New to Reason - which RE's and/or instruments for most fun, depth and useful experimentation?

[gkillmaster]

This is the most powerful midi manipulation tool I've ever used, in Reason or anywhere else:

https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack ... -computer/

You can get a fully functional free trial, and buy via rent-to-own if you like.

The more I learn about this, the more I think I might get it. amazing.. Thanks again for the suggestion!

[Auryn]

Thank you for this! Super great feedback and information. Valuable to me and I appreciate it. I get what you are saying about Nostromo. I have other synths that end up feeling like one kind of sound and lose their uniqueness from lack of variability in the timbre of the sound.

Interesting about PSQ. That was the first impression I had, how deep and technical it seemed. I have Permut 8 from Sonic Charge and it's fantastic and reminds me of PSQ-1648. Going to try it out today.

Seems like with Sunder, you could maybe make a combinator to achieve the same result.

I have a VST called Plasmonic which I love and it is immediately playable and especially good with MPE. The MPE is so well integrated, it's a joy to play and I have nothing else close to it in interesting moving sound. Because of this I was leaning away from Friktion a bit since the overall sound is similar but I bet if I spent time with it, I'd find some unique sounds I could use. I tried the demo and was impressed with the presets and sound coming out of my speakers.

Appreciate you thoughts on Parsec. I don't about those other additive synths but I hear great things about Blamsoft. I may scratch additive synths off my list. I have Alchemy, but have never spent any time with it.

Would love to hear what your most used creative inspiring plugins are!

Hey I love Permut-8 too, such a versatile effect, but it still mystifies me exactly what it does. I love that Beatrick 'firmware'. But beware: Permut-8 comes with a ton of presets, PSQ almost has none.

Never heard of plasmonic, or MPE for that matter. Interesting concept, kind of same thing as what you'd achieve with different players in reason.

It would be a shame if you were to scrap additive off your list, it's actually one of the most powerful forms of synthesis. It's unapologetically digital (as compared to many of the virual analogs that are popular) so it's uniquely 'at home' on a computer. At least try Oberon! (there's a couple of dozen patches I made in factory sound bank, they're under Quixotic Sound Design). The Blamsoft synths are excellent. I prefer Zero slightly as it's less power hungry than Expanse and VK-2 but still sounds great.

Favorite plugs: synths I love have already been mentioned... for FX I love the soundtoys bundle (they just sound great) and for creative stuff I like a lot of unfiltered audio's output.

[crimsonwarlock]

Another free effect RE to pick up is T2 Phaser. It's a distortion effect based on a phaser.

https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack ... t2-phaser/

And have a look at the whole list of free Rack Extensions here on the forum, there's quite a lot of nice stuff in there:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7258239

[gkillmaster]

Hey I love Permut-8 too, such a versatile effect, but it still mystifies me exactly what it does. I love that Beatrick 'firmware'. But beware: Permut-8 comes with a ton of presets, PSQ almost has none.

Never heard of plasmonic, or MPE for that matter. Interesting concept, kind of same thing as what you'd achieve with different players in reason.

It would be a shame if you were to scrap additive off your list, it's actually one of the most powerful forms of synthesis. It's unapologetically digital (as compared to many of the virual analogs that are popular) so it's uniquely 'at home' on a computer. At least try Oberon! (there's a couple of dozen patches I made in factory sound bank, they're under Quixotic Sound Design). The Blamsoft synths are excellent. I prefer Zero slightly as it's less power hungry than Expanse and VK-2 but still sounds great.

Favorite plugs: synths I love have already been mentioned... for FX I love the soundtoys bundle (they just sound great) and for creative stuff I like a lot of unfiltered audio's output.

I'm unclear exactly what makes Permut8 work too but I think they use computer byte operations to make patterns and beats. I also love Soundtoys and it made me never think about any other conventional style effects again. Only if they are doing something different like Echobode. And yes, unfiltered audio is also great. I got Lion and never used it. This reminds me that I already have way to many synths!! There are just so many great offerings out there to ignore!

[gkillmaster]

So far I'm most impressed with Evolution, Iridium and INDSTRLZR. I think I like Aggregate Music Systems but it was really hard to get a sense of what it can do just trying to play around with it. Would have to really dig deeper. First impressions is that it wasn't resulting in anything as interesting as Evolution but probably cause I don't know how to operate it! I'm surprised how few presets most of the REs have. Kompulsion looks pretty interesting too but again, I'd have to spend quite a lot more time with it to know what I could get out of it... Going to sign up for Reason+ for 3 months and try Friktion and any other players.

[moneykube]

more cowbell

[holopunk]

Well thanks a lot everyone. I really appreciate all the responses! Going to spend the day tomorrow trying a lot of these suggestions. I've narrowed it down to this list:

Nostromo 2
PSQ-1648
Kompulsion
Torsion Texture Lab
Evolution
Aggregate Music System
RND
Sunder
Evolution
Pattern Mutator
Oberon
Friktion
Parsec
INDSTRLZR
Iridium Distortion Synth

I'll probably get a couple of these this year for my birthday. Leaning towards Nostromo and PSQ-1648 but I'll wait til I've had a chance to demo them all. Having so much fun creating combinator with Rostnomo (free) and Bassline Generator. So much I can do with just those 2. Can easily control the sequence with the Combinator. I see how great Combinators are now!! Sounds amazing.

Nice list! I got myself some of these over the past months, too. Big fan of Lectric Panda, his stuff encouraged me to dive deeper into generative experiments. I'm still only scratching the surface but would love to see what others here come up with. I'd appreciate some insights if you feel you're getting somewhere, OP Perhaps a dedicated generative music thread might be worth considering? Unless there already is one and I've missed it...

[tomusurp]

We maybe not exactly what you’re looking for but I really love the Predator synthesizer by Rob Papen