Learning Songwriting: Reason

- [Voiceover] Everyone writes songs in their own way. The process is rarely linear, and it's not necessarily consistent from song to song. Some songs start with musical elements like a guitar riff or a beat and some start with a lyric idea or even a melody without lyrics. All of these starting points are valid. There are two groups of techniques that I'd like to share with you in this course. Techniques to get your demo song ideas down quickly before the inspiration and desire fade, and techniques to make your rough ideas sound good enough to present to your songwriting partners, your producer, publisher, or label.

I'll start with sharing some tips for setting up Reason and creating a template file so that Reason is ready to record your ideas as soon as you launch the application. Then I'll record a basic musical idea and discuss how to find the right tempo for your song. Next, I'll show you how to find a drum loop that matches your song idea and how to customize that loop to fit the groove of your song. And I'll demonstrate how to loop record and edit your vocals so that you can create one great composite take from several takes.

Next I'll add a bass track and begin adding other instrumentation to flush out the arrangement. Once I've got all the ideas down, I'll create a rough mix, balancing the track volume, adjusting stereo panning and adding EQ, reverb, and delay. Then I'll insert some limiting and compression to the output track to boost the level of the demo so it can compete with professionally mastered tracks. Finally, I'll bounce down the song to share it. So join me as we dive into Songwriting With Reason.