Question by Pingpo Manna: How to use reason 4 Music software?
can someone explain to me how to use the music software Reason version 4 and if they could show what is needed for it?

Best answer:

Answer by Virg
Do you have the program? If you do, then you probably have the text files that came with it when you installed. One of them is the manual, which is really long and complicated with lots of technical terms. You might want to just buckle down and read the whole thing, and every time you don’t know what they’re talking about, either open up the program and check it out, or go to another part in the manual that explains the terms, or look them up on the web. I learned how to use the program from a buddy, then figured out more techniques, but after I read the manual I really knew what I was doing. But, here’s a quick explanation. When you open Reason to an ‘empty rack’, it will have three things already up. The first thing will say ‘built in audio’, which is the physical routing of the final signal, which is set to play through your built in audio, aka, your speakers on your pc or the headphone port. Below that is the mastering suite, you can leave that alone for now. Below that is the mixer. If you select the mixer and create an instrument (dr. rex, redrum, maelstrom, thor, whatever) it will auto route the device to play through the first open channel on the mixer. Start by making a dr rex loop player. If you press tab, the ‘rack’ will flip around and you can see how the wires are routed, and you can click and drag the wires to re-route. It should be routed to channel 1 on the mixer. Now, I assuming you do not have a midi controller yet. Get one, it makes it much easier to write music. So now you see your dr rex. On every instrument there is a button that looks like a folder. Press it to load a ‘patch’, in this case a dr rex loop, into the instrument. Search through the dr rex drum loops in the reason factory soundbank and find a drum beat. Select it to load it into the dr rex. The up and down arrows next to the patch name allow you to change patches once one is selected, within the folder that the patch is in. Now look at the bottom of your screen. The sequencer is down there, you should see the transport, the mixer, and the dr rex. Select the dr rex and press the button on the top left of the sequencer window to switch to edit mode. You can click on a slice to hear it. Now on the dr rex, press the ‘to track’ button and the dr rex will copy the pattern onto the sequencer windows, in the region that is selected by the left and right loop markers. On the sequencer, click the ‘loop on/off’ button on the lower right. Now press play, and your loop should start playing, and repeating itself. Now, select the mixer again, and create a new instrument, a synth, maybe thor. Click the folder button on thor and load a patch. Now select thor in the sequencer and put it in edit mode. You should see a Keyboard on the left, and a grid to the right. Use your pencil to draw notes in the grid, or record with a midi controller. Press play and hear your loop. Use the arrow tool to drag notes around or change the length. Use the pencil on the bars in the ‘velocity lane’ underneath the grid to change velocity (volume). Now, while your loop is playing, press record and start messing with knobs on the thor. It will record what you are doing, and make an ‘automation lane’ in the sequencer for whatever you changed. You can go edit it further with the pencil and arrow tools. Now select the thor on the rack, and create an effect device, a cf 101 chorus/flanger. It should auto route to the thor, and you should hear the effect, which can be adjusted on the rack. Now switch back from edit mode to arrange mode on the sequencer window. Use the arrow tool to select the chunks and press command c to copy. It will automatically move the cursor to the end of what you just copied. Press command v to paste, and move your right loop marker to the end of what you copied. Your loop is now twice as long. There, that’s a good start for you. I suggest you get an M-Audio Axiom 61, it is a perfect midi controller for Reason 4. Here is a track I made on Reason with my axiom 61. http://www.zshare.net/audio/592774843a7858e9/ If you have more questions, email me. And check out some tutorials on youtube.

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