January 17, 2024 • 54 mins
If you've watched any music production tutorials out on YouTube, I guarantee you you've at least heard this man's voice. My guest joining me today is a singer, a songwriter, producer, music educator, the senior creative lead at Reason Studios, Ryan Harlin, and chat about everything from how he found himself making Reason tutorials, how Reason fits into his workflow, and how the banjo (of all things) is one of his true passions!
Watch this episode on YouTube
https://youtu.be/s0OyQLj4RHQ
Web: https://ryanharlin.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryanharlin_
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RyanHarlin
Harmony Playground: https://ryanharlin.com/harmony-playground
Walker Creek Music Camp: https://walkercreekmusiccamp.org
Reason: https://www.reasonstudios.com
https://www.youtube.com/reasonstudios
00:00 - Intro & welcome
01:49 - Weekly check-in
06:42 - Interview with Ryan Harlin
13:29 - What are some of the big attractions of Reason?
24:38 - Thoughts on the impact of the Reason Rack plugin
32:33 - How does Ryan approach learning and using new Reason instruments?
37:10 - How do Reason and being a banjo player overlap and complement each other?
48:27 - How can folks connect with Ryan?
51:33 - Outro and how you can join the 52 Cues community
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dave (00:00):
So I am so glad to have kind of reason back in my life
and they're doing amazing things.
The object synth isgroundbreaking, next level.
It still hurts my brain.
I've watched your tutorial likeseveral times.
I'm like it was so lucid andnow it is gone.
That's like I gotta watch itagain and half speed, right.
Ryan (00:20):
Right, yeah, oh, object is you know, I mean physical
modeling.
It's, it is a true physicalmodeling synthesizer, and that's
probably the type of synthesistechnology that we all have the
least experience with.
Dave (00:41):
What is happening, everybody, and welcome back to
another episode of the 52 Cuespodcast, your weekly insight
into all things, production andlibrary music.
Whether you're simply curiousabout the sync industry, or
maybe you're ready to pitch topublishers, I promise you you
are in the right place.
My name is Dave Kropf and it isso good to be with you today.
And if you find this videohelpful, then why don't you give
(01:02):
it a thumbs up here on YouTubeor a five star review in your
podcast app?
And please be sure to subscribe, because I talk about library
music like all the time.
Today's episode wouldn't bepossible without the incredible
support of our membersubscribers at 52 Cues, who not
only keep the community aliveand thriving, but as members
they also get access to extrafeatures like workshops, live
(01:25):
streams, office hours, Qbreakdowns, zoom feedback
sessions, hundreds of hours ofarchives and opportunities to
submit to real music library.
So maybe this sounds like you,and or maybe you're feeling
stuck and ready to take yoursync career to the next level.
But why don't you head over to52cues.
com?
It's free to join andmemberships start at like four
(01:45):
bucks a month.
We would love, love to have you.
So it is week three of 2000 and24.
And how's it going?
My weekly check in and I got tosay it's going really well.
Finally, on the other side ofthe holiday, finally getting
some traction, I'm wrapping upan album, got more albums on on
(02:05):
deck and it's just going really,really well, finding a new
pattern right in my calendar.
I've taken on moreresponsibilities and I've
actually gotten a promotion overat full sale, so excited about
that.
But it means that I have to bea lot more deliberate with my
time.
So there are chunks where I'mwriting and chunks where I'm
answering emails, chunks whereI'm in class and all these kinds
(02:27):
of things.
And I'm just being reallydeliberate with those times in
my calendar and just being kindto myself if, if I don't stick
to it, right, Right, it's reallyeasy to kind of set something
up and say this is what I'mgoing to do and then if you
don't do it, whether it'smanaging a calendar or whether
it's exercising or dieting orwhatever, and you can get into
(02:50):
this mindset where you're kindof beating yourself up and I
think that's self-defeating.
So so I'm going to be kind tomyself, I'm going to do the best
I can with the time that I haveand be okay If, if I, if I
don't hit hit my target, that'stotally okay.
Next week I'll try to do better.
But I'm being really deliberate, scheduling and getting the
(03:11):
most out of my writing times andI felt like this year has been
really really productive.
It's week three and I've alreadygot five cues down, so things
are going really really well.
