This is an article I’ve wanted to write for a while. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all the posts I see and all the questions asked all over the place, and it usually boils down to a few simple questions:
- How can I give my drums more life
- How do I cross-fade in Reason
- How to I create fader groups in Record
- Where do I find the best patches?
- Where do I find a “Midi to Frequency” Converter?
And so on.
So I thought I would try to grab the best and brightest resources and tutorials (aside from my own. . . ahem!) and create a sort of compendium of the best things out there that every Reason and Record user should know about. These are tutorials written by others that are exceptional, and get to the heart of the main questions that 99% of people ask. Or additional information that you should become familiar with.
In an ideal world, this would mean that we can now devote 99% of our time to other matters and move away from asking the same old tired questions. Of course, if history is any teacher, that’s an incredible fantasy. We’ll still get the same questions, and we’ll still have to provide the same answers. However, as far as I’m concerned, when I now provide the answer, it will amount to a single link that reaches back to this page.
Enjoy.
The Top Resources (in no particular order)
Before listing out some great resources, I’m going to have to say that the grand-daddy of them all is the Reason User Manual or Online Help system (F1 when in the software folks). There is also the Record User Manual, if you have Record. Read it, know it, love it, kiss it at night before you go to bed. It’s your bible for all things Reason. Read it cover to cover!
1. I can’t do this or can’t do that in Reason? Well, some (if not, most) things you CAN do! Here’s a few you may have not thought possible:
- Polyphonic 6-Operator FM Synthesis along the lines of the Yamaha DX9
- Equal Power Cross-Fader by Kurt “Peff” Kurasaki.
- Fader-Group Control in Record by EditEd4TV Bauman.
- Creating a Noise Gate in Reason by Meowsqueek (at Off-White Noise)
So next time you say you can’t do that. Why not try doing it yourself or digging to find out if it can be done first.
2. How do I create better Mixes? How do I make my drums come to life? Mixing and Mastering.
- Parallel Compression method to boost your drums.
- Compression by James Bernard.
- How to use EQ by James Bernard.
- Other Tips and Tricks by James Bernard.
- Bobby Owsinski any of his books are vital reading!
- RecordU at Propellerhead by Ernie Rideout.
- layering your drum sounds by Mo Volans.
- How to make better sounding Drum Tracks by Stephen Sherrard.
- Making Drum Samples Sound Like Real Drums by Glenn Bucci at EQ Mag
- Great Drum Sounds by Michael Laskow.
- EQ and Compression Techniques by Sarit Bruno.
- Mixing Audio book by Roey Izhaki (with some free sample chapters).
3. And speaking of frequencies. . . And lots of other useful charts. . .
- HTML-based Frequency chart by Independent Recording Network.
- IRN Main Site with lots of good resources
- Midi values, notes, and frequencies and Online Converter at the University of New South Wales.
- General Midi assignments at Wikipedia.
- Genre of electronic music by Ishkur.
- Complete Chart listing of electronic Genres at Wikipedia.
- Reason4PatchList download. Outlining all Reason 4 FSB Patches. Created by Brian Nottingham.
- Music Theory Online Lessons by Ricci Adams.
- Online Chord Finder at Gootar.
- Online Scale Finder at musica-e-acordes.com.
- Calculation of Harmonics from Fundamental Frequencies at sengpielaudio.
- Musical Pitch Relation Chart from Carnegie Hall: by E. J. Quinby.
4. How do I make this or that sound? Synthesis Secrets.
- Sound on Sound’s Synth Secrets Articles
- Emulating the Real Thing by Chris Martirano.
4. Where do I get some great new patches, Samples, and Loops? The following make excellent Refills in my opinion. Some free. Some not.
- Reason’s Free Refill Section. Be sure to checkout anything by Peff, and Exode’s “Massive Synthesis” Refill.
- Reason Patch-a-Day by Robb Neumann.
- Lapjockey. Some of the best patches out there.
- Bitword. Be sure to checkout the Wavefront refill.
- EditEd4TV’s Reasonable Help 2010. The most wonderful way to learn Reason through Combi patches.
now go out and make your own!
Honorable Mentions
- Sound on Sound’s Reason Articles
- Hydlide’s Community site
- Hydlide’s YouTube Channel
- Ed’s Reason Forum
- Boy in a Band
- Resonant Filter by Lewis Filter.
- Re-Wiki – A Compendium put together by Dioxide
- Koshdukai’s Reason Blog
- Ned Rush’s YouTube Channel
- 6 Techniques to Help You Make More Music by Matt Piper
. . . and all the other Resources you see in the right-side column on this blog.
Hopefully you all find this information as useful as I do. Any other great sites I should link here, please feel free to comment or email me and if they’re really useful, I’ll be happy to add them in. Until next time, good luck in all your musical pursuits!
Great list, I’m going to bookmark this page!
Two resources that I didn’t notice on your list that I enjoy:
http://koshdukaimusicreason.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/MrNedRush#p/u
cheers,
Lewis.72
Lewis,
I have Koshdukai’s link on my right sidebar but Ned Rush’s is a great one too. Now it’s here. 😉 So thanks for that!
What a great resource! Glad I stumbled into substance! (Good song title?… nah!) Thanks man!!
@Mick,
Thanks! I’m glad you stumbled into it as well. Song title. . . hmmmm. Perhaps. 😉
Rob
What I want to do is take some of my sound modules and turn them into refills. I can create sounds through Thor but I done that to death. I want to refill completed sampled and analog sounds and I was wondering what would be the best corse of action to create the entire sound module without turning on the combinator or using Thor. I know EMU did it with their sound set but in truth it sounds thin out of the box if you compare it to the hardware version. So it would be nice to have a tutorial on how to make refills and not one of those hit and miss videos.
From concern citizens for a better refill international
Mr.Britt,
I gotta be honest with you, that’s a pretty tall order, and is largely dependent on what you are sampling. If you are sampling real-world hardware, I don’t do a lot of sampling in this respect, but I can tell you the best approach is to get the best possible sound INTO digital format. That means great mics and positioning properly. Once it’s inside Reason, then you would most probably want to use the NN-XT to house the samples and save things that way.
If you are talking about sampling sound modules already built within Reason, then it’s a little easier. But I still am not sure I’m understanding what exactly you are sampling here. Is it a group of devices playing at once? If so, just put them in a Combinator and save the patch. This way you can recall it at any point in time. No sampling required.
If you are trying to save on CPU, then doing some “Live Sampling” inside Reason is really easy. I did a tutorial on this as well. Look for the tutorial called “Live Sampling” in my 101 Reason Tutorials category. That should get you started.
Hope that helps.
Rob