Making Rent with Reason!

This forum is for discussing Reason. Questions, answers, ideas, and opinions... all apply.
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fieldframe
RE Developer
Posts: 1037
Joined: 19 Apr 2016

02 May 2018

I have a few albums on streaming and download services that currently net me enough to pay my rent... postage. :)

I'm currently working on my first game soundtrack and have become obsessed with leitmotifs.

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FlowerSoldier
Posts: 470
Joined: 03 Jun 2016

02 May 2018

I work a full time jobby-job to pay my rent and support my Reason habit.
I'm the Greeter at the local health clinic. None of my coworkers know I make music.
I make stupid songs that I don't really think anyone would pay for, but I've made a little off throwing it on iTunes. Like, $75 dollars in the last 6 months. If you have time, check out Big Big Gun. Mvnny did the drums, I did the rest.

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plaamook
Posts: 2593
Joined: 22 Jan 2015
Location: Bajo del mar...

03 May 2018

Geltic Höhn wrote:
02 May 2018
plaamook wrote:
02 May 2018
I've got a couple little albums out, working on third. Doens't pay much. Gigs a bit. Sound design for film and trailers makes more money but its only part of my income. Which is fine by me. I can't handle too long in front of a computer.
Khun pasa thai ?
Hah!
Nit noi
I worked out there as a diver years back.
I always get a chuckle when people get it though.
Thamai kun pasat Thai? You live out there? Lived?
Perpetual Reason 12 Beta Tester :reason:

You can check out my music here.
https://m.soundcloud.com/ericholmofficial
Or here.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC73uZZ ... 8jqUubzsQg

Geltic Höhn
Posts: 43
Joined: 17 Apr 2018

03 May 2018

pom pasa thai nit noi, kraap.

Or whatever. Haha just the basics really. 10 or so food related words, 'beer please' and where's the goddamn toilet'. I just noticed your username and thought I'd shout out, as I'm thinking of renting an apartment to live in BKK for the duration of 2019

Sorry for the off-topic, people

Geltic Höhn
Posts: 43
Joined: 17 Apr 2018

03 May 2018

Actually not so off topic come to think of it. Reason users who are making coin with the program, and their talent, consider that if you step your business up a little, the world is your oyster. Being location independent, only requiring a laptop and a pair of headphones, perhaps a portable controller, and you could spend every morning waking up in a cabana by the ocean, or a hut surrounded by rice fields, and potentially live off $10/day in expenses... if that's your thing.

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chimp_spanner
Posts: 2908
Joined: 06 Mar 2015

03 May 2018

Great replies and nice to get some insight into what everyone is up to. Geltic - I really feel you on the risk/reward of turning something you love into work, and also about stepping up the business a little. Both things that resonate with me! Abridged life story incoming haha.

So I spent a few years doing Metal; solo bedroom project initially, then live touring band with session musicians. Haven't touched it for a while but here's the last thing I wrote for it before I put it on the back burner

Was also working on and off with a major UK loop/sample library company but ended up having to quit to tour (still do odd bits for them now though).

Eventually I got to the point of needing money and got a "real" job. For a day. Hated it. Then owing to a fortunate connection, ended up working with Alibi Music Library doing all kinds of stuff. Got a couple of film placements and some other random usage but still waiting for the big one (aren't we all haha). I do all of that work in Reason. Shortly after, got contacted by Red Bull for a couple of albums, the first of which you can find here;

The second just got finished a few weeks ago. Again mostly Reason, although it was ReWired at the time.

Then got hit up by a guy I knew from the Metal days who'd moved on from 8Dio to start his own company, Audio Imperia, and so I do sound design for Kontakt libraries, all designed in Reason. Been a while since I've done anything but this is the kind of stuff All sounds made in Reason, again.

Now I also do tutorial videos for Groove 3. Mostly Reason but also Cubase and now Maschine MK3, which has been KICKING MY ASS; spent hours trying to get an old Samsung S5 and a couple of soft light boxes look good. Finally cracked it haha.

