat programs not going to
crash on us and we can really try a
bunch of things out and find the sound
that works so this one I think is the
one I'm going to stick with and I think
at this point we'll add in a lead track
or some sort of a chord track alright so
I've got the sound and what I want to do
is process it through something so I'm
going to run it through the mouse drum
filter maybe or run it through the wave
shape Iran the Malstrom and see what it
sounds like so we'll create a Malstrom
and when I hold down the shift key when
I create a device it actually doesn't
route it so I'm free to make the
connections in any way I want so while
this is playing back I'm going to take
the audio that was normally coming out
of just disconnect it and route that in
to let's say the audio input here into
the shaper and I'm going to take the
output of the maelstrom and have that
connected to my mixer
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you know I don't want the shaver but I
do like the couch and I want that comb
filter to maybe open and close a little
bit so I'm going to use mod B and it's
filter by turning the knob to the right
it's going to start changing this filter
here to change its rate so slow so get a
little bit of a flange something that's
happening which works out pretty well
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yeah I like that
let's add in percussion loop I'll go to
my factory sound bank we'll get some of
the percussion up Center in here and
don't know let's see what something from
prints board might sound like that might
work so let's see what that sounds like
with the track listen to that track by
itself let me give it a little bit more
groove so let's try regroup here and
we'll get something from let's say the
MPC 60 folder I think that'll work
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kind of like that because it's kind of
given a nice little slightly human feel
to something that was very sequenced in
program don't try something different
let's take this Malstrom when we were
using mod B to change the filter here
mod a is not being used so I'm going to
use its output and let's go to no pitch
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let's see what that sounds like you know
what I'm not really liking that so let's
just undo it yeah that's better
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that's working from all right so what I
want to do now is I'm going to take this
lead sound and I want to record some
automation maybe open and close the
filter a bitch over the course of this
eight bar phrase and so as we can see
here there's my automation that got
recorded and if I decide that you know I
didn't really like that first part I
only kind of liked where it's starting
to open up towards the end there we'll
just keep that part well in that short
amount of time we were able to take a
song and create something from scratch
and we tried a bunch of stuff out some
that we liked some of that we didn't but
most of all we were having some fun we
were getting inspired by new sounds and
new ways to tweak things and that's
really what you should be doing trying
some new stuff out make mistakes have
fun don't be afraid to mess something up
because you could always start over from
a new song or you could just hit undo
and get back to where you were before
thanks again I'm James Bernard get out
there and make some reason songs and
have some fun
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