Any Veterans-With Advice??

Dr.Feelgood

Hey there folks.

I'm just getting myself set up putting together some tunes.

Using Reason 2.0 have you heard of it??
Is there something better i could be using, i'm looking for very techno very bassy kind of dark beats.
I believe Reason 3.0 is out i might pick it up too.
Any popular acts that use these tools?

What about getting out and playing the scene, what kind of equipment do i need to get my project from my bedroom to the dancefloor??

All advice/hints/tips/mistakes made and learned from are very welcome!!!

This is for people who want others to dance to the rhythm they dictate.

Let me hear you Dictators!!

Kingsize

prodigy used reason 2.5 on most of their last album its a great thing for knocking up tunes & loops etc, there are some excellent free refills on the net too which should add a bit of variety to yr sounds.


good luck

Seanie M

Try to get your hands on a bit of everything. I have some great old programmes like Rebirth, Soundforge, and Wavelab. Some other worthwhile programmes I use for samples include the E-Jays, ProDJ, and my CDJ-500's!

Tools - I find Wavelab and Cool Edit Pro very easy to use. I am finding it hard to get to grips with Cubasis myself!

Seanie.

zafa

Kingsize wrote:

prodigy used reason 2.5 on most of their last album its a great thing for knocking up tunes & loops etc,

thats a halftruth

howlett used reason as a sketchpad, just for ideas, and when he had the basic ideas for the tracks down, he took them into a proper studio and reworked them

zafa

Dr.Feelgood wrote:

Hey there folks.

I'm just getting myself set up putting together some tunes.

Using Reason 2.0 have you heard of it??
Is there something better i could be using, i'm looking for very techno very bassy kind of dark beats.
I believe Reason 3.0 is out i might pick it up too.
Any popular acts that use these tools?

What about getting out and playing the scene, what kind of equipment do i need to get my project from my bedroom to the dancefloor??

All advice/hints/tips/mistakes made and learned from are very welcome!!!

This is for people who want others to dance to the rhythm they dictate.

Let me hear you Dictators!!

reason 3 is far better than reason 2 due to the combinator addition and the overhaul of the audio engine

reason is still the daddy for beats imo, but the synths require too much programming to get an acceptable sound from, so youll need a vst compatible daw

id suggest cubase sx2 or sx3, 2 if youre "acquiring" 3 if youre buying

then youll need a whole lot of vst instruments, arturia do some extremely sexy plugins right now, and from what youre describing that you wanna make, id recomment the cs80v, moog modular v, and then the native instruments fm7, and z3ta+

youll also need a controller keyboard, and possibly a midi control surface. they take the hassle out of having to do everything with your mouse, this way you can play/tweak in real time and then tidy them up using envelope generators using the mouse within the software to get things sounding perfect

if you wanna play live you can do it with the tools i mentioned above

BUT

before all this, take some music lessons

jimi_t

zafa wrote:

thats a halftruth

howlett used reason as a sketchpad, just for ideas, and when he had the basic ideas for the tracks down, he took them into a proper studio and reworked them

Liam used all analog stuff (Roland Jupiter 6, Moogs etc...) on the album - famous for doing it (Despite the fact that the whole of Experience was done with an AKAI sampler and a Roland workstation :rolleyes: ). You'll still be able to get more or less the same kind of sounds with Reason, they just won't sound as warm or have that phat "ooomph"

zafa

you could get the same sounds with notepad and a csound compiler too, but thats more effort than is necessary

its the same with reason, why spend a week tweaking a patch in reason when 3 hours on a piece of hardware will give ye the same result

base2

The first big proper release of music done in Reason has been Mylos album. No external fx were used except I suppose for mastering. I'm waiting for that first big all Flstudio album.

zafa

i read in an interview mylo used a cracked cubase sx, lots of vstis, and some reason

anyway, thats rubbish that the first big proper release was that, since reason came out its been utilised professionally

Executive Steve

hmmm but its never sounded that good... "all strung out" by fresh from bad company on the mdz03 album was done on reason.


it showed.

zafa

reason is a professional quality package

whats this bull about "oh it showed"

anything made entirely in reason will sound crap, coz reasons not made to be used that way for professionals, for beginners and intermediates yes, but not pro level users

you wouldnt buy a synth and write every single part of your track from percussion to pads and leads on it, coz itd sound crap

therein lies the mistaken belief that reason isnt used professionally

it is

MASSIVELY used

you just cant tell where its used, coz its used properly

Kingsize

ive read interviews with howlett where he said reason 2.5 on his laptop was the starting block for almost every song on his album & its simplicty was what cleared his head of all the daunting shi-t you come accross when you are under pressure to "be creative" .i
use it myself & like i said its great for knocking up loops & ideas,there is definitely a recognisible aspect to the "reason sound", you'll hear it in pop songs all the time when you get used to the program
but i agree with zafa used properly & inventively its the dogs!
reason 3.0 has something of a mastering suite included too if im not mistaken which im sure is propellorhead's response to the feeling that reason has a flat / thin sound to it.

reason is a great program to start out making computer music with too & it can run on slower computers no hassle(MINE IS RUNNING ON AN OLD G3 MAC)-Undoubteldly it has its limits but thes can also which can be advantageous when starting out.


btw aparently dizzee rascal used music 2000 for the playstation(1) extensively on his award winning debut.
thus proving that necessity is the mother of invention

zafa

the mastering suite in r3 is a bit pointless, coz most users rewire nowadays anyway, and even tho its alrite, its not a patch on the waves vst plugins who rape it to bits in terms of quality

the audio engine DID get a complete overhaul tho, and it sounds sh*t hot now, as opposed to that dull, flat squid with awful stereo imaging that was the last 3 incarnations of the software

the combinator is a genius touch tho, many many hours have been lost to this from me already just building massive synth patches with 4 or 5 subtractors, 3 or 4 malstroms and a few samplers within it. phat isnt the word

Loobz

Gone are the days of using Rave/Dance Ejay demos and generic default Windows sound recorders.

zafa

i made my first tune ever in wavplay about 8 years ago lol

Kingsize

To the O.P. reason is a great place to start get to know the program it is enough to be going on with.most sequencer packages use the same type of set up so changing to cubase or whatever wont be a total culture shock although they all have their own little idiosyncracies.eventually you will want to expand,because you want to record audio,use different synths etc etc.
nowadays i usually use reason cos im quite fond of some of the synth sounds but i mainly use sonar3,& have collected loads of vstIs - handy to have but for a beginner probably a distraction & conterproductive.
have a look at computermusic magazine they're on the ball & they sometimes do a beginners special ( infact i think the usually do it in the summertime so there may be one due!!)
theres also an article planned for Next months issue about makin music "on the cheap"
check their website out
http://www.computermusic.co.uk/main.asp