It’s hard to believe a decade has passed since Propellerhead introduced its rack-tastic software, Reason. The concept—virtually unlimited music-making hardware and effects, available in an integrated software format—seems as fresh and unique today as it did when it debuted. Just as digital audio workstations (DAWs) replaced the cumbersome tape machines and expensive audio tape, Reason removed the need for racks and racks of synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, delays, and reverbs. By making the whole thing self-contained—no audio recording or external plug-ins allowed—Reason was able to provide a full, stable music-production facility for, well, a song. That is, unless you wanted to record an actual song—with vocals, lyrics, verses, choruses, bridges, etc. In that case you had to use ReWire to link up Reason with your DAW, a process that works remarkably well.

With Propellerhead’s 2009 introduction of Record, many of the functions of an audio recording DAW became available in software specifically designed to integrate with Reason. As with Reason, Record doesn’t allow any third-party software to be used— no VST or Audio Units effects or soft-synth plug-ins other than its included ID8, a Garageband-like synth that offers some basic, but high quality sounds (drums, bass, strings) for sketching out songs.

The features of Reason and Record would take a book, let alone a review, to cover. Even listing the new features of each in depth requires more space than we have, but I will try to give you a good overall sense of the exciting updates in both.

The Gorilla in The Room
Reason has always been a favorite of groove-oriented producers; the killer sounds in its Redrum drum machine and Dr Rex loop player offer a one-two punch for building phat beats. Both of those remain in Reason 5 (sort of), but Propellerhead has added the Kong Drum Designer to take the rhythm options over the top.

Kong’s classic Akai MPC appearance should make it instantly familiar to old school hip-hop fans. The 16 pads are Velocity sensitive, even when using a mouse—just click on different parts for varying Velocities. Each pad can be loaded with a choice of physically modeled or synth-produced bass, tom and snare drums, or a synth hi-hat. You can load a Nurse Rex (cute: Dr/Nurse—get it?) loop player to trigger full grooves or single hits from your favorite Rex files, or an NN Nano Sampler that loads up to four samples, triggerable at different Velocities. This effectively gives you the option of up to 64 sounds from the 16 pads.

Once the sounds are chosen they can be modified by one of 11 effects in each of two slots, as well as sending a bus signal to another effect within Kong. But wait, there’s more: a Master FX slot will modify the entire drum configuration—all before you send either the entire groove or individual pads to the Reason Mixer.

This is just the tip of the iceberg; the manipulation possibilities within each module are awesome. If all of this weren’t enough, Kong is one of the Reason instruments that takes advantage of another new feature in version 5—audio sampling. That’s right, now you can record your own samples directly into Reason, not just import them. Simply click on the audio icon and Reason begins recording. Full editing features are available, but as the playback is configured to play from the first detected transient, you may find no editing is necessary. A new Sampling Input rack manages the monitoring, as well as routing, from external or internal sources.

I played a guitar chord into the NN Nano and even though I started well after recording began, when I hit the pad it nailed it right from the top of the chord. For another groove, I went into editing mode and reversed the guitar sound, all without having to leave the Kong area, let alone Reason—and without having to stop playback (see Fig. 1). This opens up Reason to a whole new world of live performance sampling.

Fig 1: The sampler can automatically snap to the beginning of a sound.

Eight is Enough
When I indicated that Redrum and Dr Rex were still in Reason 5 “sort of,” I was presaging the fact that Redrum now offers live sampling and—more radically—Dr Rex has been replaced with Dr Octo Rex. No more loading multiple Dr Rex’s to go from a verse to a chorus. Dr Octo Rex is loaded with the equivalent of eight Dr Rex machines. Though they all share the same modifiers (easily circumvented with separate automation), each can hold a different REX file sample, allowing you to simply program groove changes in Reason’s sequencer section. You can also trigger each loop from a hardware controller, adding performance flexibility to this cool tool.

Of course, you can add as many Dr Octos as you like, possibly dedicating one to drums, one to bass, and another to guitars, each changing parts in perfect synchronicity. The more adventurous can now program the device to retrigger beats on the bar, the beat, or the 16th note. Individual slices can still be triggered separately, and now you can independently modify each slice’s pitch, pan, direction, frequency, and more.

Building Blocks
Both Reason 5 and Record 1.5 feature “Blocks,” a new way of constructing songs. Actually it is more like an old way: if you think in terms of traditional verse/chorus/bridge sections, you can now start by recording all the parts for a particular section into a block, then construct the song by placing the appropriate blocks in the relevant places within the song. At any time you can mute individual tracks, and add or subtract sections. If you modify parts, the modifications will be reflected throughout all of the instances of that block.

Reminiscent of working with Scenes in Ableton Live, Blocks seems like a good way to speed up your workflow. At least it did once I figured out that for some reason you can’t duplicate the blocks by hitting Command-D or using Duplicate in the edit menu (it is grayed out). Cutting and pasting, or hitting Option while grabbing a block and dragging it, does the trick.

For the Record
I have been a long time Reason user but had never worked with Record before this review. The learning curve turned out to be surprisingly speedy. Its GUI’s resemblance to Reason may have helped, but even those unfamiliar with its sister product should find it relatively easy to navigate. What will definitely help is some working knowledge of a professional mixing board; Record is rightly proud of its SSL-style mixing section, but if you have previously only dealt with a 4-track hardware recorder, the rows and rows of buttons and knobs in this product will take a little getting used to.

In addition to Blocks, the other major innovation in version 1.5 is the Neptune Pitch Adjuster and Voice Synth. Love it or hate it, pitch correction and revision effects have become a mainstay of modern production. Whether it means that you just fix one flat note in an otherwise flawless performance, or mold a head-turning non-singer into a pop star, you will undoubtedly find a use for this tool. You might find yourself using it to add harmonies by playing them on a keyboard, slathering T-Pain effects on your hip-hop productions, or even to modify other instruments. I don’t sing—even with auto correction—but I found it fun to run a guitar part through Record’s POD modeler, then into Neptune for some formant and octave shifting (see Fig. 2).

Fig 2: Neptune is the new pitch adjuster in Reason.

A Reason to Record
If you don’t own either product, getting Reason 5 is a no brainer. You need not be into dance music or electronica to avail yourself of the terrific sounds contained in its virtual hardware—the equivalent of thousands of dollars worth of the real thing. If you own version 4, Kong and Dr Octo Rex alone make the upgrade worth it—and there are a dozen other improvements—did I mention the new on-screen piano keys, accessible from your computer keyboard?

If you already own Record, 1.5 is a free upgrade—so what are you waiting for? If you don’t own Record, you must ask yourself if its stability and great time-stretching are a fair tradeoff for not being able to use any third-party plug-ins. If the answer is Yes, by all means get it and add Reason to the package—it will help mitigate that lack of access to VSTs.

Unlike some other software companies, Propellerhead does not do updates every year, preferring to wait until they can launch a new system that works as well as the old one. That is why, despite the ton of major and minor goodies added to Reason 5 and Record 1.5, you can continue to rely on their legendary stability while enjoying these fresh innovations.

Pros: Reason—Kong, Dr Octo Rex, audio sampling make the upgrade a must. Record—Neptune Pitch Adjuster and Voice Synth and Blocks recording make it a more desirable DAW.
Cons: Cannot use external plug-in effects or soft-synths.

Michael Ross in a New York City-based guitarist/producer/music journalist. He contributes articles to Guitar Player, Premier Guitar, Guitar Edge, EQ, Sound On Sound, and Gearwire.com. He is the author of the Hal Leonard books Getting Great Guitar Sounds and All About Effects.