July 28, 2007
The Producers Conference, New York, USA
New York City is arguably the birthplace of Hip Hop, and that was obvious as the participants in The Producers Conference in New York City flocked to Legacy Recoding Studios for a day of seminars on music making with Reason.
A little over 200 participants came to the event to hear presentations from seasoned Reason experts such as James Bernard, Kurt Kurasaki and Chris Petti.
The first topic was on using Reason with a ReWire host. Line 6 Product Specialist Chris Petti showed several examples of how to hook up Reason to Ableton Live to process audio from Reason in external effects and to connect all the audio outs from Reason to a ReWire host to mix the Reason audio externally. This can be practical when Reason provides sounds to acoustic recordings made in the ReWire host.
Second up was Propellerhead Software's own James Bernard to give a presentation on how to use the Reason devices in unorthodox ways. A vocoder can be used as an EQ, or a crossover filter. A Malström synth can be used as a sound processor for other devices. All this requires some routing of cables on Reason's backside. To illustrate his point, James then dived into his newly released Multiband Toolbox ReFill and showed how he used banks of effects to achieve multiband treatment of audio in Reason.
James was followed by Kurt Kurasaki, the author of Powertools for Reason. Kurt seems to have infinite insight in how to push Reason far beyond what it was intended to do, and gave a presentation on how to put Reason's Control Voltage V and Gate features to good use. He started off with a bit of synth history to explain how CV and Gate was used in old Modular systems of the 60s and 70s.
The last item on the agenda was an artist panel discussion. The invited artists were Adam Dorn aka. Mocean Worker, Hank Shocklee, producer with a background in legendary Bomb Squad and Jaison John from Sanctuary Management who manage Slip Knot and other bands. The panel discussion evolved around the business side of music making, with plenty of helpful advice from Pros that have made it in the game. Topics included management, legal and practical aspects of music publishing, promotion, getting your music in the download shops and much more.