Some of that is motivated byhaving to deliver several cues
by the end of the month, butalso Expedition 52.
So the cue that I'm writingthis week for the Expedition 52
(03:34):
check-in it's called Loch NessLookout and it is an Irish or a
Scottish or a high I called itHighland Tension, Right so it's
using Yulean pipes, it's usingthis kind of Celtic vocal type
sound and Boron samples andBoron recordings.
(03:55):
So this is my cue for 2024,week four 2024, Expedition 52.
This is Loch Ness Lookout.
So that was Loch Ness Lookoutand if you want a breakdown of
(06:29):
this cue then tune in to the cuebreakdown on Friday or tomorrow
at over for the friendssubscribers.
I've got a complete breakdownof that coming right up.
If you've watched any musicproduction tutorials out there
on the internet, whether youlike Reason or you use Reason or
(06:51):
not, I guarantee you you've atleast heard this man's voice.
My guest joining me today is asinger, a songwriter, producer,
music educator, the seniorcreative lead at Reason Studios.
I am so happy to welcome to thepodcast Mr Ryan Harlan.
Ryan, What is happening, my man?
(07:12):
How
Ryan (07:13):
Thanks for having me.
That's a good little wind upthere.
So, I'll clip that out and justmake that my alarm each morning
and your ringtone.
Dave (07:21):
Get myself going Welcome from one YouTuber to another,
from one eyewear aficionado toanother.
No, it's game, recognizing game.
But I got to tell you I've beena longtime fan of yours.
Long before we saw your face,you were really the voice of
(07:41):
Reason.
Ryan (07:43):
Well, you know it's funny, I guess in some sense thank you
for saying that.
It's funny to hear that becausewhen I came in when I so my
journey with Reason and thecontent that I did with him is
for a number of years I waswriting the content but it was
being narrated by that we had avoice over artist named Frank
(08:03):
and he would do all the stuffand he was referred to as the
voice of Reason.
And then, because of certainlogistical reasons, both in sort
of the tone and the way thatthe script was going, there was
one of them where I thought, youknow what, actually it makes
more sense for it to be my voicedoing this and not sort of the
authoritative Reason voice, thegeneric Reason voice that they
(08:23):
knew.
And let me tell you the revoltin the comments when that switch
happened, because who is thisvoice?
He's not the voice of Reason.
Dave (08:33):
You know, we need Frank back, it was a whole whole thing
.
Ryan (08:39):
And so, and for a little while I kind of would do both,
some stuff, I would do mine,some stuff we'd use Frank.
And then over time it startedto transition and the real
transition happened when YouTubetransitioned to you can't be a
faceless person anymore, youknow, we want to know the
personality, and so that wassort of the real kickoff to be
like all right, I got to get oneof these things here.
Dave (09:01):
Yeah, lights and camera, yeah, exactly.
Ryan (09:04):
I mean my, you know this is my living space and working
space and it's really becomejust a live in YouTube studio
that I, you know, bargained withmyself to fit a bed in there
somewhere, you know.
Dave (09:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
This is.
This is my production studio.
It's just a room over a garageand like some Amazon lights, you
know, and I researched andfound like a good camera, but
it's not.
It's not like a red camera oranything crazy like that, just
to make it look a little.
You know, I'm about to ask youto sit there and watch me, for I
mean, these podcast episodescan go an hour at a time.
(09:34):
The least I could do is do alittle bit of research on my
lighting.
Ryan (09:37):
Exactly.
Yeah, no hard shadows, you know?
Yeah, exactly Cool background.
Dave (09:43):
We have a fill light, a overhead and a hair light.
Yeah, I went, I went all in,Isn't it?
Ryan (09:47):
funny that you know the things that you.
You know all of us this is true, I think, for everyone that
probably would watch and listento this is that you know the
skills that you have Didn'texpect you'd have to build just
to do the skill that you want todo you know.
It's like I remember early onwhen I was in college for audio
engineering and we had a Studioowner local studio owner, big
(10:08):
studio in Liverpool, englandcame to talk to the students and
His big advice he stuck thestuck with me was he said listen
, you're gonna go out into theworld, you guys might start
studios, you might startbusiness enterprises with other
business partners.
Figure out which one of you isgonna end up doing the thing you
don't want to do, becausethat's what's gonna happen.
