Reason Design Video

This forum is for discussing Reason. Questions, answers, ideas, and opinions... all apply.
lakinlakin
Posts: 121
Joined: 07 Jan 2016
Location: Scotland

15 Jul 2018

Here's a video looking at the design of Reason:

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aeox
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15 Jul 2018

This was surprisingly hilarious!

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dandandaaan
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15 Jul 2018

This is really great - funny, interesting and insightful. You have a new subscriber!
singer/songwriter with electronic tendencies

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Logic / Ableton Live / Reason Rack / Nord Stage 2 / Moog Grandmother / Eurorack / Guitars, drums, toys

jimmyklane
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15 Jul 2018

lakinlakin wrote:
15 Jul 2018
Here's a video looking at the design of Reason:
Well Done!!! Funny and insightful.
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!

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Wickline
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15 Jul 2018

That was awesome!


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normen
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15 Jul 2018

Great video.

lakinlakin
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15 Jul 2018


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selig
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15 Jul 2018

Well done! And thanks to now living with a high level app designer who manages multiple design teams, I actually understand most of what is being said in this video (and get all the "in" jokes) - yay, design!
Am interested in seeing what else this guy comes up with, very entertaining and informative work. :)
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deepndark
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15 Jul 2018

Yup, nice video this!
And it's my opinion too that Props have a great eye + logic to make software feeling this good.

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Loque
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15 Jul 2018

Yea, nice video. Completely agree. But now....how to overcome the physical/skeumorphism limitations and go a step ahead again?
Reason12, Win10

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normen
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15 Jul 2018

Loque wrote:
15 Jul 2018
Yea, nice video. Completely agree. But now....how to overcome the physical/skeumorphism limitations and go a step ahead again?
Write a new application?

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Loque
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15 Jul 2018

normen wrote:
15 Jul 2018
Loque wrote:
15 Jul 2018
Yea, nice video. Completely agree. But now....how to overcome the physical/skeumorphism limitations and go a step ahead again?
Write a new application?
That aims for what? What is the vision?
Reason12, Win10

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normen
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15 Jul 2018

Loque wrote:
15 Jul 2018
That aims for what? What is the vision?
Uh... You were aiming for something if I got that right :) What limitations do you see? How do you think one could "go one step ahead"? Look at what the Bitwig or Reaper creators did. Reason has it's vision, the friendly man in the video just explained that afaics :)

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Loque
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15 Jul 2018

normen wrote:
15 Jul 2018
Loque wrote:
15 Jul 2018
That aims for what? What is the vision?
Uh... You were aiming for something if I got that right :) What limitations do you see? How do you think one could "go one step ahead"? Look at what the Bitwig or Reaper creators did. Reason has it's vision, the friendly man in the video just explained that afaics :)
Just read you were aiming for a new application and I was curious what you had in your mind...
Reason12, Win10

scratchnsnifff
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Joined: 21 Sep 2016

15 Jul 2018

I am all for graphics/scaling updates, or what ever the term is.
I love how this guy explains his case for each point. Also I like how he breaks down the concept of skeuomorphism. The nn19 looked so weird in that example haha

Maybe one day they will roll out a massive update compared to when they added record. I’d hope for a major graphics update but also for a few of the usual requests (combinator, more midi options, sequencer automation curves and shapes etc)

I think if they did a huge update there would be even more buzz around Reason
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selig
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15 Jul 2018

Loque wrote:Yea, nice video. Completely agree. But now....how to overcome the physical/skeumorphism limitations and go a step ahead again?
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. One way is to write a new application. Every so often the old apps just get too convoluted and far from their original vision to be nimble and efficient (both with processing and with UX/UI).

The other way is to create a new sort of wrapper around the Rack that allows the sequencer and mixer to be re-envisioned, similar to how the new Mixer was added to the original Rack paradigm. Thinking about these things from the ground up allows doing things the original approach never allowed. Tacking audio onto Reason as apposed to building an app with audio and MIDI from the ground up is but one example.

The trick with Reason is to keep what’s great about it, and fix or re-think what’s not. With a totally ‘ground up’ approach, there’s more freedom, of course, and building on Reason puts many restrictions on the new concepts.

Will be interesting to see what approach the Props take over time.
:)


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cgijoe
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Joined: 13 Mar 2016

15 Jul 2018

Great video!

Can't wait to watch more in the series...

Very informative and puts the nail on the head as to why skeuomorphism isn't such a bad thing, something I've had trouble articulating for awhile.

Like others, I'm eager for the new paradigms as well. Ableton certainly shifted it with introducing and popularizing clips and non-linear sequencing.

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Reasonable man
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16 Jul 2018

a fellow irishman ....

