(note: this is not a finished article, if anybody wants to add something useful please do)

Reason is not at all restricted to making electronic-sounding music like techno or drum'n-bass. It can also be used to create poppy-sounding tunes with vocals and guitars (e.g. this was created with Reason).

So, how do you get something like that out of Reason? The answer to that is sampling. You should not be afraid to record a lot of samples and import them into you Reason song. This article tries to cover everything needed to incorporate self-recorded audio parts (like vocals) in your songs.

Getting the recording gear

The first thing you need of course, is something that sends the audio to your PC, like a microphone to record vocals, or a sound card with line-in to plug connect to your guitar amp.

Sadly, Reason itself does not supply the possibility of recording audio. It can only play back samples (with a sampler or ReDrum) that where recorded in advance. So you will need a piece of external software for recording audio. Good programs for this are Cool Edit Pro, Soundforge or Audacity which is free. Software like this allows one to record, visualise and save audio parts. The visualising comes in handy for easily removing obsolete silent parts.

The song I talked about in the first paragraph, has recordings from vocals and accoustic guitars in it. These were all recorded with nothing more than one of those little white pc-microphones. So, in order to experiment, no fancy equipment is needed at all.

Recording audio parts

It's important to keep your recording synchronised to the Reason song you want to use it in. In order to obtain this, play the Reason song in the background while recording. If you don't have a song yet, just play a simple drum rythm or put click on. If you're recording something with a microphone, use headphones to make sure the song playing back is not accidentally recorded.

In Reason, the best device for playing back self-recorded audioparts is the NN-XT Sampler. This is because with NN-XT it's possible to tweak playback settings for each loaded sample individually. So you can easily tweak the volume and starting point'' settings of the samples to fit your needs. This is very useful, e.g. when importing different vocal samples for each verse and the chorus of your song.

An Alternative Approach

Added By Al - Not sure how this works, sorry!

Ok, it's the easiest thing in the world to add audio in as the instructions above have shown you.

However this is not the most flexible way.

In truth I seldom use this method, unless I am only importing 'hits' - that is a sample which I will use in it's entirety and which is already the correct length for the piece I am making.

In general, for vocals, or instrument parts which I import, I will cut them up in RECYCYLE first, then import them as a loop into DrRex, the loop player. There's a very important reason for this (no pun intended). In NN-XT, a single sample needs to be triggered by being played from the beginning of that sample. This means if your verse is fifty seconds long, or more, it's going to be a drag - making a change, going all the way back to the beginning of the verse, listening through, hearing the change, changing again, going allllllll the way back.

By using recycle, you will cut your audio into bite-size chunks, which means that you are free to start pretty much anywhere in your song and hear the imported audio part. You can still change setting such as pan and pitch for each individual chunk, so it is very adaptable.

I hope this all makes sense, I'm afraid I didn't map it out before I wrote it. The NN-XT is great for small stabs, or hits, but for a longer line, I greatly prefer DrRex.