Harmony

I encourage you to visit www.musictheory.net and learn everything about music theory and harmony rules.

You can also download the complete site through here..

Part 3 - Working with the Sequencer

Ok, move your look to the sequencer now and notice the track that has been created for the NN-XT.



Choose the Pencil tool (W).



Now drag the pencil tool accros the NN-XT track and draw a box (like the green box below).



Now choose the Selection tool (Q, arrow) and double click on the box you created. This will switch to the Edit mode. You can also do this by clicking the little keyboard icon on the left of the Selection tool.



Now choose the Pencil tool again. By draging it across the midi grid you can create red bars which are translated to sound by the NN-XT.




Now, that's pretty much the main way of making a song. You create more devices, you write midi bars to the tracks and the harmonic mixing of these things makes a bad, good, very good or hit song.

This is the end of the really brief overview on Propellerhead Reason 4.0. Please visit http://www.propellerheads.se/products/reason/ for program details.

Now that you have an idea on how to create some kind of a sound, we'll continue by learning some basic harmony rules.

Part 2 - Creating Devices

Ok! Now we'll learn how to create devices and loading sounds.

Right click under the mixer and over the sequencer (in the black area within the window).
This menu appears :




Synths
Thor
Subtractor
Malstrom
Samplers
NN-XT
NN-19
Other Devices
ReGroove Mixer
RPG-8
Combinator
MClass Mastering Suite
ReDrum
Dr.REX
Matrix
Spider Audio & CV Mergers and Splitters
Effects
RV7000
Scream 4
BV5210 Digital Vocoder









Now create a NN-XT Advanced Sampler.
Notice that the corresponding track is being created in the sequencer area.

Now press this :



This is the Patch Browser and almost every device in Reason has one. This opens a browsing window in which you can search for sounds, intruments and synths which are compatible with the device you created (the NN-XT for our example).

Ok, now choose any sound you like. I chose M100 BritPop which is in Reason Factory Sound Bank -> NN-XT Sampler Patches -> Organ. It's the third preset I think.



Go to Part 3

Part 1 - Introduction

First things first!

• Open Reason 4.0.
• Go to the Edit menu on top.
• Press Preferences.
• In the window that opens, check Built in on the Default Song frame.
• Now go to the File menu and choose New.
• Close the Demo Song window.
  

OK :-)



Now you propably see this :




Ok, don't panic ! ! ! Lets start from the top down explaining what we see.





This is the hardware device where you can see your sound card model and other input and outpun information. You wont need to know a lot about this device at this point.





This is the mastering suite device. We will usually place it as it is, under the hardware device. Depending on the preset or settings you choose, this little baby will give to our final song the feeling of a rock, pop, hip hop, dance (etc) sound.





This is the big mixer. Every device we create under this mixer is linked to this mixer. Each device uses a channel (most of the times) and we can control volume (channel and main out), pan, EQ (bass, treble), AUX (for general mixer effects which can apply to any channel we like).





This is the sequencer tools. We use them to write music to the sequencer.





Yes! This is the sequencer. For each device we create, a track is being generated so we can write midi notes which will be played by the parent device.





And this is the "I don't know the exact name and I don't care" device. Here is where you have all these "play", "stop", "pause" buttons and you can also make some othes interesting things with it. We'll check it out later..



Well, notice the little arrow on the top left side of each device:



When you press this, you maximize and minimize the device for your convenience and viewing pleasure :-P


Notice that the whole Reason window is basically divided in two parts:



More details on the Reason Rack (part 1) here


continue to Part 2

Welcome !

Welcome to "How to make music".

During these "lessons" (parts) you'll learn how to create harmonic sound using a pc and some software.

The best and easiest program for a beginner (but also for a professional) is Reason by Propellerhead. I prefer Reason because it combines several advance features in a single easy-to-learn window and it has a pretty simple philosophy.

So, we'll start with Reason and then we'll see..

We will use Reason version 4.0 but don't worry, when you learn a versions philosophy its easy for you to work out any others. I took most of the material from the Propellerhead official site.


Also, your comments are really precious. By posting comments you help others and you help me improve the whole thing.

I forgot! Depending on which program we use, it's logo will be placed upon each lesson.

That's all I think, lets start :-)