One of you is gonna become theaccountant and the marketer and
(10:30):
you know the the event planner,and then the other guy's gonna
get to do the stuff that youwere trying to get in on.
Dave (10:34):
So some somebody scooping out cat the cat box, right yeah,
he's got to do that, absolutelyyeah, and I'm really excited
about the democratization ofsome of the tools.
Like, if you were to rewind tenyears ago in the video
production space, like theselights which, which I got for
like 60 bucks for a whole set oflights, I would have had to go
(10:56):
in like a photo store.
Yeah, I would have had to dropall kinds of real money on these
, Absolutely.
And I mean they're not heirloomlights, I mean I'm not handing
them down to mygreat-grandchildren, but they
work really well.
They work really well so youknow it's.
Ryan (11:11):
I can.
I can speak from experiencebecause I was in the video game
10 years ago and I wasn't I meaneven you know, 15 and 16 years
ago and a friend of mine who wedid a lot of our early
documentary production worktogether and we used to have
this thing when we started outwe had this dream in life and it
was to be we.
We sort of referred to it as onetrip production, so what it
(11:34):
meant was we were someday we'dbe able to unload the car and
load into a an interview or ashoot in one trip from the car.
Like that Was the dream.
But of course at that time itwas, you know, three, four or
five trip productions, and Not,you know, just seven years later
or something.
He and I did a big project witha band where we were touring
all around the world and thewhole thing was in our backpacks
(11:56):
and it was like such a Sort ofmilestone for us to realize even
how far we'd come then.
And then we started dreamingabout I think we start calling
it a Cargo shorts productionswhen we get it down to like how
small can we get this?
you know gonna fit it in theFanny pack, right, and you know
it's actually.
I mean, some of the video stuffis crazy what's happening right
now.
There's a new thing that justcame out recently called the the
(12:16):
Osmo pocket Osmo, the newestgeneration.
That the thing is.
You know Looks like a pezdispenser and shoes video.
That's better than a lot of theentry-level kind of DSLR.
Dave (12:27):
I know I mean not to mention the thing that we all
have in our, in our, in ourpocket.
Ryan (12:31):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Dave (12:32):
Yeah, and so, like this camera right here is a DSLR
camera with a, with a, with anice lens on it, but it's like
that big right.
Yeah, full movies are shot onthese cameras which look like
like mini cam, like those littlewhat?
Those disc cameras?
You remember those?
Ryan (12:50):
yes, right, right, right I mean the thing about this,
actually, what I think was it'ssort of exciting and relevant
and certainly to your audience,is, with the democratization and
the miniaturization of all thistechnology, what it really is
doing is expanding the number ofpeople that are creating this
content.
That's right and and To to away that is good for us.
The thing that hasn't yet beenAI'd and and cracked and and
(13:12):
redundant you know all that isthat a quality Q, a quality
score, you know to go withcontent, elevates it in a way
that's like it's just enormous.
So I'm all in favor of gettingthese cameras out to as many
hands as possible, as manystorytellers as possible.
Dave (13:28):
That's right, yeah and speaking of democratization of
tools.
This brings me to reason now,some 20 years ago 22.
Ryan (13:41):
Years ago, yeah.
Dave (13:42):
I was teaching reason at a college in Memphis and I had my
choice.
I could teach like pro tools, Icould teach, you know, digital
performer, all these other, andI specifically chose reason
because I I am of the age whereI still appreciate a good
tactile Feel like knobs andfaders.
(14:03):
I still even right over here, Icould.
I could do all this virtualbusiness, but I run my entire
studio out of a physical mixeras far as the live and
everything.
Yeah, and reason had thatAbsolutely in spades and it
embraced it.
You know you get flipped theback and, and so Reason was my
first kind of big boy grown-updoll.
You know, before it was, youknow, reason with reason record
(14:26):
and then all of that kind ofstuff, sure, and so, as a person
who has spent Countless hour,you, you have put your 10,000
Malcolm Gladwell hours intoreason.
I probably have, yeah, yes, youare, are the resident Zen
master of reason.
What are some of its biggestadvantages?
(14:49):
That you could see that thatmight and this isn't a
commercial for reason here.
Ryan (14:53):
Yeah, you didn't pay me to do this, or anything.