My ideal goal would be to write for games and/or trailers but, it's hard. Work is...well...it's a full time job. I'm still doing all of the above mentioned things. Sometimes I feel like my job is music. Sometimes I feel like it's only loosely connected. And other times, such as when I'm trying to bluff my way through live video work, I wonder what exactly I'm doing with my life :lol:

Still, I manage to do it all from home. Reason is almost always at the centre of my production process so, it's very fair to say it pays the rent! I guess moving forward I wanna make some time to get back to actually writing. Like I need a monetary buffer of a few months to just drop everything and GO for it. No risk, no reward. I also need to find smarter ways to work. Start using templates. Write with a mixdown strategy in mind so I can do it all in a click rather than a thousand. So much to learn still. I'm 34 now, but I feel like I only really started properly maybe 4, 5 years ago. Gotta figure out where to go from here but my instincts tell me to start specialising. Can't be good at everything at once...

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adfielding
Posts: 959
Joined: 19 May 2015
Contact:

03 May 2018

Thinking about this is sort of making me realise that the bio on my site is totally out of date. Apologies for the long-winded post, this ended up being totally self-indulgent so I ended up waffling on a bit!

When I was younger I wanted to be a games programmer, then got into music through trackers and got into Reason in 2002 or so (which blew my damn mind!). When I left school I knew I wanted to do something music-related, but had no idea where to go outside of posting my music on-line and being active on the old user forum - I didn't have any formal musical education, just self-taught. After working in a pub and later getting an office job I decided to go to university in 2005 to study music production, where I figured that my best bet to make a living out of audio work was to focus on licensing. I worked a few part time jobs after university while also focussing on getting a solid foundation sorted, got a really nice placement in 2010 and ended up taking my music full-time on the back of that.

Most of my work is production music for libraries and the like, though lately I've been trying to get more into trailer cues and bespoke projects. I have a handful of libraries I'm always happy to work with, and I'm in a nice place now where licensing fees and royalty statements cover my (admittedly pretty low!) overheads. I'm also working with a couple of other guys now focussing more on hybrid/cinematic trailer stuff, which is awesome fun. Here's one of my trailer cues written with Reason.



I've done a bunch of sound design & patch work in the past for other people, starting in 2007 doing some work with Nucleus SoundLab. Last year I set up Fielding SoundWorks as a way to get my own projects out there, which has been an interesting learning exercise! I've had a bit of a break from that, but fully intend to get back into it when I have time. This is one of the demo tracks from my most recent release, Europa Relay.



When I'm not working on that stuff I tend to work on personal projects, which is more of a creative necessity for me than anything else - having a space where I can write whatever I want is super important, I think. In 2008 I released my debut album Distant Activity independently - I sent it around and nobody was interested, but I was really happy with it from an artistic perspective so figured "screw it, I'll do this myself!"... in retrospect, releasing an album at the start of my final year at university was probably a dumb move but, hey, everything worked out nicely. Ended up getting signed eventually and released a couple of albums through Distinctive Records, which I thought was a bit of a dream at the time as a few of my "heroes" growing up had releases through Distinctive. Went back to releasing music independently after that. This is the most recent album I released back in 2016.



Outside of my solo stuff - I was also in a post-rock band from 2010 - 2013 called Civil Protection, we released an album which I ended up mixing & producing - it was a total rush job and I really, really wish I'd had more time to work on it, but I still like how the album turned out. I also have a long-running (yet sporadic!) collaborative project called Neffle, which is hardware-based electronic stuff with my good friend Tom Pritchard. We released an album last year which I'm super happy with.


chimp_spanner wrote:
03 May 2018
Eventually I got to the point of needing money and got a "real" job. For a day. Hated it.
That's hilarious - I did something remarkably similar last year! Basically I had a bit of a mini existential crisis last year and ended up getting a job as a technical engineer, which quickly made me re-evaluate what I was doing both with my music and life in general - it really made me appreciate what was most important to me. Lasted a whopping six days in that job (it was through an agency, the guy who landed me that job was NOT impressed!), and had some really nice music-related gigs land on my lap after I quit - which was rather fortuitous, it must be said.

I also did a few livestream music making vids a couple of years ago which I fully intend to get back into - I moved house a while back which sort of put that one on hold, but now I don't really have much of an excuse not to get back into it... well, if I get time! I owe a huge amount of my own musical development to the Props, Reason, and the community in general, and I'm just hoping it's a ride I can stay on for a lot longer :)

jimmyklane
Posts: 740
Joined: 16 Apr 2018

03 May 2018

fieldframe wrote:
02 May 2018
I have a few albums on streaming and download services that currently net me enough to pay my rent... postage. :)

I'm currently working on my first game soundtrack and have become obsessed with leitmotifs.
Depending on what and how and for whom you work makes a ***HUGE*** difference in how you perceive and feel about creating/mixing/producing/ mastering/etc,etc in Reason or any other DAW for that matter. For years I owned and operated a proper commercial facility near Chicago and took in all manner of clients....some I’m ashamed to admit that I accepted only because the rent was due, even though I thought their music sucked.

