The Case for Reason 10
Mike McKew is an audio engineer and producer from the Washington DC area. As a musician for over 10 years, he has gained valuable insight into many aspects into audio, with a particular affinity for Reason. You can check Mike’s YouTube channel, and his entry to the Reason 10 Song Challenge.
When Reason 10 was first announced in September, I was skeptical. I wasn’t the only one either – many people chimed in and criticized the announcement due to the lack of workflow and performance updates.
What we did get was a content overhaul: two new synthesizers (Europa and Grain), three organic sampled instruments (Klang, Pangea, and Humana), an inclusion of existing Propellerhead devices (Radical Piano and Synchronous), and a new huge bank of drum loops and samples.
There are two small workflow updates as well, however: a content manager and an updated favorites list that can include devices as well as patches and samples.
As I said up front, I was skeptical. But three weeks and three streams showing everything off later, I am convinced. This update is one that Reason has needed for a long time, and is well worth the price of updating.
I won’t dive deep into any specific topic, but instead touch lightly on each. I’ll say it up front: the new synths are amazing. Europa and Grain are very welcome to the party. Given that Thor, the last fully-featured synthesizer to be added to Reason, was released ten years ago, I’d say that it was time to breathe new life into that segment of the core program. Yes, the introduction of Rack Extensions mitigated this to an extent, but having these instruments included in stock Reason is a huge boon.
It’s all about sharing
Why? One, because of patches. Sharing patches for instruments among the community is fun and collaborative, and a great way to learn more about the instruments and synthesis in general. ReFills will be able to include these instruments in both standalone patches and combinator patches. Add to this the stability and low DSP-usage demanded by stock instruments in Reason and you have a compelling reason to include these in Reason 10.
Not to mention, they sound great.
Further, for those just starting out with Reason (i.e. those who haven’t purchased Rack Extensions) will find the sounds modern and usable right out of the box. The stock Reason experience has never been better, and there’s no better time to get into Reason than right now.
Europa and Grain are two entirely different methods of synthesis. Using wavetable and granular synthesis respectively, one can open up a huge variety of sounds with just these two synthesizers. The interfaces are clean and easy to navigate, and they are feature-packed. The effects section sounds great as well. They both have flexible routing, and the continuity across the two interfaces means that they both feel familiar very quickly.
Next we have the organic instruments. With a variety of tuned percussion, world instruments, and vocal choirs, Reason will now include a sizable amount of new textures that weren’t possible before. These sounds combined with the flexible Radical Piano allow people to be much more exploratory when creating music. Acoustic sounds have always been something that have existed in an odd space in the Reason universe, and these inclusions are a massive help to make the sounds more accessible.
Synchronous is an extremely versatile effect that allows drawn curves to affect different parameters. While it can also be used as a static multieffects unit, it shines when mixing different curves and timings to modulate things such as distortion amount, filter frequency, delay feedback, and more. A common use of Synchronous is to have it act as a faux sidechain setup by using the curves to modulate the level parameter. This causes the classic pumping effect common in many styles of electronic and pop music.
With all of these new options, plus the huge library of drum loops and samples (not to mention new patches included in the upgrade), there will be a lot of new possibilities living within stock Reason. While I might have wished for a few extra features such as dedicated CV outs for common parameters on the new synths, they are only minor things that I can live with.
Expanding horizons
Reason is usually thought of as primarily a DAW to make electronic music, but I can see it moving more towards a general all-purpose DAW with these new organic instruments and Radical Piano. In the past, I’ve used Reason to produce electronic music and Pro Tools to produce other styles of music, mainly guitar-based rock. As time goes on, I can see more and more how I might be able to do everything within Reason, using only stock sounds. Granted, I have a variety of Rack Extensions and VSTs that aid me, but I could get by without them with this new update.
I hope I’m not the only one convinced by Reason 10. It’s also important to remember that you’re just buying Reason 10 right now, as there are likely to be point updates over the next year or so to make other improvements. For an existing Reason user, the $129/€129 price is honestly a no-brainer given what’s included. Many people pay that price for a new soft synth, and in this upgrade you get two amazing ones, plus 4 other instruments, a great effects unit, and a huge bank of drum samples and loops. For new users, you have to consider that along with the new content, you also get the huge backlog of instruments, effects, utilities, players, features, samples, patches… etc! All in all, I am happy with my upgrade, and I think many others will be too.
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