This series of videos is an introduction class to the music production software: Propellerhead Reason.

Level: beginner

Video 1: The structure of Reason.

This video initiates the class with a theoretical description of the structure of the software. Understanding how Reason is organised allows to master the flow of sound and music data within it. Reason is composed of three main modules: The sequencer, the Rack and the Mixer. We will describes these and look together how the sound flows between them.

Video 2: Moving around the sequencer, the rack and the mixer
The second episode shows the 4 ways to start up the beast, and how it presents itself on your computer. You will get familiar with the three main windows and learn how to navigate between them (using the mouse or keyboard shortcuts).

Video 3: First notes in Reason
In this video, you will learn how to create a synthesiser in the rack and play a few notes. This will allow you to observe where the sound goes in the software and give you a perfect opportunity to learn what is meant by "the rack" and by "device". You will also record a few notes in the sequencer as well as some MIDI parameter data. This will give you the opportunity to learn a few basic editing techniques as well as how to hook up a knob of your midi controller to a midi parameter in the rack, and record its real time motion!

Video 4: Applying effects
In this video, you will start having a glimpse of Reason's musical power. In this episode, we will edit the MIDI clips we created in the previous video to adjust them to our liking. Then you will learn how to connect effects to the synth created in the previous video and how to set them up to get the sound we want. This will give you the opportunity to discover two of Reason's effects modules: The Echo and The Rev7000. We will record variations of these effects with time by assigning some of their parameters to knobs on our MIDI controller.

Video 5: Exercise - creating a spacey Piano
A challenge for you! From what you have learned in the videos up to now in the course, you should be able to create a spacey piano sound from scratch . Try it, seriously! that effort will allow you to get familiar with the basics and prepare you for the second section of the course.

This class is the first section of a global course about producing music in Reason. If you wish to go deeper into the subject, please enroll in the next class.

Lou Aceto

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