Reason 4

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I recently got Reason 4 music software on my computer, but the thing is, I haven't got a clue how to use it!!

A friend of mine from where I work suggested that I get a magazine guide for it which comes with a tuition CD. So I'm going to get that.

Has anyone got any advice on how to use it, perhaps with some easy to follow step by step instructions? And could people perhaps post helpful tuition videos you may have found via YouTube etc.

Any hints and tips would be very welcome.

Thankyou in advance.

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I don't have the program myself but I found a video for beginners on YouTube. Hope it helps.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgcE4m4eqwg&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/youtube]

Reason is an odd duck when it comes to music software. I'm more of a sound designer, and that's how I tend to use Reason. But I'll do some producing with it from time to time.

The cool thing about Reason that will make things easier is that some signal routings are set by default. These are the steps I generally take:

Start with an empty file.

1. Drag and drop a micromix (line mixer)
2. Drag and drop any effects you intend to use.
3. Drag and drop any instruments you want to use, like NN-XT, SubTractor, etc.

Follow that basic order and you'll be set up and ready to go. Otherwise you'll have to tweak your routings. The first few times I tried to use Reason, I couldn't even get sound out of the thing.

These steps are important to follow when starting from scratch. Think about how you'd wire up instruments in an actual studio. Your output is your monitors, so that's at the top of the chain.

You need a summing mixer to even get stereo output, so a mixer needs to be next in the chain.

Your instruments are routed to individual channels. For simple productions, micromix will work just fine. It's also a handy tool in Combinator. For more advanced work you'll want to use Remix, which I believe is 14 channels instead of 6.

Effects will be routed to your buses in a loop, so as you add effects they will form a chain. Logically you would want to put chorus ahead of reverb. You can adjust your wet/dry signal in your mixer aux on each channel. Micromix only gives you one aux bus, while Remix gives you for buses, hence you can use more effects in parallel rather than in a chain (or up to 4 chains). That's why following the steps I gave work for the simplest kind of setup.

Feel free to PM me any time, and I'll try to answer as many of your questions as I can. Reason is awesome music software.