Hello everyone in the USA and the world. Hope you're all well. I've just finished this reggae bass line influenced track. It's a rough mix but then ain't they all! The idea for this track came around while trying to break down One Love Jam Down by Michigan and Smiley. If you know the original then you know it's got a very loose groove. I found this impossible to create in a DAW environment so I opted for a tight funk vibe. Hopefully you get the chance to have a listen. Best wishes and regards from the UK Rich

Some people think Reason is a toy program. I disagree. You can produce excellent sounds in Reason with a little care. Reason allows you to work quick; very quick. That in itself makes it a cool program. The first thing I do when I start a beat is make sure the Rex drum loop is solid. Just because you've got a professionally produced Rex sample library doesn't mean that the loops are tight. I listen very closely for off-timing in my REX loops. Sometimes Regroove can help but most of the time if a loop isn't in time then it is never going to be. I also like to run two REX beats and with creative muting can vary the beat. Time saving compared to building a beat using Redrum. The next step is probably the most important for Dance music. The bass-line you create has to rock with the beat. If you haven't got the beat and bass grooving together then nothing will work. A sign that you've hit something good is when the beat and bass by themselves make you move. Then everything else you add is icing on the cake. Now you're ready to ice that cake with finely tuned samples. Its very tempting when creating to leave out of tune samples. Look at it this way - if it was noticeable to you, then it will be for others. The "fine tuning" knob on the NNXT takes care off that. So your tracks kickin' and you're ready to release it. The final step is using the mastering suite of Reason. My track Beat Disc No1 used the Hip-Hop preset which despite my music being in the House genre did the trick. It increased the energy level exponentially. Don't forget to pan, add effects and sit the vocals low in the mix so it doesn't rob the music of its energy. The most important thing to remember is too enjoy Reason. Some of the greatest underground Dance tracks of the past were created in home studios that had a fraction of the processing power that we have at our command today.

Like most artists I'm a musical explorer. One day I may be working on a ballad and the next a jungle tune. Other times I'm just throwing sounds into the melting pot to create an ambient soundscape. The reason - I enjoy creating music.. My initial postings were a mixed bag. The maxim "an artist can never be a listener of their own music" holds very true and naturally I thought that since I enjoyed creating the music that others would enjoy listening to it.. One day while surfing through SoundClick I came across a trance track that I really liked and was just about to check out this artists other material when I saw that they had posted hundreds of songs. I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the amount of tracks they had posted and quickly moved on. I had returned to being a listener with all the expectations that accompany that mindset. Holding onto my listeners mindset I returned to my Band Admin and removed tracks. It seems to have worked. I'm getting more visits and plays. The great thing about doing this is that I can rotate tracks. A track I removed can be put back later. I've decided five or six tracks should be enough.

SoundClick is a huge site. I've been a member for a year and recently a song of mine has been added to a user radio station. I went to check it out and decided to listen to some of the other tracks. The quality of the music was amazing. I just keep going back and listening. If you're new to SoundClick then there's no better way to navigate through 3.5 million songs. Just find a song you like thats been added to a station and then check out the rest of the tracks.