Propellerhead Reason Review: Checkout this cool Digital Audio Music Production. Learn about the most powerful & complete virtual studio recording rack! Reason allows the user to focus on making music, rather than wasting time moving around hardware and physically reconnecting them. You can test various ideas quickly (e.g. try out different effects) since you can hook up devices without leaving your seat.
- Want to setup a Powerful virtual studio rack on your Computer?
- Want an Infinitely Expandable all-in-one music production environment?
- Looking for capabilities which can extend to complete Mastered tracks?
- Looking for a fully functional Trial-version of the product?
Don’t want to spend a lot of time learning various tools and products? Want to create your music ASAP?
Have a look at Propellerhead’s Reason!
Propellerhead’s Reason is one of the most intuitive, and also one of the most music composition software available for music producers. When you open the software, its interface looks more like a music hardware/rack rather than a software. Those who are familiar with such hardware will instantly recognize the various tools: mixer, samplers, synths, drum machine, and effects devices. You can easily organize these devices on a virtual rack. Press the Tab key and it flips to reveal the back of the rack, showing all the inputs/outputs, gates and cables, as if you were looking at the back of actual hardware.
The design is so clever and amazing.
Reason also has a great sequencer, which logically converts the temporal nature of music into visual, spatial data. The sequencer should therefore be readily accessible for people who have basic experience with graphics software and easy to learn for those who don’t.
Here you will find Reason Tutorials to help you get a quick understanding of this product.
What is Reason?
Reason is a virtual studio rack with all the tools and instruments you need to turn your ideas into music. It’s a complete music system!
The Reason interface is designed to look like a hardware rack, with the individual components actually looking like hardware instruments.
When using Reason with other software such as Cubase, if you want each component in Reason to have a separate channel in Cubase then all you have to do is press the “tab” key (it flips the rack over) and then plug the cables for each component directly into the numbered channels on the back of the hardware interface.
Does it look complicated?
That’s the thing with Reason, when you look at it first, you think you’ve got a very complicated software on hand. However, just play with it for a while, things look easy (it does have plenty of features though).
If you do not intend to record audio tracks, this product should be a perfect fit for your requirements. It provides you all the tools to create your mix and burn to a CD. In case you wish to record audio tracks as well, you will also need a sequencer like Cubase / Sonar.
Reason Tutorials – The Various Reason Components
Lets take a look at the various Reason components and what they do.
The Propellerhead Reason software is designed to look like a hardware rack. In fact, as you add the different components of reason, you will see that it actually resembles a hardware rack with actual hardware instruments.
Just press "tab" and you can see the rack turn over. You can actually see the connections, the wiring, between the various instruments.
If you want each component in Reason to have a separate channel in Cubase, then press the tab key to flip the rack over and plug the cables for each component directly into the numbered channels on the back of the hardware interface.
If you now go back to Cubase, the channel numbers correspond to the channel numbers in the rewire panel (in Cubase go panels->rewire to see this).
Let us now look at the different Reason components and their uses.
DR Rex: Don’t want to spend time creating your own drum tracks? Then load from the available loops (known as rex files) in this instrument. If you want to edit any loop and create your own rex files, you will need another tool called Recycle from propellerhead. You can add the loops to a track within the sequencer.
ReDrum: Create your own drum track! Reason synth provides lots of drum kits; just load them into this instrument and create your own patterns using the pattern sequencer at the bottom. You can then add those patterns to a track within the sequencer.
Subtractor synth: Once you have the drum loops sorted out, you will need a bass track. Use this instrument to create basslines! Just add this instrument to the rack, select a bass sound that you like, select the Rec (record) button and start playing the keyboard. The notes will be added on a separate track on the sequencer.
NN-19 Digital Sampler: Once your drum and bass tracks are in place, you will need more tracks… for chords and for working out the other parts of your arrangement. The Reason synth provides you this instrument, which is a sampler, to add those tracks. Add this instrument to the rack and load an instrument like piano, guitar, string or anything you want. Select the Rec (record) button and start playing the keyboard. The notes will be added on a separate track on the sequencer.
Rewire – Using Reason within Cubase
Want to use Reason within Cubase as a VST instrument? It’s simple!
You just need to load Reason after you have launched Cubase; the necessary connections would already be made.
Using Propellerhead Reason in this way i.e. within a sequencer like Cubase / Sonar is also referred to as Rewire.
Ideally, you should have each instrument within Reason on a separate channel within Cubase so that you can mix efficiently.
To do this, press the "tab" key. You will see the rack flip over. You need to now manually plug the cables for each instrument into the numbered channels on the hardware interface.
You will find the hardware interface at the top of the rack.
Now if you go back to cubase and check the main mixer, you will see the Reason components on separate channels.
This is simple & cool. Just use Reason for recording the sound/instrument tracks and Cubase for recording the vocals. Finally mix it within cubase to produce your final output!
Reason 10 Intro: Lite version of the main Reason DAW
Propellerhead has announced the launch of Reason Intro, a liter version of its popular DAW – Reason 10. Now you can experience the Reason DAW (and its workflow) at a much lower price.
“Reason Intro gives customers access to Reason’s famous workflow and some of the best sounding instruments and effects we’ve ever created, all at a great price. Get started making music without compromising the quality of the instruments, effects and recording tools you need,” said Propellerhead Product Manager.
- 16 tracks of audio and midi recording
- 10 Instruments, including Europa Shapeshifting Synthesizer, Thor Polysonic Synthesizer, Subtractor Synthesizer, NN-XT Advanced Sampler, Kong Drum Designer and more.
- 11 Effects including RV7000 mkII Advanced Reverb, Scream 4 Distortion, Softube Guitar Amp, Softube Bass Amp and many more
- Professional recording tools with Pitch Edit, Slice Edit, high-quality time-stretching and more
- Fully-featured analog modeled mixing console with bus compressor
- Reason’s famous workflow and modular music-making environment
- Support for Rack Extension and VST plugins
Reason Intro customers can always upgrade to Reason 10 full version (for a reduced price) and access unlimited tracks, the full set of features, instruments, effects and expanded sound library.
So go ahead and use the quick music-making software that’s also fun to use and gives wings to your creativity.
Final Thoughts
Propellerhead Reason 8 is one of the most powerful software synthesizers around. Reason provides you a host of different sounds/tools and can be used on its own to create your music. Using Reason 8 in combination with a more powerful sequencer like Cubase, will efficiently handle all your audio production requirements.
Processed Pianos For Reason
Processed Pianos is a new Propellerhead Rack Extension for Reason. The details direct from the company is below and you can also check out the Propellerheads tutorial: Sound design with Processed Pianos.
Want to create experimental, evolving and exciting pianos? Processed Pianos, our much-loved Reason Pianos re-shaped as a Rack Extension instrument is for you!
Try Processed Pianos for free today: https://t.co/q3X2TrXeHv pic.twitter.com/jD2bFbFrfb
— Propellerhead (@PropellerheadSW) June 27, 2019
More on Processed Pianos
KeytarHQ editorial team includes musicians who write and review products for pianists, keyboardists, guitarists & other musicians. KeytarHQ is the best online resource for information on keyboards, pianos, synths, keytars, guitars and music gear for musicians of all abilities, ages and interests.
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