Reason 12 and the great outdoors

[jfrichards]

This Acer/AMD laptop is $300 at Amazon, allowing me to build a Reason 12 recording system that fits in a backpack. Wow, composing on the front porch, at the beach, and in the woods!

[challism]

That's great! Now all you need is this to extend those recording sessions beyond the life of the $300 laptop battery.

power.png (313.8 KiB) Viewed 6964 times

[dvdrtldg]

Don't forget noise cancelling headphones so you won't be bothered by all those pesky beach & woodland sounds

[jfrichards]

Oops, the $300 Acer laptop won't run Reason because it only has Windows 11 Home, not the full Windows. Gotta pay $100 more to get an Acer with full Windows 11. However, $400 to compose in the woods is still worth it.

[jfrichards]

This is where I'm headed with Reason 12 (San Gregorio, 30 miles west of me). And dvdrtldg is right, the pelicans, sea lions, and whales are too loud.

[bxbrkrz]

You can sample them and create a pack?
Beach Beach Beat: Pelicans, Sea lions & Whales

[selig]

I can never get this method to work for me. I used to dream about doing just this, but then I get there and have no ideas and am distracted by all the amazing beauty and potential activities all around me. Seems the last thing I wan't to do when I'm outdoors is bury my head in a laptop. Plus in the wilds of nature, the sounds of the environment are often so captivating on their own I feel I can't compete. Then there's the fact I can't work nearly as fast on my 'portable' system and there's always something I'm missing or can't do. And possibly the fact it feels like I'm "working" instead of vacationing. But I know plenty of folks who thrive working this way, and end the end you gotta go with "whatever works" IMO!

That said, I almost always have a productive burst of activity after time away from my home studio. Absence can work wonders for me, creatively speaking it would seem.

[jfrichards]

Here's a Pelican sound and I raised or lowered them to create notes.

[sublunar]

I don't see a link to whatever shamazon product you were referring to, but yeah I personally wouldn't want to work on a laptop in the great outdoors.

However, I've always taken my personal laptop to work so that I could work on music on lunchbreaks in coffee shops or wherever. I've also done various work as a passenger on road-trips with my laptop, but unfortunately, I get motion sickness after a while which is a huge bummer.

If you're techy, you can get a pretty good laptop on ebay minus various parts like drives/memory and build a more powerful machine than whatever cheap laptop can be had new on shamazon for the same price. And if you get enterprise grade laptops from Dell, for example, with the OS license embedded in the BIOS, then you don't have to shell out extra money for an OS. My personal laptops have always been rescued from the junk pile so the only costs associated with them were buying whatever parts they were missing to fix em up. I've never bought a new laptop and I don't ever plan to do so because I'm a resourceful cheapskate. New computers are like new cars in that their value plummets once they leave the lot, so you'll always find me in the junk piles/yards swapping parts and saving that money for other stuff.

[jfrichards]

here's the Sh-amazon link, and it includes a 1 TB SSD.

It seems to be a medium quality laptop from Taiwan. But $400 is the most I want to spend.
It also needs a teal backpack:

[jfrichards]

Damnation, I just found out in the small print this laptop has Windows 11 Home, not full. Does anyone know if Reason 12 runs on Windows 11 Home?

[Stamatz]

it should definetely install. Try it!

[bxbrkrz]

Here's a Pelican sound and I raised or lowered them to create notes.

Ooh the soothing sound of pelicans. Beautiful and inspiring. Watch out a bit for your recording level though.

[jam-s]

Damnation, I just found out in the small print this laptop has Windows 11 Home, not full. Does anyone know if Reason 12 runs on Windows 11 Home?

I don't think there is anything which would make it not run on Windows 11 Home as Home is just missing some features which are most useful in a corporate environment or for using virtualisation.

[ambi]

To work outdoors the display should be very good which is often not the case with $300 notebooks. Make sure that it has a non reflective very bright display or your outdoor trip may result in a not so good experience.

[RobC]

Ah, mini midi keyboards. A lot of them are great, but the cheapo ones' keys yellowed for me. I find it disgusting, cause it appears filthy. Not sure what happened. It didn't get more humidity or UV than usual. I wonder if it still works even. x D Then again, it was a mini, keystation by M-Audio. Another brand has the exact same keyboard, so I guess it's something made in china, then brands slap their name on it and sell it. Not something M-Audio can be proud of.

Korg, and AKAI didn't yellow.

My first ever, by Miditech, super cheapo, big key looks like it was soaked in wee.

I love compact mobile stuff, still!

[RobC]

I can never get this method to work for me. I used to dream about doing just this, but then I get there and have no ideas and am distracted by all the amazing beauty and potential activities all around me. Seems the last thing I wan't to do when I'm outdoors is bury my head in a laptop. Plus in the wilds of nature, the sounds of the environment are often so captivating on their own I feel I can't compete. Then there's the fact I can't work nearly as fast on my 'portable' system and there's always something I'm missing or can't do. And possibly the fact it feels like I'm "working" instead of vacationing. But I know plenty of folks who thrive working this way, and end the end you gotta go with "whatever works" IMO!

That said, I almost always have a productive burst of activity after time away from my home studio. Absence can work wonders for me, creatively speaking it would seem.

For me, anywhere outside studio is a great place to come up with topics and stories for lyrics.

Not to mention new ideas for the nerdy sciencey audio topics.

Taking a computer outside? Haven't tried that though. At least not for production. That would probably not work out for me either, because it demands focus.

[jfrichards]

Just got approval from the Finance Minister (wife) for the $400 Amazon Laptop. Getting close to launch day.

[motuscott]

Godspeed, you black emperor!

[Jagwah]

I have always liked the idea of having amazing scenery behind my reason screen but I am unsure how much better it would be than my wall with a couple of posters on it, I would definitely like to have a decent laptop that I could whip out whenever I wanted to work on reason that would be cool.

That's great! Now all you need is this to extend those recording sessions beyond the life of the $300 laptop battery.
power.png

[bxbrkrz]

What kind of battery bank are you planning to use?
Headphones or iLoud Micro?

[luckygreen]

outside recording system_addition.jpg (170.49 KiB) Viewed 6179 times

I added a "portable" battery pack, a headphone and some small speakers. I got the IK Multimedia iLoud Micro together with the official travel bag.

https://www.thomann.de/intl/ik_multimed ... 9&reload=1

they are decent if you don't try to play too bass too loud

[DaveyG]

A bit like Selig, I put together a simple laptop system but found I wasn't very productive with it "on location". I tended to mess about with the system rather than make any music.

These days I have an iPad and a field recorder to keep me amused when I'm away. I don't process the field recordings until I'm home and I don't try to make whole songs on the iPad. Instead I fire up one of the excellent apps like Beatmaker 3, Korg Gadget, Garage Band or FL Studio Mobile and knock up a few loops. If a melody pops into my head I sing or hum it straight into the iPad mic. When I'm back at the "proper" PC I try to make sense of all the random stuff I've recorded. Most of it goes no further...

[jfrichards]

All I need is these

[DaveyG]

All I need is these

And love.
Actually.