Since you’re doing your own music and trying to market yourself to the TV/Film world I would say that you should become very conversant with scoring for strings. Even movies with super alternative scores like the new Tomb Raider have orchestral bits and bobs, and you’ll have to know how to mock those up. If you merely want to make money with just your own creations then having a very strong social media game is key. Get as many followers as possible and open a Patreon page and ask them to support you and your art.
DAW: Reason 12

SAMPLERS: Akai MPC 2000, E-mu SP1200, E-Mu e5000Ultra, Ensoniq EPS 16+, Akai S950, Maschine

SYNTHS: Mostly classic Polysynths and more modern Monosynths. All are mostly food for my samplers!

www.soundcloud.com/jimmyklane

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plaamook
Posts: 2593
Joined: 22 Jan 2015
Location: Bajo del mar...

04 May 2018

Geltic Höhn wrote:
03 May 2018
Actually not so off topic come to think of it. Reason users who are making coin with the program, and their talent, consider that if you step your business up a little, the world is your oyster. Being location independent, only requiring a laptop and a pair of headphones, perhaps a portable controller, and you could spend every morning waking up in a cabana by the ocean, or a hut surrounded by rice fields, and potentially live off $10/day in expenses... if that's your thing.

Yeah that was the plan at one point. Dive in tropical paradise and make jungle. In the jungle! But at the time you couldn't quite just load up a laptop like you can now.
So now I live in England and I dive in the dark and the cold and make (something like industrial ambient) music.
Perpetual Reason 12 Beta Tester :reason:

You can check out my music here.
https://m.soundcloud.com/ericholmofficial
Or here.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC73uZZ ... 8jqUubzsQg

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Zac
Posts: 1784
Joined: 19 May 2016
Contact:

04 May 2018

Love this thread. Very inspiring.

IAmFleX
Posts: 1
Joined: 28 Jun 2016

04 May 2018

Long time Reason user.

Have had the opportunity to be a session 'adviser' I'll say on numerous productions, indie and a couple major releases. Usually just being with the right people at the right time. My knowledge is pretty technical, my brain also works well in composition mode. Not too much of a live musician, but can compose on the fly very quickly. I've recorded a few local bands, co-produced some songs, things like that. I did pretty well around 2009-2012 with my production company (selling beats and submitting tracks for majors), but it quickly became a hard business to sustain for me.

Mostly I've done my own Spoken Word/conscious hip-hop albums (100% in Reason too) that are available on the usual streaming sites and Itunes these days. Pretty proud of those. Great feeling to see your passion projects released and folks enjoying them. I've made enough money to keep them up in the stores. :lol: I pay rent doing IT work and CAD support.

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Creativemind
Posts: 4875
Joined: 17 Jan 2015
Location: Stoke-On-Trent, England, UK

04 May 2018

chimp_spanner wrote:
03 May 2018

The second just got finished a few weeks ago. Again mostly Reason, although it was ReWired at the time.
Really diggin' that second one. Nice work. :)
:reason:

Reason Studio's 11.3 / Cockos Reaper 6.82 / Cakewalk By Bandlab / Orion 8.6
http://soundcloud.com/creativemind75/iv ... soul-mix-3

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MannequinRaces
Posts: 1543
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

08 May 2018

This is a great thread! To the pros what's a good way for somebody to break into selling music to music libraries for TV placements? I know there are websites that specialize in this but are they worth it or is it better to build a portfolio and send that around, etc.?

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HeavyViper
Posts: 74
Joined: 26 Oct 2016
Location: Australia
Contact:

08 May 2018

Pretty heartening to see people doing well in the field. I'm a freelance composer/sound designer working primarily with indie game devs at the moment. It's early days now, but the teams I'm working with seem to be very happy with what I'm delivering. They've also been nice enough to enable my FM synthesis addiction!

I've got my fourth game soundtrack in the works at the moment; it'll be the first I've done entirely in Reason. I've been using Reason for a few years now, mainly for sound effect design and cover projects, so I'm still figuring out workflow stuff that works for me.



