Hi (Again)

[Johnbee]

Hello All!

 

My name is John B.  I originally joined Songstuff in 2005 but I haven't been around for so long I can't remember my password so I have to start over with a new one.  This site has grown so much in the past 8 years.  My music and methods have changed as well.  I started in 2005 with a stand alone Zoom 8 track with a Yamaha digital keyboard and drum machine, then "graduated" to MIDI and computer based music in 2009.  I've been away from music making for the past (almost) 2 years and now I'm getting back into it. I have quite a bit of virtual instruments triggered by MIDI keys.  My sequencer/record program is Samplitude version 2008.  With that I use Garritan Jazz & Big Band ver 3, Toontrack EZdrummer, Cakewalk Dimension LE, and Miroslav Philharmonik Orchestra.  I also use Melodyne Essentials on the rare occasion when I just can't get the vocals in tune.  I've recently bought Propellerhead Reason 7 and I've been practicing with it as it's a complicated program.  I like it, but I'm beginning to wonder if I made the right choice going with it.  It seems to cater to the Electronica/Dance/Trance genre and I'm more 70s 80s Pop Rock and soft jazz.  They offer expansions called Rack Extensions but I can't afford any of them right now.  The core program set me back almost $400.00!  I've offered my music up for review here over the past few years so I won't be repetitive.  I will listen to some tracks here and comment before I place my first Reason project for your approval (or dis).  If there are any Reason users here who can give me tips I sure would appreciate them.  Please remember my genre is as listed above though,  I'm not into beat making or groove making or dubstep or any of that kind of thing.  I'm an old timer of the Billy Joel, Barry Manilow crowd.  Hope to make some new friends.

 

John B.

[john]

Hi MrB for some reason I thought you had left deliberately and had asked for your account to be deleted? If you are the Mr B I am thinking of, that is. I can always check your account if you can send me a note of your previous email address in PM and if necessary merge it with this account. If deleted it is also possible that some of your posts could be recovered, though not your profile or PMs.

Anyhow, welcome back stranger

[Johnbee]

Hi john & Tom!

 

Yes, I am the John you are both thinking of.  I've lost track of my activities here due to much activity such as building a new house and some minor health issues.  JM, you can merge my account with the old one if that will work better.  My previous UN was Voclizr and the previous email was zoom802@verizon.net and the one before that was voclizr@localnet.com.

 

Tom-Cheers.  I still am baking but haven't been in touch with Donna in a little while.  She is a friend on Facebook, but I was thinking she would still be hanging around here.  Guess she's a busy lady.

 

JB

[john]

Oh, have you tried combining Reason with Recycle?

[john]

I will check out the account situ when I get back on my desktop. I'm on my ipad ATM which is great but not ideal for some things.

I still speak to Donna on FB sometimes, but she spend most of her online time at a drumming forum these days I think. I am sure it's nothing against Songstuff, just a change in her focus of interest.

[Johnbee]

@john-There is a Recycle link in Samplitude but I can't get it to work.  I get an error message when I try.

@Tom-I still have my clarinet, but got rid of the saxes.  Donated them to schools.

 

JB

[john]

I am assuming you have Recycle installed and are using Rewire as the interface? I'm not a Reason or Recycle expert by any means.

[Johnbee]

john-I stand corrected.  ReWIRE is in Samplitude, not Recycle.  Dont know anything about it.  My hardware interface is a Pod Studio UX2.

[zulza]

Hi Johnbee...

(Again)

[Johnbee]

Thanks all for your welcome!

 

David-Propellerhead says their answer to not being able to use VSTs and VSTI's are the Rack Extensions because most of them come from other developers besides Propellerhead.  They're cool but I can't afford them right now, having blown almost $400.00 on the core program.  The modules available in the core program do sound better than some of the plugins I've bought over the years and if I managed to crank out "When You Close Your Eyes" I guess I'll be able to get much more out of it.  I look at it as another tool I have at my disposal, not the only one.  I can export/import and convert MIDI to audio tracks and vice versa to come up with the finished project I desire using Reason as my final mixer since it does have a full mixing console in it.  It will be a while till I get with anything more I have to buy though.  As you said, there are many free refills made by other users but I hesitate to use them, only because when I tried a few of them a few weeks back, I got a nasty virus that all but locked up my system and I had to do a full reformat.  Might not have been from a refill, but I don't want to take a chance.  It took me all of two weeks to get my system back to normal with all the music programs. I did get the Electromechanical refill because that was a freebie and came straight from the Props and has some sweet old Hammond organ, vintage Rhodes and Whirly Electric pianos and neat Hohner Clavinet Duo sounds.