Dave (14:57):
But what are some of some of the things that really kind
of drew you to reason and beingable to to pour so much of your
creative energy into that's.
Ryan (15:05):
I think that's actually that's great.
I'm glad you mentioned you likethis isn't a commercial for it
because actually, like I have toremind myself that when I talk
about reason because I I am areason user that through
happenstance and luck hooked upwith the company and happened to
be a video producer and andHappened to live in Los Angeles
(15:26):
when they needed one, and thenhappened to work with them
enough that they, you know,started working with me on a
more sort of regular andfull-time basis, and so so to me
that is all like Secondary.
I sort of feel like I there'ssome loophole trick where I,
like I got to be a reason userwho gets paid by reason and just
Kismet man, you know.
(15:46):
But I still very much like whenI talk to, when I'm hosting live
streams, I'm talking to thereason community.
Or when I, and whenever I go toan event like I was at Super
booth in May and meet with theReason community, I'm not there
as a reason representative, I'mthere as a reason user, hanging
out with my, my friends, youknow, and I still very much
think of it that way.
So it's always, it's almostweird when I have to think, oh
(16:08):
wait, what it?
What is the official companyline on this?
Or what is the what is themarketing talking point?
Like I don't, that's not myworld.
Dave (16:15):
My world is just as a reason user and so yeah, and
you're and you're notnecessarily here as a
representative.
Like reason didn't send you.
Like I didn't like pitch theirmarketing and they sent.
Well, here's here's Ryan.
Ryan (16:23):
Yeah right, talk to our product specialist or whatever.
Yeah right?
Dave (16:26):
No, that's not what we're doing here.
I, you're a lover of reason, auser of reason who, like like
you said, has moved into this.
So what was it about reason?
That just resonated with you,yeah that's a it's a good
question.
Ryan (16:38):
Well, so in some sense I came into reason at the same
time you did.
I was a A relatively young kidgetting into audio engineering
in the 90s.
I was the kid that would youknow, like the little studio rat
that would hang out and be likeCould I wrap cables and make
coffee and just just to be nearthe action at the recording
studios in Philadelphia.
And Because of that I wasgrowing up.
(17:01):
I mean, I didn't know it at thetime, but I was growing up and
training at the tail end of thehardware world.
You know, I learned how to, youknow, calibrate a About two
inch 24-track tape machine andthen never used one to actually
record because, like, by thetime, I knew how to do it.
That was like that moment inpast you are me.
Dave (17:18):
I took classes in college on splicing like.
I took a radio productionsclass about splicing tape and I
never got to use it.
Ryan (17:25):
Exactly, exactly that exact same thing.
Yeah, I could, I could splicetape really slowly and awkwardly
If I had to, but yeah, I'venever actually done it in
practice and so, um, but what Idid come up in is the world of
the.
Well, now we're gonna call itthe hardware metaphor, but it
was hardware.
And so using a patch bay andunderstanding signal flow via a
(17:46):
cable and the, the simplicity ofthat did.
A cable has two points it goesfrom something to something, and
there's no ambiguity about that, and you don't have to
right-click to see what it'sdoing and you know you don't
have to go into some likerouting matrix to make that
happen.
It's just, it's it's tactile,it's just that.
And so there was this veryartful simplicity to the way
(18:08):
recording studios worked as Iwas coming up and learning.
But I also was young enoughthat I was on the, on the Entry
edge, the sort of that, thatbleeding edge of the DAW stuff.
So I was, when I was going toschool for audio engineering, I
was the kid that had Pro Tools 3, which what was what it was at
the time, and a little I can'tremember the name of the card
(18:30):
bus Technology that you had toput in your computer to make it
run, but it was like it was oneof those year or whatever.
It was a scuzzy drive and thenbut there was a name like it had
.
I would.
If I googled it I'd find it.
But there's some name for thespecial card yet but it wasn't a
PCI card, that we didn't havethose yet.
It was like that's somethingelse.
But yeah, so I was.
I was sort of on the early edgeof that and when students we had
(18:50):
one class where we werelearning I I think it was Otari
made a disc based digitalrecorder For use and the idea
was we took a class for learninghow to use it for
post-production sound, you know,sound effects and slipping
things in Dialogue and that kindof stuff.
And I started using it torecord and produce music.
And I remember people thinkingwas kind of weird.
