When MIDI instruments first were made (long ago, in the 1980’s), they were actual hardware instruments that made sounds. The new thing about them was that they could communicate with each other, and with the computer.
In recent years, MIDI virtual instruments — software applications that emulate actual MIDI instruments — have become popular. So instead of having a big, expensive box that makes sound, you can buy a less expensive program to run on your computer. MIDI systems have become both cheaper and more portable.
Reason is a software synthesizer and sampler that runs on both Macintosh and Windows systems. However, Reason is more than a virtual instrument: in addition to sound-making capabilities, it includes a full-featured sequencer, and it lets you work with audio tracks as well as MIDI tracks.
In our classroom, we use the Korg Triton Le as a MIDI master keyboard: when you press a key on the Triton, it sends a MIDI message to Reason, and that causes Reason to play a sound. So the sounds you hear are produced by Reason — they come from the computer’s audio output jack, not from the keyboard.
For people taking the online version of this course: your MIDI keyboard may have different knobs and wheels, but the basic ideas are the same.
In this tutorial we explore making sounds with Reason. You’ll experiment with several techniques special to playing an electronic keyboard.
Reason contains many different types of device: synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, effects units, pattern generators.
You will set up a rack of three different melodic or chordal instrument devices — such as SubTractor, Malström, Thor, NN19, NN-XT, etc. — in any combination. Note that the ID8 will be a little too limiting.
If you don’t hear anything, check the following settings.
Try it and listen for the changes in sound: first play softly, then play the same note forcefully. Nearly all synthesizer patches will respond to key velocity. Usually, greater velocity makes a louder sound, but there are other aspects of the sound that can change, typically tone color. Try to figure out what varies with velocity.
Some keyboards have a joystick to the left of the keyboard. Others have a modulation wheel and a pitch bend wheel in that spot. The mod. wheel moves freely, whereas the pitch bend wheel and joystick are spring-loaded — they snap back to the middle position when you let go.
Pitch Bend: Play a note and, while holding the key down, move the joystick right and left. The pitch rises and falls. Notice also that the Bend wheel in SubTractor goes up and down. It’s controlled by the joystick’s horizontal motion. Or, if you have a bend wheel on your keyboard, it works like the one on screen in SubTractor.
Read the opening paragraph with the envelope diagram, and the descriptions of Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release. Then read the Amplitude Envelope section only. (You don’t need to read the Filter Envelope or Mod Envelope sections now.)
Does this sound like a real saxophone? It might, or it might not, partly depending on how you play. Experiment with playing the keyboard in a way that makes it not sound like a sax. How you play is important! Try playing notes in the low register (left end of the keyboard), the middle register, and the high register (right end of the keyboard). Play notes with a variety of lengths: some short, some long.
If you have a small, two-octave keyboard (25 keys), it may be difficult to try different registers. But your keyboard will have buttons that let you shift the note range of the keyboard.
This is called an insert effect, since you’re inserting the effect between an instrument and the mixer. (If Reason didn’t patch this correctly, it’s because you didn’t select the NN-XT before creating the effect device.)
To search for a type of sound that might be available from any of the synthesizers and samplers, do this:
