Music Software & Interface Design: Propellerhead’s Reason
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- Опубліковано 15 чер 2024
- My Patreon page: / tantacrul
In this video, I discuss interface design and music software by focusing on Propellerhead's flagship DAW: Reason 10. I look at how they adjusted to the ever-changing audio production landscape over the last 18 years and the painful choices they needed to make in order to succeed. I conclude with a few software design principles.
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NOTE: This was not a 'paid for' review. I have had no contact with Propellerhead prior to the release of this video.
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Special thanks to Savith Wadasinghe for his tireless 'proof watching' and editing advice.
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Attribution:
The horror music at the end of the video was created by GowlerMusic:
freesound.org/people/GowlerMu...
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.
Haha. Can I get a link to a screenshot of your workflow?
@@Tantacrul Probably 5 Sausage Fatteners through each step of the mix bus.
@@goldra8409 *izotope trash, actually.
In that case, you should LOVE Logic's EXS24 ... it makes me want to spoon my eyes out and squeeze them into a blender.
@@hillra207 Same with ES2!
"Extra credit for not mentioning Hitler" I need to start using this in my yearly appraisal meetings
I fucking shat myself at that line
I actually laughed, which hasn't happened since early 2015.
What is 'laughed'?
@@rusmiller816 Baby don't hurt me
-1 credit for you, becouse you mention Hitler.
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".
Ohh thats why pop exists
They were courtesans?
7.8/10 Too much -water- knobs
My god I literally just watched that scene today in my music class
@@MintyBiz is it specific though? Amadeus is one of the biggest films ever made. Enormously popular both critically and commercially. It won best picture at the Oscars. It's like saying "say hello to my little friend" is some niche reference few will understand. No, offence
I think it’s interesting that Logic and Reason are both music production software.
I'll create a logic processing software called “Feelings” and “Intuition”
@@mrpedrobraga all software is logic processing
@@kallepronk7328 true
@@mrpedrobraga you could focus on various engineering solutions
having massive infrastructure projects done through "Feelings", with static and building physics through "Intuition" could be quite nice
I may be wrong but in the late 20th century, composers tried to reduce human intuition and introduce statistical / logical methods to composition process - Schoenberg may be the most famous example, but people like Xenakis also comes to mind. Some might say that composers yearned to introduce their "Logic and Reason" to their works.
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
Oh, some work that way! It's nuts.
And that right there is why knobs in software user interfaces are bad design. Skeuomorphism is supposed to help users understand how an interface works by modelling parts of it after real world things. Sliders and buttons both do that. Knobs don't.
I almost got carpal tunnel from those rotary movements
@@GarethRogers Did you not watch the video you mong?
@@uniqhnd23 Would you really have, on seeing a knob in a software interface, immediately intuit that the interaction it requires is vertical linear motion? It's not unreasonable for the user to assume that it requires rotation. Most of the time, software designers should be using vertical sliders instead.
Not here, however, since as the video mentions the software interface is trying to hew extremely closely to existing hardware. That brings its own set of design concerns.
"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*
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.
...or AR as the case may be....
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.
These are the reasons I'll always think skeumorphism style design has some sort of place in software. It might not look super sleek but it it makes it easier to use for sure in some cases.
When I looked up the guitar amp Peavey Revalver, I noticed that one was called "KÄFTEN". Which is Swedish for "shut up". (pronounced /ɕɛftɛn/)
8:06 ugh my school's webstite was a bit outdated so one day it just changed overnight and they did exactly this.
On their teachability: Native Instruments' Super 8 was what actually made me understand how a synthesiser worked.
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.
That would be so interesting. Surprised he still hasn't done it 2 years later. There are so many quirks and idiosyncrasies that make FL Studio unlike anything else. I used it alot from 2011-2015 and it was my first DAW before I switched to Ableton for 2 years and then eventually Logic which i've been on for the last 5 years. I recently tried to go back to FL and use a new version out of curiosity (20.8) and they've made a lot of great improvements since then. I really like the new 'Track Mode' where you can emulate a more traditional multi-track workflow where each pattern channel is automatically linked to a mixer channel. Also, the new audio warping system (NewTime) is somewhat competent (i don't like it as much as Ableton, Cubase, Reason or Logic's audio warping though).
0:13 Can we just have the sound clip of "aaaaaAAAAAAAAHHHH"
1 year late but
PLEASE?!
Yes please
It's actually "
H H H H ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀ ∀"
ua-cam.com/video/-KI_PA4ciUY/v-deo.html
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.
Interesting observation. A useful design features, certainly.
Blender's UI has been giving me headaches for ages though.
Granted I learnt most of the (small amount of stuff) I know about 3d modelling using 3d Studio Max. (version 2.0 - which should provide some context for how long ago that was.)
And while that has a lot of issues too, I found it a lot more usable than most anything else I've ever tried...
Certainly blender has come a long way, the early versions were nightmarishly bad in terms of UI, and modern versions are a lot better...
But it's still a huge struggle to do basic things.
I also for a while was using Wings3d, which was also just far more usable - though you ended up needing to export the models because Wings3d lacks any real texturing or rendering functionality...
But as a design tool it's just vastly easier to work with than Blender, even though strictly speaking it doesn't have any real features Blender itself doesn't also provide...
Except... Making use of those tools within blender is excessively difficult...
UI is important, you know?
You could have the most powerful feature set on the planet, and still in all probability a program with 1/10th the features, but much more functional UI, could do the vast majority of tasks a lot more quickly.
@@pixiepandaplush You can also do math with the values as well. If you want a value to be, say 4 times what it is currently, you can just type that value "*4" and it'll figure the result out.
Blender is the only application where I have wanted to physically throttle someone. The GUI was a mess of insanity. I haven't tried installing it in maybe a decade now because I have nightmares over it. This was coming from a guy who used Sculpt 3D on an Amiga and POVRay where you typed in everything to a text file. It was actually easier to do than trying to figure out Blender. I hope they've made improvements since then. :)
I quite like Adobe After effect's idea of doing text values that you can drag.
@@benbarnett1430 It sounds nice on paper, but from my experience AE is really unprecise, laggy and unpleasant to use. Especially the scrubbing on the text values is awful, there is a bit of delay before it responds to your mouse movement, so you think 'ah, so i have to drag further' and then you move your mouse one more milimiter and the whole thing just slides to the max/min value. The refresh rate on these controls also seem to be extremely low so it feels like your computer is lagging when you use them.
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!
I definitely think the interface needs a bit of an update, not least to make it worth better with HD screens. Hopefully that's on the cards soon, but I'm glad they didn't prioritise it over audio recording or VST support.
Why not both?
"Too many knobs" -> Look at an audio rack. What do you see in places where there is no display?
A KNOB!
No, we need to change all icons to text! That's the only way!
Look at this new and improved UA-cam player: imgur .com/dsTL1dW
"What's the problem with music production?"
"TOO MANY KNOBS..."
"... maybe but not in the way you're suggesting"
Maybe that guy should look at a mirror
Oh look! Another KNOB!
@@LiggliluffGotta make those thumbs the word thumb!
"Rules are there to make you think before you break them" - Salvor Hadrin
Can't wait for the video on Sibelius! Good job.
Xavier Gervais-Dumont Yeah. As a Finnish person, I can confirm that any software made by, or named after someone who’s Finnish (even if he is our greatest composer of all time) is probably not very good.
I have a love-hate relationship with it. It can do so many things! One of which is making me want to snap my computer in half. Wonderful!
Sibelius UI vid could be just a prolonged "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh"
Xavier Gervais-Dumont: Seconded! It's the worst good app of all time.
sorry, Sibelius crashed
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.
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 :)
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.
00:13 hahaha YES!! ive been using reason since the first came out and im now using 9.5 and STILL get that feeling hahaha!
did you consider upgrading to Reason 10? Even though I might be not as experienced as you, I still find the new content in Reason 10 really really good
Manner MP reason 10 does not have the ability to record multiple midi channels they never updated that feature it's time they did
ye that's right
Yes I have been using it since 2010 and I still love it till now! 😇
Keith Kemper You can do this easily in the Advanced midi device settings. Here you can route/bus midi input/output to hearts content. I managed to get MPE (“MIDI Polyphonic Expression" for Roli, linnstrument) working within Reason, which literally records over different midi channels for with every note played (including expressive, pitch and mod values per note). I guess you have a point that its a bit of a workaround. But thats equally so with most DAWs
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 think the problem is that people saw the places where skeuomorphism was unnecessarily adhered to, thereby tying the presentation to the metaphor in a way that looks ridiculous - iBooks showing books on shelves in the way no rational book lover would ever do at home (because we want as many books on our shelves as we can fit, rather than carefully placing them so we can see all the covers) or putting unnecessary paper textures in reading areas - and decided that it was bad. The problem, of course, is that rejecting a concept because of how it has been abused is just as unfair as improperly using it in the first place - and you get none of the benefits that those abusing it got. The solution, as with all design (and much else in life) is to be intentional: don't make decisions based on what is popular or what looks amazing but based on what is the right thing to do (and if you don't know what the right thing to do is, learn, or if it doesn't exist yet, invent). Unfortunately, castigation is far easier than nuance, and laziness in use of conventions is easier than pursuing appropriateness in all things.
Like all trends in design, skeuomorphism is something that emphasizes certain considerations at the expense of other valid considerations, and therefore will not be appropriate (or inappropriate) for everything. We ignore that at our peril.
There's been a big resurgence in recent years of hardware synthesizers, even analog ones. When working in a DAW, it makes sense to me that the software matches the physical look of actual synths. It makes it easier for me to make tracks that blend both hardware and software. Reason is outstanding.
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 :)
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.
I'm just amazed at your production value - loved this video, keep it up!
Hey man, just wanted to say that I enjoy your videos immensely! They're so niche, it makes you feel special watching them.
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.
This video is fantastic, I want this to be a series it's great
Clicked the bell simply because I *need* to see the Sibelius video when it comes out. Can't wait!
Working on it right now :)
@@Tantacrul it was fantastic btw, it brought me to your channel and I'm very glad it did.
piano roll needs to be updated heavily
What would you say needs to be done to it? I guess quarter tones would be nice...
Tantacrul Labels on the keys. Better connection with Kong for making drums patterns. Matching velocity of the last note placed. Looking at FL compared to Reason is like looking at a younger generation and old generation. FL has better features. Reason has better sound and is better for me to learn music production but it's just hollow.
The Navigator : Ah, I thought you meant the concept of a piano roll was bad. Certainly, the designers of Reason now need to zoom in and build some smaller-scale feature improvements. I'd add to your list that their audio pitch correction (which uses the piano roll) is no where near as good as the Logic Pro version. They also need to rethink their method of recording audio takes because it's easy to lose track of them. They also really need to adapt their UI for high resolutions and I'd love to see a less literal visualisation of the wires at the back of the rack.
Labels on the keys though.... (I'd prefer an ability to quickly switch to notation)
Tantacrul Ya I'd appreciate it if they'd fix this in Reason 10.2 or something. I doubt they will change anything about the piano roll seeing how Reason 10 was just instruments being added in. I guess I'll stick with reason since I upgraded from 5.
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!
Cheers man! My Sibelius one will be coming soon. After that... who knows?
@@Tantacrul Well, here we are, one Sibelius, one Musescore and one Dorico later! I'm really glad you continued the journey (also the videos became monstruously large, which I love by the way)
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.
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!
Please create a dedicated "Interface Design" playlist on your channel!
Awesome video; super clear discussion of design in this context. Love the concise editing and funny asides. 👍
Uh oh, sibelius...
Great video! Really enjoy the UI/UX part of it, and would like to see more!
Wow, Is this something you'll continue beyond the first two episodes? I hope so; this is fantastic!!!
Reason is a far too often overlooked piece of software, incredible video.
The foreshadowing of your notation software reviews was great.
I was not expecting this video to be so damn good, informative and entertaining. Genuine example of "pleasantly surprised."
Finally someone who sees how well structured Reason is too.
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
You are like the Matthewmatosis of music/audio. Great stuff!
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 !
Loved this vid, looking forward to more :)
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!
Planning a lot more visual / music stuff. :)
YES! That article drove me crazy.
Aw, these videos are so well made
I love this video - UX and music tech, so good! Subbed!
I'd LOVE to see your take on Reaper! :D
So glad you’re leading MuseScore design 😁🙌🏾💫
Amazingly well done video 🙌
Thanks very much.
"I discovered Reason when I was in my early twenties"
So you didn't learn it in school? Not surprised tbh
I like this pun because Reasons. :P
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!
"It's his own damn fault for getting sick" LOL
I have given you a point. Thanks for the video.
I love this! Im a programmer in love with music. Music software is such a blackbox afaik. Big fan of the series already 😍
Turn a knob, Sibelius has crashed.
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.
Such good videos. I very rarely make it all the way through like with these.
I like the way you think! great editing too
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.
I immediately subscribed after the moment at 3:11
Nice video! Loved Reason since Version 4.
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!
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.
Loved the nod to Serum, and would love to see a video of your thoughts on it, and its design.
I really love this video a lot
You should do more videos on software, I'm really enjoying them.
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.
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
Propellerhead Reason is my number one music technology teacher of all time
I love it ... I have been in reason since version 4 in 20O8 and is my choice of music composition for the flow.
Great work.
That was awesome! really well put together. Yeah I switched from Apple to Andriod, no longer living in the apple box! Lifelong reason user.
0:14 I hear this whenever I read "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" now, thanks Tantacrul
A well made video. You get a point!
3:59 That error has a name - the "Kaebora Gaebora mistake".
What a kludge.
Makes me glad I am using Reaper.
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).
super interesting video dude! subscribed
pretty funny too :)
, well done this was very beautiful video
This is very exciting because I'm a long time reason user who's been off the horse for some time. Ever since v5.0 I'll have to buy a new copy because I really like what I see!!
Tantacrul, I give you +10. The 'updated' NN19 instrument says it all....
9:21 That is a wonderful piece of steampunk engineering.
yes PropHead, I used Reason 3 before, then i moved on to other software.... when audio recording came i upgraded to 6.5... then i moved on again... now vst support is in and i upgraded to 9.5. suprisingly, after that i have been using a lot of Rack Extensions, so it is a wise move from Props...
great video!!
and thus a legend was born
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 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!
11:26 check the subtitles for a certain inside joke...
This is good stuff!
I never realised this vid was the start of the end.
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
FL Studio has a nice way to deal w rotating knobs, they have a value but also a little progress bar that pops up telling you how much you're moving and what the borders are
This is such a good video
Nice vid. Some factors are helpful not only on Daw designing.
Where have you been all my life bro? Hilarious video. Take my money please.