I was like guys, like I meanyou get it right, like I can
(19:13):
copy this chorus and paste itover here and I can like loop
this part and I can fix this,you know, and there's a lot of
things.
So so I was, I was sort ofcoming up in this world of
cables and hardware, embracingthe digital, and Right after I
got out of school and kind ofentered the world of actually,
you know, professionally makingmusic and and and making and
(19:34):
recording and producingReasonlanded and it was what was
so Brilliant to particularlypeople of my era at that time
was it was you know what I cannow call the hardware metaphor,
which was it?
I looked at that and I didn't.
I didn't need a manual.
Dave (19:53):
I just looked at went, oh, got it.
Ryan (19:54):
I mean, the only manual thing you needed to know was you
hit the tab key to flip to theback of the rack Right and then,
once you know that, then therouting is, it's like
instinctual.
Dave (20:05):
Yeah, knobs look like knobs.
Ryan (20:08):
Yeah, you know the compressor looks like the
compressor that I have over here, you know, and yeah, and it
behaves like it.
That's the other thing too, andso it just.
It just was a this no-brainersort of transition in terms of
that now at the time, and thenstill, you know, I Can use logic
and pro tools and live, I mean,alive at that time wasn't quite
(20:29):
out and cooking yet, but youknow I Dabble in all these Dawes
and use all these Dawes.
But what clicked for me at thetime that I started using reason
more Exclusively or moreheavily, was that my creative
output was more efficient andbetter working in reason, and
(20:49):
and may that might not be truefor everyone, I don't want to
like say that like it's aguaranteed fix for anyone.
Dave (20:56):
Yeah, the tool, the tool and the workflow just resonated
with you.
Ryan (21:00):
It's that matter, it's, it's like what's the?
Dave (21:02):
difference between a three thousand dollar Yamaha
saxophone or a three thousanddollar like Selmer saxophone.
Ryan (21:08):
Right, it's just, they're both great instruments, but one
of them is just gonna feelbetter in your right, and I've
thought about that in my youknow as, as you sort of say, I
sort of in a sense, through mycontent, become some type of
like you know avatar or you knowthe human avatar of the reason
community.
And so I think a lot about thatquestion because I get asked it
(21:29):
a lot and so and so in the inthe more recent years I, when
I'm working in reason, I do sortof think about like well, what
is it?
Like, I say it's more efficientfor me creatively.
But why?
What is that?
And what I have come to realizeis there's certain things about
it like it's.
It's an open, blank canvas,it's it's a virtual studio rack
on your screen.
And so when I drag aninstrument in, it just lives
(21:51):
alongside the other gear, whichis, you know, if someone's not
used to that workflow, theymight come into that and find
that to be almost sort ofchaotic.
Where it's like well, why isthis instrument sitting next to
this one?
But they're on different tracksand they've got different you
know Automation lanes and why,why are they just right next to
each other?
But for me it's like that's a,that's a feature, not a bug,
that right next to each other Ican move so quickly without
(22:12):
having to like keep going backto the sequencer and selecting
another, you know, or a channelin the mixer, and and toggling
back and forth.
And when I use some of theseother does I'm often doing.
I'm amazed at how many of theselittle like Sort of
transitional clicks I need to doto like, oh, I got to go back
to this other page view to clickthe channel that I want, then I
got to click the the button toselect the plugin that I want to
(22:33):
open, and then I got to go downLower here and click the little
wrench thing to make the popand it's like that, just that
process right there, like greatideas can die in that, that's
right.
Leading moment.
Dave (22:45):
And yeah, because you're, you're pulling yourself out of
the flow state right.
And so now it would be like youknow, talking about saxophone,
the saxophone is going oh, whatwas the fingering on that scale?
And now, suddenly right,thinking creatively.
Ryan (22:56):
Now you're thinking how many times I'm sure anyone you
know listen to this how manytimes have you had a great
musical idea and Forgotten itwhile you're trying to get the
voice memos app open on yourphone?
You?
Dave (23:06):
know.
This is why I keep a microphonePlugged in, ready to go at any
time.
So if I want to go hey, I needto, I'm gonna, I'm gonna record
shaker, yeah, then I just grabthe shaker, grab the mic and get
it, yeah.