Thankfully, it's coming along nicely. :3
Sound Designer and Composer :reason: FM+PSG Chip Sorcerer
https://heavyviper.bandcamp.com

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C//AZM
Posts: 366
Joined: 20 Jan 2015

15 May 2018

Hey this is a nice read!
Thank you all for your personal stories.

Me?
I was working strictly as a full time engineer/producer from the mid eighties to the early 00s. I engineered all sorts of music I did R&B, Rap, Gospel, lots of Grunge rock and folk stuff. I peaked when I started working with George Clinton and his ever evolving family of musicians. We were restoring and mixing hundreds of songs from their extensive parliament, Funkadelic, Bootsy Collins, Parlet, Brides Of Funkenstein, Blackbord McKnight, Horney Horns, Zapp, and Ruth Copeland archives. Out of that came the 5 CD Family series of unreleased songs, The four CD live boxed set, the two CD brides of Funkenstein set, and the four CD Sample set of un-finished P-funk songs which were also broken down for each instrument. We also recorded the Cinderella Theory, Smell My Finger, Dope Dogs and TAPAFOAM albums. Aside from that, I did a lot of radio and TV ads and a whole bunch of never famous acts. Got to travel as a working engineer. Made good money in many of those years. I also did work with up and coming artists JDee- (J.Dilla), Proof, and Eminem and lots of other Detroit acts.

...but then an opportunity presented itself in the early 90s that changed my life. A well paying square job offer fell into my lap which meant steady hours, steady money and time to sleep at night and raise my children and have good health insurance. I'm a father first and everything else came after that, so took the job and started working at GM Design. For years I tried to work both jobs, burning the candle at both ends, handing over client after client and gig after gig as the GM job became more intense and time consuming.
I'm an old geezer of 56 and I'm not up for 20 hour days, sleeping on the couch three hours, eating a Pizza, then doing another 20 hours.

Sometimes though I deeply resent working here and at the same time I'm completely satisfied with my choice. I wish I had never left the studio full time and also, I don't miss the BS that a commercial studio brings; Guys who's credit card melts, Bounced checks, guys who bring in the whole neighborhood, guys who bring strippers, people who OD, cops who suspect you're carrying drugs, guys who spill beer on the console, crumbled blunt papers in the carpet.... also the industry was changing and you didn't need a full mic cabinet, a piano, drums, Amps, a Studor and a Large Frame Console to have a studio.

In the early 00s I kinda gave up recording but I kept a studio running and did sessions on the weekends and popped by after work each day to check on things... but now, I'm only producing choice clients here and there, at home, and occasionally I go and mix.

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abeonis
Posts: 84
Joined: 06 Nov 2015
Location: Spain-France

15 May 2018

Don't have the need to make money with my music. Only pure fun. I am happily retired so I spend my day "playing" with Reason. I started to be interested in synthesis in the early 80's with a JP6, a Mac 512k(!) and Digital Performer ... but I had no time. Now, I feel free to do what I always wanted to do. Anyway, even if I wanted to make money with Reason, there is a huge competition. You are a zillion of expert producers. Also, I don't care if what I produce is not strictly related to my potential targeted customer needs. I prefer to remain my only listener and fan.
Windows 10 64-bit | Reason 9.5 | Live 10 Suite + Push2 | Intel i7 8700K | 16 GB RAM | Scarlett 6x6 | Arturia MiniLab MK II | 2x Novation LaunchControl XL

jimmyklane
Posts: 740
Joined: 16 Apr 2018

15 May 2018

chimp_spanner wrote:
02 May 2018
So I thought I'd change it up a bit here and get a sound off from everyone here using Reason in their work. What do you do? What kind of projects and clients do you deal with? What do you love about it and what do you hate about it? I'd love to hear what fellow working Reasoners are up to. Go!
Sound Design for commercial libraries, independent film work, songwriting, and the occasional TV spot.

In addition, I also mix and master other peoples music. Sometimes I need an outside audio editor, but Reason’s workflow is fairly similar to Harrison Mixbus when it’s all audio....without the baked in coloration that you can’t get around and with extremely flexible routing options.

Basically, Reason paired with a console and outboard makes for a stellar combination, since automating effects units with MIDI is so dead simple using EMD units.
DAW: Reason 12

SAMPLERS: Akai MPC 2000, E-mu SP1200, E-Mu e5000Ultra, Ensoniq EPS 16+, Akai S950, Maschine

SYNTHS: Mostly classic Polysynths and more modern Monosynths. All are mostly food for my samplers!

www.soundcloud.com/jimmyklane

djadalaide
Posts: 234
Joined: 11 May 2018

16 May 2018

I have just had about 10 jingles / corporate tracks approved by pond5 today, hopefully i will make some sales :)

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sonicbyte
Posts: 347
Joined: 16 Jan 2015
Location: Argentina
Contact:

16 May 2018

I sell royalty-free music since about 10 years ago, almost exclusively build within reason (lately I've added some vst)... also I monetize from youtube's content ID and had a couple of small documentaries that use my music.

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MattiasHG
Reason Studios
Posts: 488
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

16 May 2018

Back before I started at Propellerhead, I made rent by writing video game soundtracks for indie games in Reason. For example for Mojang's Scrolls, Oxeye's Cobalt and Sauropod Studio's Castle Story. Some of them I started before working at PH but they ended up being released WAY later.

Here are some examples:
TxK (Llamasoft, for PSVita):

Scrolls (Mojang, for PC/Mac):

Castle Story (Sauropod, for PC/Mac):


Writing music for games is hella fun :)
Last edited by MattiasHG on 16 May 2018, edited 1 time in total.

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C//AZM
Posts: 366
Joined: 20 Jan 2015

16 May 2018

:lol: Gasp! You mean you had a life before Propellerhead? I imagined that you were created in a lab by Dr. Noonian Soong for a single purpose. Video games are reall cool to work on. I have a friend who did that awhile back and it was always fun watching him.

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HeavyViper
Posts: 74
Joined: 26 Oct 2016
Location: Australia
Contact:

16 May 2018

MattiasHG wrote:
16 May 2018
Back before I started at Propellerhead, I made rent by writing video game soundtracks for indie games in Reason.
The more I get around, the more I see your name!

There's definitely a little more room for creative freedom in game music, which is why I've always drifted towards it. Hella fun indeed. :3
Sound Designer and Composer :reason: FM+PSG Chip Sorcerer
https://heavyviper.bandcamp.com

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MattiasHG
Reason Studios
Posts: 488
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

16 May 2018

HeavyViper wrote:
16 May 2018
MattiasHG wrote:
16 May 2018
Back before I started at Propellerhead, I made rent by writing video game soundtracks for indie games in Reason.
The more I get around, the more I see your name!

There's definitely a little more room for creative freedom in game music, which is why I've always drifted towards it. Hella fun indeed. :3
Hehe, that's how I got this job actually! Started as product specialist/demo guy because I had made so much different music in Reason for, among other things, video games. :geek:

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chimp_spanner
Posts: 2908
Joined: 06 Mar 2015

16 May 2018

MattiasHG wrote:
16 May 2018
HeavyViper wrote:
16 May 2018


The more I get around, the more I see your name!

There's definitely a little more room for creative freedom in game music, which is why I've always drifted towards it. Hella fun indeed. :3
Hehe, that's how I got this job actually! Started as product specialist/demo guy because I had made so much different music in Reason for, among other things, video games. :geek:
Love the examples you posted Mattias! Was this work you canvased for yourself? How did you get yourself out there? I would love to at least start with indie games to build up a portfolio but - while I know a lot of people who do the work - I'm not so sure how to get into it myself.

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MattiasHG
Reason Studios
Posts: 488
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

16 May 2018

chimp_spanner wrote:
16 May 2018
MattiasHG wrote:
16 May 2018


Hehe, that's how I got this job actually! Started as product specialist/demo guy because I had made so much different music in Reason for, among other things, video games. :geek:
Love the examples you posted Mattias! Was this work you canvased for yourself? How did you get yourself out there? I would love to at least start with indie games to build up a portfolio but - while I know a lot of people who do the work - I'm not so sure how to get into it myself.
Happened primarily because of two reasons I think. First, I was heavily involved in ocremix.org from when I was like 17. Through them I learned a lot about making music and about video games, and also got involved in making two songs for the Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix project. Simultaneously I hung out on a lot of forums/IRC channels like TIGSource when that was happening. I just met a lot of people there and some of them eventually needed music.

It's a lot tougher now I think, many people see video game music as a very valid career (which it is!) and when you reach a certain age or professionalism, you'll have to approach it like any job. Contact people, create demo reels, get out there etc.

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