I have a soft spot for ridiculous, over-designed plugins. If my synth looks like an alien spaceship's control panel, i'm a happy boy.

"Extra credit for not mentioning Hitler" I need to start using this in my yearly appraisal meetings

I think it’s interesting that Logic and Reason are both music production software.

oh, THAT's how you're supposed to control software knobs? I thought you were supposed to move your mouse in a circle and I was always frustrated when they didn't work

That "Too many knobs!" thing remember me that part in the Amadeus film when courtesans tell the king that Mozart's music is bad because it has "too many notes".

"I discovered Reason in my early 20s"--you and me both brother! Oh, you mean the software. Right.

and you covered just the GUI... this piece of software is so well written, that i honestly NEVER ever managed to crash Reason since Version 3 which was my first Version of Reason!

Tantacrul: "I'd also like a point" Me: *Quit Sibelius*

The whole skeumorphism thing reminds me of when I was deciding what guitar amp sim software to use. I was mainly tossing up between Line 6 Helix, with it's clean, minimal abstract interface, and Peavey Revalver, with it's more concrete interface. While at first Helix looked so much nicer when I was just messing around, before long I found Revalver so much more useable because it conveys so much more information. If I want a tubescreamer-esque pedal, I can just look for the green one. If I forget what the different amps are like, I can tell by the colour scheme and number of knobs on an amp if it's a modern high gain 3-channel amp or a simpler vintage amp. Even more so when I'm selecting a cabinet or mic for the amp, where there's more options and the names are less descriptive.

at some point in the future they should add VR implementation so you don't have to scroll down for millenia to get to the bottom of your huge rack and can just look around your virtual control room. i love racks.

"Rules are there to make you think before you break them" - Salvor Hadrin

Blender (which is by no means a UI masterpiece overall) has a good replacement for knobs. They have sliders with numbers inside where the background bar fills up to show an amount of the maximum, which solves the main problem you point out with text values. I'm not saying knobs have no place, but your example of replacing them with text values seems worse than it needed to be.

I'd be curious to see your analysis on FL Studio. I really enjoy the way it's designed and the general aesthetic, but I've also been using it for like a decade.

Awesome video, really cool to see Reason explored from a design perspective and not just its DAW functions. I'm a long-term Reason user but I've become slightly ambivalent towards the interface. On the one hand, it's intuitive, attractive looking and really quite fun, but on the other it feels like my workflow is hindered by all the visual embellishments and hardware imitations that add unnecessary steps. I've been spending time on Ableton to try and explore different workflows because of this. Ableton, unlike Reason, seems like a functionality-above-everything programme. Boring to look at but very powerful. Not sure which to commit to!

On their teachability: Native Instruments' Super 8 was what actually made me understand how a synthesiser worked.

"Too many knobs" -> Look at an audio rack. What do you see in places where there is no display? A KNOB!

0:13 Can we just have the sound clip of "aaaaaAAAAAAAAHHHH"

Can't wait for the video on Sibelius! Good job.

8:06 ugh my school's webstite was a bit outdated so one day it just changed overnight and they did exactly this.

Holy heck this is the first time I hear about Reason since high school in 2008. In music class we got to choose between making digital music or practice an instrument, I choose the former. And my school used this music program, I don't remember how I managed to learn to use the program because of how all the plugins makes it look super chaotic. But oh god it was such a fun program, I wished I had the songs I made in it at hand. I never heard anyone else use the program so I had just assumed it was some unknown obscure thing that my school got their hands on for an ok price. This video is so nostalgic to me. I wished I had this program. I'd love to be able to make weird music again.

Even though im not that into music, i love how your slick presentation and humour make everything so interesting. I always come away having learned something new :)

Reason is a far too often overlooked piece of software, incredible video.

We were taught Reason in music college, my thoughts about it was like "I'll never gonna use this again". Also one time I had to record some vocals on Mac, it has Logic installed. I was surprised how "unlogic" it is, absolutely unintuitive. Ended up installing Reaper, which I know how to use, thanks for being cross-platform.

Finally someone who sees how well structured Reason is too.

Hey man, just wanted to say that I enjoy your videos immensely! They're so niche, it makes you feel special watching them.

It's impressive the amount of work you put in a video. Great work. And, sincerely, being visually impaired, low contrast vision, I appreciate it when you talk about accessibility. Thanks.

Appreciate the Reason love. I feel like most people don’t take it seriously, and that sucks because it’s like someone not taking you seriously as a musician because you play a more obscure instrument. “Oh, you play the accordion? I always thought that sounded fun, with all those buttons and stuff. Rock on dude!”

This is the video I always thought of making. Glad you made it! It helped me appreciate Reason more. Although working in the timeline of Reason 10 was eventually so frustrating I switched to Logic.

