My first little experiment composing with Reason 3. I wasn’t seeking out a new sequencer/instrument really, but I was casting about for new beat/drum stuff. I checked out Guru but it was not quite what I wanted. Then I remembered that my friend Jeremy spoke highly of Reason for putting together percussion stuff and I downloaded the demo. And while it was not what I was initially looking for, I was quite taken with the overall deal and decided to take the plunge – especially since it’ll snuggle in with Logic via ReWire. I’m pretty happy with the results.

This was partially an exercise in just learning a new composition environment. It really just started off with screwing around with some features and coming up with that initial mandolin theme. Then I thought “why not hit save and see where it goes?” Not to be an ad, but I found Reason to be very easy to work with and ended up spending more time writing stuff and creating new sounds than fighting with the software (as can happen with Logic). The trumpet with string backing with an effected sub-mix took all of 3 minutes to toss together (barely knowing the application) which is great. Bonus points for that.

In the “if I had it to do all over again” department (which technically I do, but I’m tired of messing with this) I would have created better sub-mixes for the drum parts. Next time I know how get started out of the gate. There was an additional struggle since Reason does not come with a good set of organic/acoustic drum sounds out of the box – it’s very geared towards electronica. So that was a bit of a hassle since I like both. The actual mix facilities have plusses and minuses as well. I like the Logic Hyper-Draw deal and this was more oriented to “hands on” which caused a little stalling. I’m also used to the Logic finalizers (where is my Multipressor, damnit?) so the final mastering mix was a bit of a bitch (not that I’m great at it in the first place). I got it to sound good on nice headphones and my desktop JBL Creatures, but trying cheap earbuds and such yielded differing results. I’m wondering if I pad too much which adds complexity and makes mixing for multiple output devices harder if you suck at it (like I do). I think that final mix/mastering engineers are gods that they can make anything sound good anywhere.

Anyways, the drum mix pisses me off. Just had to get that out there. Drum engineers must be their own sort of demi-gods.

But overall, composition and general tinkering-wise, this was totally fun to work on. The next one ought to go faster since I now have a handle on how to use the environment and know how I should start (various sub-mixes) next time. This one was also written to be self-contained (rather than being a stub of a rock song to be added to at “a later date”) so it holds together pretty nicely. So that’s it. Sort of gothy bullshit with a horn section. Works for me.

The “published Reason song” version is a “locked” version of my Reason project. I don’t use any ReFills or external samples on it, so it should load on any default Reason install for whoever (nobody) is interested.

[playtime-in-the-dark.mp3]

The Reason published song:

[playtime-in-the-dark.rps]

Cheers.