Personalizing Propellerhead Reason

The very existence of Reason has already simplified the music creation process, but many people aren’t aware that it is possible to streamline it even further from within the program. There are a variety of ways to customize the program to your personal style of working, which will save you time and make general navigation of the application much simpler. Let’s take a closer look at these settings.

All such settings are found in Reason’s Preferences panel (Windows and Mac OS 9.X: Edit > Preferences; Mac OS X: Reason > Preferences). We’re going to take a look at both the General and Sound Locations control panels.

General

You may have discovered that making small adjustments to knobs and sliders in the interface can be a little difficult. To remedy this problem, first select General from the Preferences menu. The Mouse Knob Range allows you to decide if you’re going to make coarse or fine adjustments to the settings. The Normal setting allows you to make coarser adjustments. You can also change the setting to Precise or Very Precise for less change as you move the mouse, resulting in more finite control.

The Appearance settings affect the way things are displayed. If you have created songs with splash screens, but do not want them to be displayed when opening, uncheck the box next to Show Song/ReFill Splashes. When looking at the back of the Reason rack, cabling can get overwhelming when viewing all the connections. You can make that go away by removing the check from the Cable Animation box. If you wish to see the actual value of a knob or setting on the rack, leave the Show Parameter Value tool tip on. If you do not want to view the Parameter Value when you roll the mouse over a knob or are making changes, uncheck the corresponding box. The Show Automation setting will either enable or disable showing automation in the sequencer view for each track, depending on whether the box is checked or unchecked.

One of the greatest features of the Reason Preferences menu is the Default Song setting. When you create a new song file within Reason, you can elect for it to appear as an empty rack, to use the default song template that comes with Reason, or to create your own template. If you like to work with a certain set of instruments and effects, you can create a rack and save it as a song file. In order to have Reason open that song file as a template, go to Preferences > General and select Custom. Next, browse to the file and select it. Now when you create a new file, the rack will appear in that format. This can save you lots of time by allowing you to get right to work.

Sound Locations

If you have a large number of sounds, ReFills, or REX loops, you can save them in different locations but access them quickly once you set up your Sound Locations. On the Sound Locations tab, you’ll find four audio paths that will enable you to set up shortcuts. Click on the path of your choosing and browse to select the location of the desired samples. Then, when you open a patch or sample for an instrument, you’ll have four folder icons on the browser. Clicking on those folders will take you into the locations you saved on the Sound Locations settings.

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