Fantastic video! Since you have experience as a software designer I hope you can do more videos like this. It would help musicians such as myself who know very little about how these apps are made. I already learned a few new terms in this one video alone! On a side note, after years of teaching DAW to students, I've found that Reason is the easiest for younger people to learn. Even children. Skeuomorphism for the win!

As someone who started out music production with Reason, and has been using it for a decade now, great video! I'll always love this software; I've always been more of a tangible learner so software that has a real hardware look stimulates me in just the right way

It's weird how skeuomorphism has just become almost like a bad word. I think there are places where it's not helpful, and places where it's great. Take iOS for example, even though some disliked the change, I think the OS looks better after going for its current clean/minimal look. Yet for something like a virtual synth, I like the skeuomorphic approach. Having an ADSR that looks like real sliders will make it instantly jump out at me a lot quicker than say the controls in Ableton's analog do. It's one of the reasons I don't use the built in Ableton plugins as much, even though they're otherwise great plugins. The design choice makes me have to scan the interface to remember where things are.

I've always used reason and I've always loved it more than any other program that I try, so it's nice to now know some of the reasons (hehe) for what makes me like it so much, and the process for getting there.

I've not used Reason for years because of the "when hell freezes over" mentality towards VST. when they finally decided to include VST support I had moved on and learned new software. I still love the idea of Reason because of the patching on the back, not in spite of it (I've got a rack full of actual modular hardware so it's very appealing to me) I'm currently pondering giving it another go. this was a very well put together video.

I am astonished by the amount of work you put in your videos. I'm not a music producer, UI designer or even a graphic designer but I somehow watch your videos from start to finish without hitting the pause/play button. Well done!

Well, I have always hated knobs because I thought you were supposed to make an "arc-like" motion with your cursor to control them, which never quite worked. Thank you for the tutorial !

don't forget how they engage with their community, through charming, down to earth and informative tutorial that end up advertising for reason and it's myriad of extentions, and their Ads for exstentions that end up being down to earth and informative tutorials on how to use incorporate it to your workflow.

Clicked the bell simply because I *need* to see the Sibelius video when it comes out. Can't wait!

Propellerhead Reason is my number one music technology teacher of all time

This was an absolutely fantastic video. My main problem with skeuomorphic interfaces is not so much that they use buttons but that they dont allow a company to use consistent placement of controls over a range of functionally similar tools across their lineup of products (and sometimes forbid good use of screenspace, if they try to fully recreate the original interface). For example, take Arturias FX collection. Sonically, I like what they offer but their fancy design makes them really clunky to use. I keep having to learn every single plugin anew for all the fancy graphics and different placement of functions. Now imagine they use their 3 compressors or even delays and create a higher level representation that accomodates shared controls at in a shared xy arrangement and just add the distinct functions in accordance to that. Not only does it significantly reduce the learning curve and can keep you easier in a flow state as you dont have to context switch but it would allow them to e.g. let you switch between 3 compressor flavours in one plugin. Thats the reason I very much prefer something like AudioDMGs Trackcomp over "eyy it looks like the real thing" and not because I hate looking at graphical representations of knobs. E.g. Infinistrip found a nice balance between usability and representation. For me the best interfaces are abstract though and I think the best designed synth I ever used is Phase Plant. It's extremely fast and very deep at the same time. Funny enough, my favorite Synth (at least right now) is Arturias Pigments. It's not that their interface design is bad per se, I just think sticking to graphic representations of physical objects has too many downsides and makes only sense in very specific cases (like Reason, as reason is its own environment, where almost everything follows the same rules).

Turn a knob, Sibelius has crashed.

I can't wait to get Reason back. Made some of my best stuff in Reason but I deviated due to my course only using Logic and Pro Tools

I'm just amazed at your production value - loved this video, keep it up!

Also, this is all the stuff about programs that I couldn't put in to words due to my lack of design credentials. Love your work!

"I discovered Reason when I was in my early twenties" So you didn't learn it in school? Not surprised tbh

This video is fantastic, I want this to be a series it's great

The foreshadowing of your notation software reviews was great.

That was awesome! really well put together. Yeah I switched from Apple to Andriod, no longer living in the apple box! Lifelong reason user.

So glad you’re leading MuseScore design 😁🙌🏾💫

This is such a well made and interesting video! I'd love to see more Music Software & Interface Design videos from you! Just finished binge watching all your other videos. Keep up the awesome work :)

Wow, Is this something you'll continue beyond the first two episodes? I hope so; this is fantastic!!!

Interesting views, man! I'm a software developer myself for the last decade or two. Reason has its flaws when it comes to consistent user interface / interaction design though. Like separating the result you get when using loop recording audio vs. MIDI. With audio you get alternate lanes / tracks automatically, but using MIDI / Instruments you get... nothing. Manual creation of new alternate lanes are the only option. This is one of many small annoyances I experience when using Reason.