Good video

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chimp_spanner
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Joined: 06 Mar 2015

16 Jul 2018

Really good video. Great to see that someone else out there "gets" skeuomorphism. Somewhere along the line it became a dirty word, and everything got replaced with thin, wispy, minimal interfaces. I've been using software of some kind for most of my 34 years and it's really an indictment of terrible design practices that I can open up new applications and struggle to find options or menu items. And when I do it's usually a series of three dots or lines in pale grey against a white backdrop or some silly shit like that. Reason's interface might not be very 2018 but tbh, that's the best thing about it!

Of course the video does lead to some interesting questions like, how do they evolve the software without breaking compatibility? For me the rack is about as good as it needs to be. All it needs is the ability to zoom, and maybe some other improvements (like an easier way to see what's selected, visibility zones or a way to fold large parts of the rack down). Same goes for the mixer. If it got fader linking and a dark theme I think most people would be pretty happy with it.

So that really just leaves the sequencer, and there's no reason they can't do anything they want with that...beyond preserving compatibility with old projects. Although really, do they need to totally reinvent it? The things I've been asking for are relatively small; folder tracks, more colours, marker tracks. Curved automation could slot perfectly well into the existing automation system. New MIDI tools can be added to a dedicated menu (or to the F8 box if really necessary but, I'd prefer a menu). Clip launching could sit on its own page like Blocks.

I don't personally believe that Reason needs a *complete* overhaul to survive or stay relevant. If you look at Cubase version 2 or 3 on the Atari, it's instantly recognisable as Cubase. Many things are still in the same place. All that's changed is the level of polish, graphics fidelity, feature set. At no point did they feel they needed to tear up the rule book and fix what isn't broken.

In any case, I'd sure love to be a fly on the wall at HQ and have even a hint of what they're working on next. Roll on 11!

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EnochLight
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16 Jul 2018

Ubiquitous menu buttons are awesome! :D


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Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

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NekujaK
Posts: 631
Joined: 09 Oct 2016
Location: USA

16 Jul 2018

I LOVE skeuomorphism!
There, I said it.
wreaking havoc with :reason: since 2.5
:arrow: https://soundcloud.com/nekujak-donnay/sets

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PSoames
Posts: 278
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: Somerset, UK

21 Jul 2018

NekujaK wrote:
16 Jul 2018
I LOVE skeuomorphism!
There, I said it.
Same here. It's why I use Reason. If I didn't, I would use something else.

Unless, that is, I enjoyed harping on about stuff, in which case I would use, errrrr ...Reason.

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PSoames
Posts: 278
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: Somerset, UK

21 Jul 2018

Oops! Fucked up editing and duplicated the post!

Reasontalk forum isn't skeuomorphic enough for me it seems and I get confused by simple icons.

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gdm41
Posts: 89
Joined: 19 May 2016

21 Jul 2018

Very good video, i am not into design but this vid was very interesting.
Start lending-> http://www.kiva.org

scratchnsnifff
Posts: 1423
Joined: 21 Sep 2016

21 Jul 2018

chimp_spanner wrote:
16 Jul 2018
Really good video. Great to see that someone else out there "gets" skeuomorphism. Somewhere along the line it became a dirty word, and everything got replaced with thin, wispy, minimal interfaces. I've been using software of some kind for most of my 34 years and it's really an indictment of terrible design practices that I can open up new applications and struggle to find options or menu items. And when I do it's usually a series of three dots or lines in pale grey against a white backdrop or some silly shit like that. Reason's interface might not be very 2018 but tbh, that's the best thing about it!

Of course the video does lead to some interesting questions like, how do they evolve the software without breaking compatibility? For me the rack is about as good as it needs to be. All it needs is the ability to zoom, and maybe some other improvements (like an easier way to see what's selected, visibility zones or a way to fold large parts of the rack down). Same goes for the mixer. If it got fader linking and a dark theme I think most people would be pretty happy with it.

So that really just leaves the sequencer, and there's no reason they can't do anything they want with that...beyond preserving compatibility with old projects. Although really, do they need to totally reinvent it? The things I've been asking for are relatively small; folder tracks, more colours, marker tracks. Curved automation could slot perfectly well into the existing automation system. New MIDI tools can be added to a dedicated menu (or to the F8 box if really necessary but, I'd prefer a menu). Clip launching could sit on its own page like Blocks.

The only thing I think the rack could use is an indicator for visual modulation like how in massive and serum you get visual representation of how the knobs move and how much they move and rate etc

It’s not needed and I feel like it’s something along the lines of an sdk update probably, more so than a rack update maybe they would have to update both so the native devices got the option

Kind of like how using the cv in on the combinator
Mayor of plucktown :evil:

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