Music Production for Beginners

Cover the basic components of every synthesizer, from oscillators to filters to envelopes. Program your own patches with the power of ADSR. Distinguish between the basic waveform shapes.

There's more to most synths than the basics. Mod envelopes, filter envelopes, LFOs and polyphony!

Use your newfound knowledge to break down the components of more complex synthesizers, including Malström and Thor.

You've got a great hook, and now you want to record it. It's time to learn multitrack recording basics in Reason.

Edit your tracks with the selection, pencil, erase, razor, mute, magnify and hand tools. Switch between them fast with QWERTYU.

The building blocks of your song in Reason are... Blocks. Understand how to arrange your song with them in this lecture.

Add automation for any knob, fader or button in Reason and learn how to fine-tune it.

Discover the NN-XT, a powerful multisampling device. Set root notes, note ranges, velocity layers and more!

Drum Machines can be samplers too! Let's begin to understand the inner workings of the Kong.

The Dr. is in! Rex loops are a powerful tool. Learn how to load, alter and switch between them on the fly!

Got an audio interface and a microphone? Good! We'll set them up in this video.

A tiny button with a lot of power. Learn how to instantly turn anything into a sample and use Reason's built-in sample editor.

Let's add some audio waveforms to our lonely note lanes.

Are you a 12-take wonder? Artificially create the best combined performance with ease.

Reason handles most routing automatically, but sometimes you want to handle it yourself. Also, we discuss common features in effect devices.

Put your music in a room, hall, or bounce it off a plate.

Learn the art of delay (delay, delay, delay...).

Crunch, warm, resonate and auto-wah with the Scream 4 Sound Destruction Unit.

You have to start somewhere. On the mixer, it's the input section.

Squish dynamic ranges into manageable signals with compression.

Get rid of unwanted background noise with gates.

Learn about Reason's 4-band EQ, low pass filter, high pass filter and how to change it with the visualizer.

You always need more effects! Add an insert effect combinator and learn about auxiliary sends for even more mixing options!

Everybody loves a good fader. In this section, we can pan, solo, mute and group channels together!

While some professionals won't master things themselves, the tools are built in to Reason to make final touches. We'll talk about what mastering is, and how to use the mastering combinator.

Another compressor, FX sends, FX returns and a handy control room output make up the master section in Reason.

You're done and want to share your song with the world? Let's export to a high quality format that can be sent off to a separate mastering facility or crammed into a tiny MP3 file.

Our time has come to a close, but we're just getting started. Here are a few resources and next steps to continue your journey as a music producer.

It's a mini-sequencer for everything! Take the red pill and discover a rabbit hole of loopiness.

Want to combine a bunch of devices? Ask the combinator to do it for you.

Triple filtered. Always smooth. The alligator adds rhythm excitement to even the most drab sounds.

Ever wanted to combine your voice with a synthesizer? Now you can!

Tired of the built-in devices yet? Need some aural inspiration? Browse, try and buy a wide variety of other devices.