I'm new to Reason and have started working on some pieces with it to get familiar. I like it so far. Well I shelled the money out for it so I better like it anyway

My desire is to incorporate Reason with real heavy metal guitars and real drums. I currently use Presonus Fire Studio to record my guitars and drums, and use the studio to add compression, mix, etc...

So I have a few ways I can do this, and would like some "expert perspective".

First, I was thinking of sampling my guitar note by note and then chord by chord. I could then arrange my guitars in Reason. However when I go out to listen to people's guitar samples in Reason, they sound too electronic. Is there any tutorial on something like this? Sampling my guitar?

Regardless, the big question on my mind is... do I mix and master in Reason or do I mix and master in FireStudio's Cuebase tools?

My initial gameplan is to do the Reason parts up, export them to wav files piece by piece and then import them into Fire Studio where I can then add my real drums, real guitar, and vocals and then do the mixdown and mastering there.

However, I do not have my mastering tools in Fire Studio and those cost an additional $200.

I see that Reason has mastering tools or at least a mastering device. So what I was wondering is...

Can I record my guitars, my drum pieces, my vocals in Fire Studio and then export those one at a time over into Reason and then do the mixing / mastering in Reason?

How would you go about this?

@ Auticus:

I am also a metal musician who has been using Reason and Cubase for years. This is what I do:
I use Cubase SX3 as the mixing and mastering platform. I record guitars, vox, and bass in cubase and use Rewire to get Cubase to recognize Reason as a VSTI. For my metal stuff, I use reason to host the drum samples. I program the drums using the midi drum map in cubase, and open reason through the VST Instruments menu, and host the sounds through the Redrum in Reason.

As for your project, I saw that you record live drums. If you are only planning on using reason for some synth stuff or something, I would create midi tracks in cubase, and open Reason using Rewire. That way you can use the sounds from reason but do all the writing and using of the piano roll in Cubase. You just have to select the proper in and outs, which are most likely All Midi Inputs and "X Reason Device" respectively.

Also, with respect to your question regarding guitar sampling. Dont do that. It sounds overly tedious and annoying. What I do in Cubase is, instead of taking a million takes on guitar to get it perfect, I do a less than perfect take and cut the notes and manually move them to the correct beat. I guess you could call it manual quantization.

P.S. When you use Rewire, Cubase, or whatever DAW you use acts as the master platform and must be opened first, and closed last. Otherwise the programs wont sync.

Check out the stuff I wrote using reason for drums and cubase for editing/mixing. (I am not aloud to post the link; its at soundclick dot com, band name is miscarriage.)

Wait, Joe.. are you the band Miscarriage with the songs "Eternally Yours" and "Malpractice"?

Some times musician facing problem to play guitars and drums kit reason is that electric item some times not work on any defect but it is not always possible.Metal musician occurs any hand problem and do not play this device.

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electronic drum kit

Hi,

I agree with Joe on this one. Reason alone is not good for handling recorded tracks without it's sister program "Record".

If you have Cubase, then as Joe correctly said, open Cubase and use Reason via Rewire. This way you can record all the guitar and drum tracks in cubase, and sync flawlessly with Reason to add your midi tracks.

This next statement is NOT meant to sound patronising, I'm just trying to offer up a little advice:

Remember that mastering is a term that many people really get confused with. I don't mean to say that you are, but for the moment is sounds as though you are describing mastering a single track? Getting all the drums, guitar work and everything in one nice sounding track...?

Mastering is (in VERY basic terms) the process of arranging and getting MANY tracks (an entire CD for example) to work together, so they flow nicely and sound roughly equal to the others in terms of dynamics, eq etc.

There isn't much point in 'mastering' a single track without the others to compare it to. If, like I assume at this point, you are talking about 'mastering' in terms of a single track, then really it is the final process of MIXING which you are describing - getting all your levels right, EQ and compression, dynamics and volume all in your individual track. At this point, it should sound very good on it's own, and you can use the 'mastering' device in reason for this process to good effect.

Good masteing plugins don't come cheap as you say, some from izotope cost a small fortune for example. Reason's 'mastering' device is a little misleading in my opinion, as it IS good for balancing and prepairing a single track and making sure each of these tracks sounds good seperately. Each of these tracks would then be mixed ready for mastering, and it is this stage where you would impliment your mastering processes.

In some cases, you may find that no amount of tweaking will get the 'right' sound for one track to fit in well with another, in which case you need to revert back to the mixing stage and alter the problems in the mix.

Mastering is a very complicated procedure that takes a finely tuned ear, and my own personal recommendation is NOT to master your own work, especially if you don't have the right tools, the right accoustically treated room, and a good set of monitors you know like the back of your hand. This is especially true because you know your mix very well, and you are likely to be very subjective about it when it comes to the mastering process.

A mastering engineer however, will look at your tracks objectively and be able to pick out issues in your tracks (you may even be sent your work back for re-mixing) that you would not have hear because you are too emotionally involved.

If however you insist on 'mastering' (and by that i really mean MIX) individual tracks in reason with the device, you can do so in the final chain between your mixer(s) and hardware interface, but there are better tools for the job, and really the only way to get them is to spend a hefty wedge. This is not to say that you can't master without those 'pro' plugins as anyone with a REALLY good ear and access to basic mastering tools can in time get a good master down.

Just remember one rule of thumb:

Your EARS are the best piece of 'equipment' you own. Trust them.

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