On Tuesday, February 3rd, IAR hosted the long-awaited Do It Yourself: REASON Part II seminar. The music production software, REASON, is developed by Propellerhead, one of the world’s leading makers of software instruments. This Swedish company pioneered the concept of computer-based software synthesis with Rebirth, and introduced the concept of slice-based sample manipulation with Recycle. REASON, their third breakthrough product, is a core part of IAR’s MIDI curriculum, and a very popular program amongst students interested in electronic music production.

Faculty member Dana McCurdy teaches electronic music and computer-based music production, and has worked with electronic music hardware and software for over 30 years. Most of the audience members at the seminar were already REASON users, and Dana went into detail regarding many of the program’s more advanced features, including the Reason modules Redrum, Subtractor, Dr. Rex, Matrix, the Vocoder, and the Combinator. He showed how, using REASON’s patchable outputs and inputs (both audio and control signals), a creative user can accomplish practically anything “within Reason.”

His demonstrations included how to:
•”fatten” drum sounds through multiple gating, or create synthesized drum kits by gating synthesizers from Redrum.
•create “phatter” bass sounds, or more convincing string and orchestral sounds, through doubling via the Combinator.
•load “Rex” loops into the NN-XT sampler for more flexible processing options.
•use multi-band processing to create unique delay effects.
•create rhythmic modulation effects using Matrix’s Curve output.
•use the Vocoder to process rhythm grooves and vocal samples.