To use an album as a benchmark of creativity, I urge EVERYONE to listen to Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album released in 1967 by The Beatles. Now, I already know that those unfamiliar with the band usually cringe and say 'fuck that old bubblegum pop band'. Here's a newsflash to those people. You can't begin to imagine what this album is like if all you think of the Beatles is the 'Love Me do' sound. The band had already given up on touring for good (save for a final, impromptu performance on the rooftop of the Apple building at the end of the band's career (uh-huh.. you read right. Apple Corps was the company and label that The Beatles created, long before Steve Jobs stole the iconic name), and proceeded to make the Sgt. Peppers album that could not even be performed live. Such is the studio wizardry executed by the band, along with producer George Martin, that the Sgt. Peppers record broke into territory that no other band had ever achieved in the past. Experimental music was not a new thing, but to be experimental and musical, and to chart at #1 in five countries, was truly a groundbreaking achievement.
While 8-Track recording was available in 1967, Abbey Road Studios were slow adapters of technology. Thus, Sgt. Peppers was recorded using a 4-TRACK (utilizing bounce outs, splicing, reverse playing etc). This is the model they used:
I believe this was the mixing console that was used for the album. A far cry from the SSL, hey?
Do you know the history of a 'flanger'? While perhaps not the originators, It was popularized by the Beatles, and if not for John Lennon, we may have not seen the device in today's world.
"Further development of the classic effect is attributed to Ken Townsend, an engineer at EMI's Abbey Road Studio, who devised the process in the spring of 1966. Tired of laboriously re-recording dual vocal tracks, John Lennon asked Townsend if there was some way for the Beatles to get the sound of double-tracked vocals without doing the work. Townsend devised Artificial Double Tracking or ADT. According to historian Mark Lewisohn, it was Lennon who first called the technique "flanging". Lennon asked George Martin to explain how ADT worked, and Martin answered with the nonsense explanation "Now listen, it's very simple. We take the original image and we split it through a double vibrocated sploshing flange with double negative feedback".Lennon thought Martin was joking. Martin replied, "Well, let's flange it again and see". From that point, when Lennon wanted ADT he would ask for his voice to be flanged, or call out for "Ken's flanger". According to Lewisohn, the Beatles' influence meant the term "flanging" is still in use today, more than 40 years later. The first Beatles track to feature flanging was "Tomorrow Never Knows" from Revolver, which was recorded on April 6, 1966. When Revolver was released on August 5, 1966, almost every song had been subjected to flanging."
Have you all downloaded Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band from your favourite music source yet? It's your loss if you choose not to. Not only as a listening experience, but to allow you to consider your own creativity. Buy it, download it, find a comfortable space, free from distraction, and immerse yourself. Live only for this moment. Your moment. You and the Beatles. Together alone. Within You, Without You.
The Reason software suite offers a vast array of tools to not only equal most approaches in the Sgt. Peppers album, but to execute them immediately. WOuld you like some backwards audio tracking? Easy.. select the clip and choose 'reverse clips' from a drop down menu. Need to slice & dice some tracks? Hit the letter 'R' while in the sequencer window, and start slicing away. Younger folks living in the digital age may not appreciate the work that went into these processes in 1967. It was literally a razor blade and some cello tape. The tape console motors were mechanically reversed. If you wanted some crazy warbling sounds, you didn't reach for the left mouse click and choose a creative effect, but stuck a pencil in the tape's journey, and fucked around with the tension.
With Reason, we have it so easy. Lossless multitracking with no track number limitations. Several stock synthesizers with limitless tweaking possibilities. OK, not limitless, but within Thor alone, between all the patches, and every position of each filter, there would be BILLIONS of variations. Load up some native FX patches and tweak them, for millions more. Repeat for Subtractor. Add into that the Malstrom. Multiply the figures with Alligator.. it goes on and on (a bit like this post), so we may as well say 'limitless possibilities', for wont of defining a number that Benoit Mandelbrot would struggle with calculating.
Check out the 'Echo'. A tribute to the Roland Space Echo series (of which I have one - wanna see a pic?). It's been a favorite hardware device in psychedelic music of the '60's, and years later a core device in the birth of Dub. Not this stupid 'dubstep' or any other genre using the term. DUB. Look it up on Wikipedia if you don't know what dub music is really all about. For Reason users, we can do EVERYTHING that the original dub guys were doing.
