Just out of curiousity: when you guys make songs with Reason, what genre/genres are you mainly focusing on?

I am a trance addict (eventhough I suck at producing trance) but recently I have started playing around with semi-accoustic sounds and jazz drums etc...

I come from a synth pop background (played in a band in the mid/late 80's - unknown to the outer world ) and before that I took classical piano lessons for 10 years. Then other interests took over until I bought Sonar a few years ago together with a Korg K49 MIDI Studio Controller and the Korg Legacy Collection VST-pack.

I shifted to Reason with version 4 and I am now using Reason 5 and never looked back and I'm making music strictly as a hobby.

Well....most of what I write/produce is all over the place being I'm just a fan of music in general. I tend to lean towards ambient/chill-out, or even more up-beat rhythms with chilled layers on top. However, that mood can swing to the other side and I will create d n' b, techno, etc. When I play out (dj)...I play mostly minimal and techno, but honestly those genres are what I create the least. I suppose if I were dj and play live...it would be a total package show as far as genres go, lol.

Dose

I'm mostly interested in exploring sound synthesis, and trying out unusual combinations of instruments and effects. Most of my projects end up being just a few bars long, but very heavy on automation, CV routing and FX. Then I get bored and move on to something else. I also enjoy remixing and rearranging popular tunes, ranging from lullabies to trance.

Though I've gone through years of classical piano training and music theory, I never wanted to make music for a living. It makes a hell of a hobby though! I started out with Mod/IT trackers in the 90's, then moved onto Reason.

Nebula,

Did you ever use OctaMed on the amiga? IMO that was the best tracker around in the early nineties.

I do pretty much... anything. Sometimes im like nebula and just want to do the craziest shit possible with crazy automation and funky routing, and other times i write proper pop music, other times it's electronic like square pusher or prodigy. Then sometimes its like dose, where I write something relaxing, like just using piano and strings. (I've been playing keys for 22 years now).

So yeah, jack of all, but specialist in none. Last track was an 8-bit chip tune mixed with modern synths, and my next one will be a dub-step track. Eventually when i get my computer, that is

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Absolutely. It's funny, when I worked with OctaMed with its limited resources and processing power, I would spend countless hours squeezing out every last feature and effect it had to offer, and looking back, those tracks were some of the most intricate stuff I've written!

Nowadays with all the unlimited channels and gigabytes of samples, I find myself paying less attention to details which makes for blander tracks. We are so spoiled.

Amen!

I still have octamed on PC. I know where my roots are

I don't use it much these days though, even if i still find it 'interesting'

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I completely understand the the being spoiled thing...I know from personal experience that I have gotten lost in patches, refills, etc. with the result being a very basic song that is below my own expectations that just some frills to it. Basically the icing with no cake. One thing I do every great now and then when I fall victim of this is to use nothing but the factory sound bank, if even that, and keep Kong, Thor, and even the Combinator out of the options....basically use Reason 2. This way I'm going back to basics and forcing myself to work again. Now that I know what sounds can be achieved via some creative thinking and some leg work, I get more satisfying results of accomplishment.

Note: I don't do this all the time, but it helps me sometimes when I'm in that rut.

Dose

Trance addict too, mainly the classics/90s stuff. also love house, electro, progressive, drum&bass & dubstep

Hi dose,

That's a great way of working. Sometimes you HAVE to go back to the roots of things to truly appreciate what you have.

I have employed some of the same tactics you have to build a track. Only after i'm confident that the content is satisfactory do i then start swapping out basic patches for more complex ones. Then a quick re-mix, and the musicality is spot on along with the complexity that todays music production seems to insist on...

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I agree...I have written songs with basic patches to get the notation down that I want, then throw in the patches or synth-modeling that I want to do. The only problem with this for me is sometimes creating or manipulating patches will lend to a song musically. What might sound great as far as the song structure with basic patches might sound horrible with the synth sounds I'm after. It is a very delicate balance at times.

Dose