Propellerheads Reason: MIDI to the Max

I have been interested in music production since last year when my father, a recording engineer himself, bought me a FireWire 1814 I/O box and a copy of Pro Tools for Christmas. I couldn’t wait to start producing my own music and spread it around using the Internet. Of course, that wouldn’t happen for another six months because that is how long it took me to finally get it working. By then I had completely given up on Pro Tools and adopted a more user friendly program, Ableton Live.

With Live, I was able to get my personal recording studio up and running. I never really created a whole song, just sort of dicked around now and again. It wasn’t until this fall when I got my hands on a MIDI keyboard and a copy of Propellerheads Reason that I was finally able to express myself. I found myself recording for hours on end, totally caught up in the program.

I guess now would be a great time to explain with Propellerheads Reason is: simply put, Reason is a digital representation of an audio rack. Users start out with simply a mixer on screen and they add instrument and effect plugins as they please. Each individual plug in has an array of knobs, sliders and options that the user can use to manipulate the sound. By synching with a MIDI keyboard, the user can actually use the keyboard to change the length of notes, the volume, the pitch, etc.

Reason comes with hundreds of different instrument types including an extensive collection of drum kits. This is what draws most people to Reason, I believe. Reason is exceptional at providing digital drum kits that sound life like. Coupled with the ability to loop segments and touch pads on my keyboard, a beat can be made in literally seconds. It is remarkably easy to start off with just a simple drum beat and end up with something that sounds very professional.

Now that I had finally mastered Reason, I began to experiment with the different features. One great thing about Reason is it’s sampling plug ins. Creating a sample and using it in beats is super easy and I used that to create my first full song. I created it for my Basic Visual Literacy class as a project following a field trip to WACK!, a feminist art exhibit at PS1. It was my way of commenting on one of the pieces, a photo of a sculpture of a woman’s lower legs and hips. The vagina was so big that it showed people walking through it. I found this interesting and decided to create a song in the same vain.
This is what I ended up with.