Product Description

This definitive guide provides insider tips and techniques for producing music using Reason, one of the world's most popular virtual-studio programs. Readers will expand their sonic palettes by applying the advice of a recognized Reason guru, and they will learn the audio concepts behind these effects so they can become experts in sound innovation. The companion CDROM features demo software, custom samples, and original Reason song files.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #954278 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 234 pages

Customer Reviews

Awesome Reference For Experienced Reason Users
Being a user of Reason now for a year, I was looking for material that I could use to add some spark back into my music. After checking out some Reason tutorials that Kurt wrote on the web, I was intrigued and went to his website, only to find that he has written an entire book on the techniques in his tutorials! Every piece of Reason is explained and dissected, with examples and tutorials! If you are looking to take the next step in using Reason, this book is for you! Beginners to Reason may want to hold off on this book until they have a grasp on basic usage, as there are some assumptions of technique in here.

Filled with useful and unusual ideas
As has been noted by previous reviewers, Power Tools for Reason 2.5 is not for beginners. In this guide, you will find a wealth of information about how to create sophistated and unsual instrument/effect routings that will greatly expand your musical palette.

The bulk of the book focuses on Reason's different CV routing possibilities, and you really can achieve a lot by treating the entire Reason rack as if it were one big modular synthesizer.

I do have a couple of criticisms. I was hoping for more information, tips, and tricks for working with Subtractor and Malstrom. There is actually surprisingly little here about working at the synthesizer level. My second criticism is that some of the CV routing diagrams are not explained in much detail. You will definitely have to spend some time studying the diagrams (and not just following the manual's instructions) if you want to understand what is going on.

These are small criticisms considering the great favor Mr. Kuraski has done Reason users by publishing this book. You'll learn a lot here.

Good tips, but poorly organized as an instruction book
Maybe I've been spoiled by the excellent tutorials in Apple's Pro Training Series (e.g., Final Cut Pro HD) books. The way the concepts are presented and then immediately followed with step by step tutorials (including pictures of many steps) is superb for learning. Mr. Kurasaki's book doesn't quite measure up in this respect. There's a lot of text to wade through in some chapters that begs an *immediate* example to illustrate the concept. Also it would have been nice if some of the more lengthy examples could have been included on the CD-ROM, since some of them take some time to get programmed, esp. some of the Matrix data. I'm still searching for a really good intermdiate/advanced Reason tutorial. Hopefully with the arrival of Reason 3 something will emerge. As for this book, I'm giving it three stars for useful content and withholding two stars for its organization and examples.