Reason Producer’s Conference – Chicago (Review)

[semantik]

Sorry for the delay in delivering this review… it’s actually been sitting on my desktop for a while, but a number of things have taken priority. Anyhow… let me say that both the Propellerheads Producers Conference and Chicago Recording Company was a really cool place to hang out on a Saturday afternoon.

I strolled into the event about five minutes before the event started and was greeted by a friendly reception desk and given a complementary Brainwerks “Music Production with Reason 4” DVD, notepad, and pen (take a wild guess at how we did the previous giveway). Another nice surprise is that while I’ve gotten so used to being starved during events that I came prepped with my own food so the assortment of refreshments came as a surprise and was a very nice touch.

I’m not quite sure how many people they were able to accommodate, but my guestimate is that less than 70 people attended. It’s almost a shame that, with a price tag of only $35, there were actually empty seats. If you take into account the retail price of the DVD, the price of attendance paid for itself upon setting foot in the building.

The only disappointment of the whole event was not getting a chance to hear Donavon Knowles speak. He wasn’t able to make it to the event and it would have been nice to hear some of his insight into producing R&B. The other presenters did one hell of a job taking us inside and out of some of the lesser-known aspects of the software. I guess this explains why the first half hour was spent watching what was essentially an extended product demo for their bass refill (still another eye opener).

The first segment of the session began with product specialist Chris Petti discussing ways to improve speed and creative workflow. This pretty much blew my mind away. Chris was able to get up and running, creating music in what seemed to be like seconds. He discussed topics ranging from simple ways to organize sample libraries and suggestions for storing project files to more complex to other, more complex techniques such as automation and ways to utilize the samplers.

My personal favorite presentation was by Kurt Kawasaki aka “Peff”, who segment was titled “Modular Synthesis with Thor”. This not only turned out to be an overview of the amazing Thor synth, but really a crash course in synth architecture, sound construction, and patch programming. He also talked about which analog sequencers Thor was based on and can emulate demonstrated in detail the Modular Matrix. Much time was spent on theory, including oscillator, filters, and amplifiers, but sitting through the presentation was like an 8 year old watching Saturday morning cartoons.
Another product specialist, James Bernard was up next to talk more about sound design. Those that have seen the video of DJ Khalil demoing a Nas song at the Los Angeles Producers conference will appreciate this. According to James, his job is to seek out prominent artists, give them software, and get them to do interviews. If I recall correctly, he also said that he was a sound designer working for Korg for 14 years. Can you imagine what kind of sound library this guy has?!

Anyhow, after a quick show of hands to determine the percentage of people using Regroove, James took us deep into the program. Here’s where I was won over. Regroove is a shuffle quantize feature that is able to emulate the shuffle/swing feature of the Akai MPC or whatever pattern you program it for! During the demo he went through a couple of Regroove patterns such as MPC 60, Reggae, and a sort of Baltimore Go-Go.
Another amazing thing he did to demonstrate the power of the sampler and sequencing was to make 4 complete songs each using only one sample. In other words, he created an entire song using on 808 tom drum! From this one sound he created basslines, kicks, snares, hi-hats, synths, and other effects just to prove how creative you can be with sound design and construction. As you can imagine, pretty much everyone in attendance had their minds blown with this one. He also demoed an additional track where he did the same thing using a 909 kick.

That’s right, I’m back to using Reason again. Call it an impulse buy or whatever you want, but since I was on my way to Guitar Center to pick up a Motu Ultralite interface, I copped a copy of Reason 4 while I was at it.
There's nothing like a great event to spark the creative juices and get things flowing again. If you haven't noticed, we've taken a detour recently from some of the more technical discussions and leaned towards a more news. Truthfully, the lack of in depth posts has main been a result of my disjointed production workflow coupled with a newly found hatred for all things Microsoft plus frustration with Digidesign's lack of timely support for Pro Tools on Mac OS Leopard.

It just so happens that in the middle of all this, the product specialists over at Propellerhead decided to hold their Producers Conference this past weekend at the Chicago Recording Company. At first it just seemed like a good chance to go check out the new Reason 4 and hang out with some like minded people, but it ended up being a real eye opener since I'd ceased using Reason since version 2.5 when I'd made the jump to the Akai MPC 2000XL.

I highly recommend attending any of the Reason events whenever you get the chance. It’s definitely worth the investment of time and money.