 

Thanks again!

 

John B.

[mbfrancis]

Hey John--

I just joined the forum and am a heavy Reason user, happy to help.  

 

Question - why did you buy it?   It's a great program, I love it, but 1) it's a little duplicative of all the other stuff you already have and 2) by using Rewire you're basically running two parallel DAWs, and are pulling Reason's audio into Samplitude.  Not the simplest workflow of you're trying to simplify.  You can use none of the other VST products you have within Reason itself, only Rewired via another DAW.  (You can use your audio loops.)  $400 is pretty standard for a new DAW FYI...you just bought the quirkiest, most walled-off one available!

 

You can certainly do everything you want to do within Reason, it's not just for electronica.  The Factory Sound Bank is really wonderful, and will likely have most of the sounds you need.   The program is insanely intuitive (and fun!), tons of great devices, and the new mixer (from v6) sounds great.  

 

So again, why did you buy it?  If you like Samplitude and your existing tools but want a huge bank of new sounds and devices, Rewire Reason into Samplitude.  If you want a simple all-in-one closed environment with limited options (a good thing) so you can be productive, I would try working 100% in Reason for a while.  See if you need to even use your old tools.  Or...maybe sell your new Reason license and get Sonar (if PC) or Logic (if Mac).  

 

Hope this helps.

[zulza]

Johnbee,

 

How did you experienced in Toontrack products...It's worht it...did you used Ez player pro...Seems the player pro are much versatile where it can get the drum mapping on almost drum vsti plug in available...and i think it more humanize if you know how to set it properly...So how is your thoughts about it..

[Johnbee]

mbfrancis and Zulza-Thanks for your posts and I will answer your questions.

 

Why did I buy Reason?  I guess to expand my horizons and to experiment.  My first choice was Sonar, but I was afraid my PC wouldn't cut it processor wise. Sonar requires 2.6 ghz and Reason only requires 2.2 and my laptop is just a bit over 2.2.  I haven't had any issues with power (yet).  I did run some of the demo projects and a few of them have a large number of tracks and effects and it's handled them well.  My projects will probably never get as huge as some of the demos and I can tweak my PC to make more RAM available if I have to.  The Line 6 website has a series of video tutorials of how to free up resources in Windows 7 and all of the projects I've tried running (including my own) were done with everything running so I'm not too worried about that aspect.  As far as Rewire, Samplitude does have it but when I tried using it I got an error message.  I only tried it once and haven't really delved into doing that much yet.  I've been concentrating mostly on learning Reason and experimenting with it for the past month since I got it.  I know you can do more than Electronica but there doesn't seem to be many examples of other genres on the net by other users.  Even on the Music Forum on the Propellerhead site I 've only been able to find a small handful of people who make the pop style I like to work with.  I'm finding myself liking Hip Hop more.  That's saying alot because up until recently, I HATED it, but it's kind of growing on me, especially the kind that has a mixture of a ballad style and hip hop mixed.  That's kind of cool, really.  I've actually been fascinated by Reason for several years now and was always curious about it.  There was a guy on a music site I heard about 10 years ago who used an earlier version and I thought it was neat.  So, I hope I gave you some more insight into my decision.  Looking forward to discussing the subject with your further, and wouldn't mind hearing a tune or two from you done in Reason. 

 

Zulza-Regarding Toontrack.  I only have experience with EZDrrummer at this point in time.  I've heard of EZKey and EZMix and Superior Drummer and heard some demos but they're not in my arsenal.   There was a time I would have never relied on preset drum patterns, but my ability to program drum tracks sucks as compared to the quality you can get with EZD.  It's really like having a pro drummer on your sessions and they don't have a problem with you using their patterns and fills in your songs, even if you sell them professionally.  They tell you that.  That's what they made them for.  So yes, I do like the program.  You can hear some examples of what I've done with it here:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=1058168

The EZD songs are Mystery, Yes You Are, You Wanted More, Tryin' to Write a Song, Perfect World , and Now.

 

John B.

[mbfrancis]

Hey John--

I still don't get it - you basically picked the one DAW that *doesn't* run all your go-to tools: Garritan, EZ Drummer, Dimension, Melodyne, Miroslav.  Plus, unfortunately, one of Reason's weak spots is in the EZ-type auto-play type tools...it doesn't have any.  Also amazing strings (the Orketer Sound bank is just OK).

 

That said all DAWs do the same basic stuff, though, and you can make great music on any of them, and Reason is no exception. And in return for the Reason walled garden, you get an incredibly stable, solid program that is seamless and really easy and fun to use, especially if you're used to hardware.  And it runs very efficiently, as you've already noticed.  You will probably never crash it.

 

Here are a few songs I've done in Reason - note that some of these use 3rd party Audio loops or sample libraies, but they were all programmed recorded and mixed in Reason:

 

https://soundcloud.com/martinbfrancis2/something-must-be-killing-you2 (super raw demo in progress)

https://soundcloud.com/martinbfrancis2/when-we-break-up-v3-short

https://soundcloud.com/martinbfrancis2/swooner-he-lies

[Johnbee]

mbfrancis-Thanks for sharing your tunes.  Is ALL of this done using the Reason rack?  The guitar is a real guitar, right?  If not, how did you get it to sound like a guitar?  All are good here, but I'm most impressed with the third one.  I like your style.  It's closer to mine than most of what I heard other Reason users do.  I would really like to know what sounds you used on these, if it's not too much to ask.  As far as your comment on the "ease of use" issue.  I'm not particularly interested in keeping all my projects easy to produce.  I think what I'm looking for most in Reason is experimentation.  The synths in Reason seem close to hardware models and I've always wanted to delve into the mysteries of synthsyzed music.  Like I said, experimentation.  Breaking my mold in the pop stuff and perhaps creating my own style.  I've already "designed" my own Malstrom patch and I may use it in a song someday.  Maybe not.  Maybe I'll modify it more.  I also like playing around with voice synths and vocoders and Reason offers lots of that stuff.  I'm really anxious to see what new directions Reason can take me in.  I want to evolve from just the standard pop crap.  I'm also considering converting some of my Samplitude recorded tracks to all WAV files and remixing them in Record to see what I can do for them with the much more powerful audio engineering tools the Record part of Reason has to offer.

 

Dave-Your tune is great!  Love it.  Again, you probably tracked your guitar in Reason and embellished it with the rack, right?

[mbfrancis]

mbfrancis-Thanks for sharing your tunes.  Is ALL of this done using the Reason rack?  The guitar is a real guitar, right?  If not, how did you get it to sound like a guitar?  All are good here, but I'm most impressed with the third one.  I like your style.  It's closer to mine than most of what I heard other Reason users do.  I would really like to know what sounds you used on these, if it's not too much to ask.  As far as your comment on the "ease of use" issue.  I'm not particularly interested in keeping all my projects easy to produce.  I think what I'm looking for most in Reason is experimentation.  The synths in Reason seem close to hardware models and I've always wanted to delve into the mysteries of synthsyzed music.  Like I said, experimentation.  Breaking my mold in the pop stuff and perhaps creating my own style.  I've already "designed" my own Malstrom patch and I may use it in a song someday.  Maybe not.  Maybe I'll modify it more.  I also like playing around with voice synths and vocoders and Reason offers lots of that stuff.  I'm really anxious to see what new directions Reason can take me in.  I want to evolve from just the standard pop crap.  I'm also considering converting some of my Samplitude recorded tracks to all WAV files and remixing them in Record to see what I can do for them with the much more powerful audio engineering tools the Record part of Reason has to offer.

 

 

From what you've written Reason may well be perfect for you then...it is a real joy to experiment with, flip the rack, build wacky combinators with multiple instruments and FX, use the CV routing to have crazy LFOs controlling everything, oh man.  You'll have fun.

 

All those songs were recorded in Reason.  The guitars and bass in He Lies were recorded direct, although I think I ran the guitars through a my cheap Behringer amp modeler pedal.  The drums are a mix of 3rd party samples and the Reason Drum Kits refill (great drums), played in an NNXT sampler.

 

You might like this - here is the original demo version of He Lies (same song), made 100% with guitar and bass samples within Reason (NNXT patches).  I think it's all that Tremolo Guitar patch.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g1b98d6ka4b2axi/he%20lies%20mod%20vocal%20rough%20v1.mp3

 

Play around with REX loops - there are a ton of guitar and drum loops.  

For bass I use the NNXT Flat Bass (?) patch...run it through a Scream Tape Saturation, good stuff.

 

Have fun!