All Day. But a lot of folks don’t think about song form until really late in the composition process (which contributes to people having a hard time finishing songs) IMO. I almost always try to think about form from the beginning.
I use blocks on every song, but don't put anything in them. Once I have a feel for a song, and the structure, I drop in a basic drum midi loop for feel, hit play, and draw in my blocks in real time, as I "listen" to the song in my head. Then I label and colour code my blocks (intro, verse 1, chorus 2, bridge, outro, end fade, etc.). In under 10 minutes I have my entire song blocked out for me and labelled. The most important thing is to get to the end. Once the end is in sight, literally, I have a song. I know where I'm going. The rest is the details. Very fast way to get songs done.
@@blackpranther I found I was taking stuff out of blocks back into the main song a lot. Blocks are an indispensable visual aid, for me. I'm going to start labelling them the quick way you do here - in Blocks mode. Then switching to Song mode, I'll left click on them to give them another label on top - say, the chorus Blocks labelled 1st, or 2nd. A hybrid approach might be really cool. I have an idea. You can’t write Blocks on top of each other, but you can drag them on top of each other. If you drag functional Blocks (ones with stuff in them) on top of each other, only one will play, so it’s kind of useless. But you can drag a functional Block on top of the visual Blocks, and it will play. Should be really handy if you have something, say, a vocal reverb effect, that only happens twice in a song. The visual Blocks will help place it, and a contrasting colour would make it stand out, especially if you don’t give it a second label on top. It should give you a lot of control and focus on that part. I’m going to try it. Maybe an idea for a 2nd Blocks video :) Blocks are great. I really appreciate the video, and the time you took to make it. Looking forward to more.
Great tutorial and introduction to Blocks. I just updated to Reason 11 from 9. It's come a long way. Blocks are definitely in my future. My organizational skills are not great. Hoping this helps.
You put out some great ideas here. I’ve been using Reason for about eight years, but two months ago I did some audio groove extractions and Pro Tools has some features that Reason doesn’t. I decided to switch to Pro Tools for a while, but I miss working in Reason, and DAW uses like this could pull me back. Great video.
Yep! Each DAW has advantages and disadvantages. I love reason because I know my way around it best, but I know that there are other programs that are better for certain applications. I think there’s a place for both programs in most people’s work flow
Thank you for this...I was hearing people say hit "B" to get to blocks but it wasn't working for me. So thanks for the tip to click on "options" and then "enable blocks"...NOW I can hit "B" and toggle between block/song.
Thanks for the straight-forward explanation! Also, nice production values on your vids! You didn't need to do a 2 camera shoot, but gave it that extra pro look!
Meh, only works well when doing those standard pop arrangements. Doing electronic music, usually the format isn't really followed and I find myself getting stuck with blocks because of the constant minute changes along the verses and the choruses...in the end it makes little difference than just building the song in song mode. Already spent time with that years ago, and went back to song mode after too many frustrations. Blocks, in many cases, feels limiting and restrictive. Electronic styles like techno and the groovier things require more freedom.
Good stuff bruh! So I have never used blocks. My question is what do we do with all of these reason songs that have been created in song mode. I need a way to create some remixes. I'm running 10.4.1d build. Subbed!
So glad I saw this! I'm new to Reason and it's a bit overwhelming. I've been using Roland V-Studios for years. How do I go about learning this program without reading the whole manual?
Blue Eyed Soul Man That’s a good question, if you find the answer let me know😂 All jokes aside, I only know what I’ve had to learn for various projects over the years, but Reason has some great tutorials on their site. Of course, I’d suggest subscribing to my channel too 😉
Man, really nice tune! Do uou know if there is a way to automate jump brom block to block? I mean, if you perform live playing one instrument on top of the blocks, and need to jump from session to session using a controller, just like on an MPC.
That’s a great question bro! I have no idea but that’d be a neat feature. You can draw events with the pencil tool into the main timeline which would work but is a little clumsy of a setup for live applications...one way to bootleg that kind of thing would be to export the blocks into WAV or AIFF and import them as samples on a Redrum. That’d give you up to 10 4 bar patterns to loop and you could cue it up with out having to trigger it to stay in time 🤷🏾♂️
I never used BLOCKS I'm creating rite now... I'm going to see if I can understand it a bit more as far as going in and re-editing my track. Nice video tho. Thanks
Dive in! You can always go into an old track and copy the sections into blocks. I didn’t mention it in the video, but this is probably clutch for making remixes...