What a kludge. Makes me glad I am using Reaper.

As a musician and designer this deeply satisfied me!! And it also kind of started an argument at the office about our own website hahaha

This video is EXCELLENT! It is fascinating to consider the design choices and rationale which went into Reason. What works, what doesn't, and why. Reason is my DAW of choice. It works like the hardware I grew up using.

Lordy! I know NOTHING about synthesizers or music software in general, but I'll be damned if this video wasn't super entertaining! Keep 'em coming!

I love this! Im a programmer in love with music. Music software is such a blackbox afaik. Big fan of the series already 😍

YES! That article drove me crazy.

I'd love to see a video about FL Studio. It's my favourite daw, and i always feel like im defending it - honestly i think most of the hate it gets is just because of how silly it's original name (Fruity Loops) was.

Aw, these videos are so well made

piano roll needs to be updated heavily

9:58 Knobs/sliders vs. text values: Why not have both, but have the knob/slider take center stage? If you must need to make precise adjustments by entering in a value, have it be a right-click option. That way the usability of the knob/slider is still primarily focused on the left-click but tweakers can have fine control if they right-click. Kind of like how operating systems use left-click as a primary or common action of where the cursor is positioned and its current context. Right-click typically brings other actions that can be performed that aren't used nearly as often.

I'd LOVE to see your take on Reaper! :D

I love Reason so much! Literally switched to Reason on version 10 after many years in logic and just find music making more fun in Reason. Feeling like working with hardware with the convenience of software. Easy to record, comp, slice, automate... I’m just loving it and making my best music ever

I’ve been using Reason since about 2007. I love the workflow, the routing has become second nature to me. The integration of native audio recording and the introduction of the main mixer felt pretty natural to me. It’s still my preferred DAW. My only complaint is that fine knob and slider control is very difficult. The skeuomorphic design has always been a boon for me. It’s made transitions to physical gear easier for me too.

"It's his own damn fault for getting sick" LOL

This is such a fantastic video, i feel like FL Studio could also be an interesting app to cover, as even though it isnt very consistent and has really strange systems that take some getting used to, its also the fastest daw ive used

It'd be cool if you took a look at audio programs that use a tracker style composition interface, specifically OpenMPT, Milky Tracker, and SunVox (which uses a similar linking style as the Reason, but with lines instead of wires). Would be interesting to see what you think of such things.

Please create a dedicated "Interface Design" playlist on your channel!

Would love to watch more videos from you about the relationship between sound and sights, the brain and technology, design, creative processes and this sort of stuff! And of course also music and music making!

Dear Tantacrul, Hi. I'm Connor. I'm a recent addition to your fan-list. I really enjoy your videos on music software design. Like Sibellius, ugh. As a fellow programmer and music creator, what you say resonates deeply within me. Pun intended. I'm gonna cut to the chase: please could you do a video about Caustic? It's a DAW that works well on both mobiles and computers. The mobile edition needs an "unlock key" to be able to save and export, but the pc version work fine without any external downloads. There, unfortunately, is no way to do plugins, but I'll let you find out some other things about it. Yours sincerely, - Connor (Magnogen)

A similar problem to the one you're talking about here is a very common one when model building in the Sciences and social sciences . Basically, when model building you are attempting to display a pattern that you have noticed in reality . However, no model pattern can ever capture the full complexity of reality. Therefore, if you stick only with the pattern, if you are consistent in other words, your model will end up somewhere crazy that clearly does not represent reality. For a plausible model therefore, you are forced to make hopefully minor adjustments for no other reason then to make the model look like reality . In the Sciences and social sciences we refer to this as being ad-hoc . It is not a popular thing to do because makes it look like you have not really recognised a valid pattern in reality but really just tampered with your model until it appears to superficially represent reality . For instance, if you wanted to represent income growth, but your formula for doing this does not account for, say, a ten year period in the middle, you would simply add a correcting algorithm to make this period fit. But shouldn't you just keep researching until you find an algorithm that naturally accounts for this? That might never be found and your model might be mostly reliable. In this case, you can reluctantly justify being ad hoc. This dilemma becomes particularly important during crises. For instance, the refusal of certain economic policy makers to recognise that their model did not account for the Great Depression as it was happening meant that they did not take policy decisions that clearly would have benefited people only because their model did not give them a justification for it . I guess the key lesson is no one should think that they are so smart that they can capture everything in one consistent pattern and that therefore because of the complexity of the world everyone must be ad hoc from time to time. Avoid being too ad-hoc though or else you probably haven't really discovered anything. You are probably just cheating until your model fits the data.

