Last week on Live Musician Central I did a series of features on the incredibly powerful Propellerhead Reason 4.0 music production software. Reason 4.0 is an amazingly powerful music program that will let you fully explore your creative impulses. As I’m sure you’re aware, the documentation that comes with most of these great pieces of software is basic at best. There are so many devices available for you to use in Reason 4.0 that it can easily overwhelm you without some direction. That’s why today I’m going to point you to an excellent guide that will help you get up and running quickly with Reason 4.0. That guide is called Reason 4 Power and is written by Michael Prager, a 15 year veteran in the music technology industry. His credentials are too numerous to list but if you want to read them check out the Reason 4 Power product page. Needless to say, he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to using music production software.
As I said, Reason 4 Power is an extremely comprehensive guide to this powerful software but the book is very easy to follow and understand. It begins with the basics such as “What is Reason 4.0?” and a brief explanation of digital audio and Reason which covers analog sound as well as digital audio and sampling. Reason 4 Power then walks you through installing and configuring Reason on either a PC or a Mac. The book then gives you a basic overview of all the various components in Reason 4.o which includes the synths, sounds, beats and treats. It covers the real-time effects, the combinator and then gives you an introduction to the Reason Sequencer. All of this happens in the first 3 chapters and by chapter 4 you are ready to create your first Reason song.
It’s so easy to get started with Reason 4.0 by using Reason 4 Power you’ll be thanking your lucky stars you bought this book every time you open it up. As the book continues it takes you very in-depth into all aspects of the Reason 4.0 music production software. Each device is discussed in detail as well as the sequencer, mixer and MClass mastering suite. The book also covers using Reason 4.0 as a ReWire device for your Pro Tools studio which is how I use Reason 4.0.
Reason 4 Power is 664 pages long but you don’t need to read each and every page in order. You can simply use the book as reference when you have a specific question about a device or an application. I highly recommend Reason 4 Power if you want to get the full potential out of your Reason 4.0 software.
