Specifications

QUICK TUTORIAL
20
About this Chapter
This chapter is a quick introduction to the basics in Reason, laid out as step-by-
step tutorials. At the end of the chapter you will also find a “guided tour”, de-
scribing the different areas and devices in the program.
! Before you proceed with the tutorials, you should have connected
your equipment and made settings for audio and MIDI as described
in the previous chapters.
Playing a Song
1. If you haven’t launched Reason yet, do so.
2. Pull down the File menu and select Open.
The Song Browser dialog appears.
3. Navigate to the Reason program folder.
4. Open the Demo Songs folder and select the song “Tutorial
Song.rns”.
5. Click Open.
The document window for the song is displayed on screen. This consists of
a “virtual rack” with devices (this song contains four instrument devices and
two effects), a sequencer section and a transport panel.
6. Click the play button on the transport panel (at the bottom of the
window).
Playback starts. If everything is properly connected, you should now hear
Reason play!
7. Click the stop button to stop playback when you’ve heard enough.
Now, try out some real-time mixing:
8. Click the stop button again.
This moves the song position to the start of the song, allowing you to play
the song from the beginning again.
9. Near the top of the rack is a mixer device - make sure this is visible.
You may need to scroll the view using the vertical scrollbar to the right in the
rack (or the scroll wheel on your mouse, if it is equipped with one).
If you look at the mixer, you will see that each mixer channel has a “tape strip”
next to the volume fader. If a device is connected to a mixer channel, the tape
strip is labeled with the device name. In this song, there are only four instrument
devices, so only the four first mixer channels are labeled.
10. Click the play button to start playback.
11. While the song is playing, click and drag the faders to adjust the
level of each instrument device.
12. Try changing the pan setting (stereo position) of a channel, by click-
ing the pan knob above the fader and dragging up or down.
Dragging up will turn the knob clockwise; dragging down will turn it counter-
clockwise.
The stop button. The play button.
The Mixer.
The scrollbar.