Check out the virtual mixing console we have in the Reason arsenal. Now scroll back up to the image of John Lennon sitting alongside the EMI desk. Now, are you feeling a bit more grateful for the technology we have at our fingertips in 2015?
How about the NN-XT ? Sgt. Peppers aside, almost all of the greatest music, the most creative endeavors, were done with real instruments. If you didn't have the instrument, you paid a fortune to get it. This imposed limitations, but we, as Reason users, have no such restrictions. Complain all you wish about NN-XT being an 'old' device requiring a revamp, but it's a powerful device in it's own right. Coupled with a wide range of third-part ReFills, it's a home & professional studio powerhouse. Don't compare it to the next DAW's wizz-bang model, nor seek to acquire the latest & greatest, because no amount of gadgets will really help you if your compositions are lackluster.
Perhaps you would like some piano in your next song. Let's not whinge about the limited sounds in NNXT or ID8, but quietly reflect on how much a pain in the ass it would be to actually buy a piano. Heavy, takes up a lot of space, and you only have one core sound source. With Reason's native devices, combined with FX, there are a multitude of piano sounds that can be generated. If you don't like to, or don't have the skills to get a great piano sound, there is the excellent Reason Piano ReFill and also the Radical Piano RE.
How many electronic drum beats do we need? ReDrum is nice, it's an ease to use, and one could look no further (lol) for those boom boom boom sounds that appears in 90% of people's music. But the boundaries have been extended with Kong. Holy crabs, that device is a giant. I never used it until mid 2014, and discovered the extended panel for tweaks. The Kong library of single hits is enormous. Between the library and the in-device tweaks, can people really not find an artificial kick drum to their liking? I guess not, because there are RE's being sold for such porpises. It seems a nit fishy to me, when the whole 'drum machine' concept developed as a crass imitation of the real thing - perhaps some younger users might like to know that drums were once an instrument that you hit with a stick. To each their own, but I see more organic soul in a drummer like Danny Carey over some dude with one hand punching the sky and the other hand tapping some illuminated buttons. In the author's own opinion, drums/percussion are the one shortcoming of the DAW. Let's see how many people take me to task on this paragraph and ignore every other point made......
Think about the Combinator, and what it does. Step outside of yourself, and instead of focusing on what *you* use it for, take a broader examination of what it *can* do. For truly custom sounds, some epic Combinators can be built when you start throwing a few 14 channel desks into the device. Such technological capabilities could not have been dreamed of when Sgt. Peppers was being recorded.
How about the automation parameters. Almost every device, both native and third party, allow for absolute control down to 1/64th of a beat. Those old school original dub guys would cream their pants at such a technology, and if it were around in 1967, George Martin would have had a heart attach brought on by a state of pure production ecstasy.
"We need synth 'x'" (Zebra, Omisphere, whatever) is often the cry from Reason users. There must be what, 10 in the RE store already. Taking the guesstimated billions reference earlier in this topic with Thor alone, purchasing those RE's will put you in the range of having TRILLIONS of options. No, in fact, there is no word for the number of unique sound options a user can create. Let's go with BAZILLIONS.
So what are y'all waiting for? How close are you to making that album that will define what absolute creative genius is all about? You don't need to strive towards making an album that sounds like Sgt. Peppers. You don't even need to emulate the musical style. Find your own way, not that of some dude in a mickey mouse mask playing loops, or a dirty-haired midget smackie pushing buttons, or one of countless hooded air punchers who dominate the scene. Reason is here, and waiting for you to explore. Push the boundaries, not only of the software, but of your own consciousness.
Footnote: I do not take the position of a master composer or producer. I'm mediocre at the former, and lousy at the latter. But I'm self aware enough to know that the only thing stopping me is my own limited skillset. The Reason Suite, couple with the current range of third party RE's & ReFills, is an unrivaled powerhouse in digital music production. No other DAW, as far as I know offers the versatility of skeumorphic design that goes beyond a pretty looking GUI. I've overlooked the power of CV routing, because it's not my forte, but again, I am aware of the possibilities. Likewise, there are many, many other aspects of the Reason suite that I have failed to mention.
How about you? What do you like about Reason?
"Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.” -Epictetus
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