That was great, well detailed, explained, clarified, precise and professional, I congratulate you and thank you for the great contribution you make to the different communities of musicians who seek the most appropriate and flexible to do what we do best, make music, thank you. like

I started on Reason 3, which was great! I then moved to 4 which was just brilliant! I then moved to 9.5 and now 10 which I find work but are overly complex compared to Reason 3 & 4 and equivalent software like Live, etc. Also, Reason 9.5/10 runs laggy compared to Live 10 which runs flawlessly on my Mac Pro. Great video!

On the one hand, you called out the ridiculous UI of Rage of Bahamut for its counter intuitive menus, on the other hand, you reopened the wound in my soul that is the death of the English version of Rage of Bahamut. You'd think two years would have been enough to dull the pain.

11:26 check the subtitles for a certain inside joke...

I was not expecting this video to be so damn good, informative and entertaining. Genuine example of "pleasantly surprised."

Great video! Really enjoy the UI/UX part of it, and would like to see more!

Loved the nod to Serum, and would love to see a video of your thoughts on it, and its design.

I love it ... I have been in reason since version 4 in 20O8 and is my choice of music composition for the flow.

12:58. Is the chord progression for that, major triads: A B C C C C C C# D. so it would be E F G G G G G G A C D E E E E E E F A B C C C C C C# D dotted crotchet, quaver, 5 crotchets, quaver, semibreve

Got this video recommended, weirdly enough I'm into UI design, synthesisers and music production so all of this made perfect sense! Good job!

I love this video - UX and music tech, so good! Subbed!

As a guy who likes pottering on Caustic, Reason looks like one amazing audio workstation. I'd love to get it someday.

I know I'm late and all BUUUUUUT, I've used Reasons 2, 5, and 10. 10 is the first one I've personally owned, because it's the first one that puts everything I need in one place. It is my sole DAW at this point. Additionally, while the way audio tracks work with no visual indication of a connection might be an adjustment for those that had been using Reason for a while, I had absolutely no trouble adjusting (had been roughly 5 years since I'd used Reason regularly). The current Reason version is nearly perfect, and Reason 11 will allow me to pay over a hundred dollars for the minor UI tweaks that I'd been hoping would come in an update!

Awesome video! And your sense of humor is the type sorely lacking in the contemporary world. You got a sub bub.

9:21 That is a wonderful piece of steampunk engineering.

Nice video! Loved Reason since Version 4.

Awesome video; super clear discussion of design in this context. Love the concise editing and funny asides. 👍 Uh oh, sibelius...

I’m not a musician, but I used to play with Reason between about 2006 and 2009 and I loved it. I could generally figure out how to make things work and it was great. I did try out ithers like Ableton and I didn’t get to the same level. So, for me, the UI was great.

0:14 I hear this whenever I read "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" now, thanks Tantacrul

I literally laughed out loud several times watching this. I've always been all-in with Reason (even when I had to play all of my recorded audio through samplers). This is why.

This is really interesting! I'd like to see a video about Logic Pro X.

Loved the carpal tunnel joke, I like how you criticize with well thought out arguments and subtly go on a ranting tangent.

Great content Tantacrul! I really really hate Sibelius: I have a theory: they just added stuff to an old, clunky 90's UI, so they don't scare long time users. Also looking forward to your video about it, and would love one about Ableton Live!

I'd be interested to see a comparison of different DAWs and how they influence creation within them. For instance, I notice that when I write music in a program like Ableton, It's extremely conducive to looping and editing parameters on the fly. As a result, I find it easy to write by section, and later choose how long, and when to trigger each. In contrast, if I'm writing in a program like Reaper or Protools, I find that my creation is much more linear due to the design focus around the arranger view for composition. I find that I generally make several passes through a song/section, moving instrument by instrument, and then cleaning things up later. (which is fairly analogous to the way that recording studios are run) I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this subject, as well as anybody else here. I know this is a youtube comments section, but I think the link between design and creation is a fascinating one.

seen it - sub'ed it! This is actually entertaining, and in it's execution quiet brilliant. Congrats on that!

Looking forward to the Ableton review :)

Propellerhead's recent adaptation of protocols such as Ableton Link and their cooperation with Korg are very smart ideas and they should continue this in the future. Unfortunately it is hard to see how they plan to compete in the future since their "patchbay" style of workflow may make sense for older users, but I can't see future generations needing this type of graphical workflow. One thing Reason has going for it is that it sounds amazing. When I hear music made on this platform by competent musicians the results are quite stunning.

I immediately subscribed after the moment at 3:11

First off. Fantastic video. Informative, accurate and entertaining! Your video showed up on my feed this morning. KZfaq’s algorithm works! I’ve been a reason user since when it was called ReBirth ;-). Back then I was new to the whole music production scene and the UI and intuitiveness of the app was always what drew me in and kept me using it till today. Lately I’ve started to play around with Logic to experiment. It’s a very powerful DAW but by no means was I as productive with it right out of the gate as I was with Reason. Software is only as good as its usability. Reason is a masterpiece in UI design