Ryan (23:17):
So in that sense, the other, that open canvas of the
reason rack, I just move aroundthrough it so quickly and so the
yeah and the proof is in thepudding.
I just make more and bettermusic and reason.
Yeah, and I was, you know.
Dave (23:28):
I did a whole episode of a video on.
I called it doll wars, likewhich is the best doll, and it
was like it was kind of clickbaity and shit.
But it's really.
You can obviously tell thefolks who just read the title
and then, like like carpet, bondme in the in the comments,
right, versus people who watchthe video, because the video
says the doll that you know isthe best doll to use, right,
(23:50):
there is no one doll which islike top of the mountain or any
of that.
When I, when I moved to Floridaand I took a gig at full sale,
they're they're logic.
They're logic and pro tools andso I sadly had to set reason
aside because I had to go likeall in, I was reason and Ableton
.
I did Ableton for a lot of myremix work and that kind of
(24:12):
thing, and reason forpractically everything else,
especially before the recorddays, you know yeah, right when
you couldn't record live audioin.
Ryan (24:20):
Yeah, yeah, it was just virtual instruments.
Dave (24:22):
Yeah, and but the fact that it was a closed
architecture, that's what soldme on it to my, to my students
in Memphis.
I was like, here it is, youdon't need any plugins, you
don't need VSTs, here's, you gomake music anyway.
So I, kind of, you know, had toset reason aside, but
Thankfully the prodigal returnedwhen reason Created the reason
(24:44):
rack as a VST.
Yes, I just chef's kiss, thatwas exactly what I was, what I
was looking for, because all ofthe things that I loved about
reason the, the actual DAWitself, like if there was a
Mount Rushmore it would be, Iguess, kind of like not even up
there, the sounds I loved the,the board and SSL board and all
(25:06):
that stuff, but but havingreason rack, that, knowing
you're not a representative,blah, blah, blah, but that, that
feels like a tectonic shift inThinking for what was then, I
guess at the time, propellerheads.
I think they were stillpropeller heads at that time.
Ryan (25:24):
I had they had.
Dave (25:24):
They shifted over to reason studios.
Ryan (25:26):
They might have done that switch at the same exact time.
It was reason 11.
That was when the reason rackplugin became an option, and I
think that might have been thesame time that they switched
from propeller head to.
Dave (25:39):
Reason yeah, how did that resonate throughout the
community, the fact that, hey,you can buy it as a plug-in?
And did you have folks likeScreaming you're abandoning the
DAW, or folks who are like me,who are like praise Jesus right?
Ryan (25:52):
where you're back.
Yeah well, it won't surpriseyou or viewers to hear that
anything you do with the toolsomeone uses is gonna invite
every spectrum of opinion.
So, yes, there was, there wascertainly that was represented.
There was people that thoughtthere's still people that think
that there's some nefarious Likesix-year plan to like walk away
(26:14):
from all this and I don't quiteknow for the yes right.
Yeah it's like, oh, they'regonna do this and then they're
gonna do that, and then they'regonna do this and then it's
gonna all be over and it's like,wait, why?
No, that's.
You know, the goal is to togrow and get music makers to
come to reason, not to, you know, sort of Sort of sneak out of
the room when no one's looking.
And so there was certainlythere was some of that
(26:34):
conspiratorial thinking.
There was people who Worriedabout where the focus would fall
.
You know it's like are you, areyou gonna be just focusing on
the on the rack plug-in and notfocusing on the DAW?
I think, at least as a DAW users, you know, because I still
primarily produce in the reasonDAW, that hasn't been the case.
(26:56):
So I think people kind of, oncethat Time, a little time passed
, they realized that it wasn'tnot, it wasn't being backburner,
yeah, and and the big thing wasthat you know you talk about
the DAW wars, and that was themost fun for me, and I think
other reason users figured outthat like, oh, this totally
changes the the conversation,because in the DAW wars, that
(27:16):
the DAW wars is rooted in theseconversations that we all have,
as Musician to musician, friendto friend right, and if you're
using FL studio and I'm usinglive, it's a good chance that
part of our friendship is basedon kind of ribbing you and
trying to Convince you to cometo my side of the fence and
you're trying to get me to go toyour side of the fence and it's
all like, oh yeah, can you dothis in live.
Oh, can you do this in FL studio.
(27:37):
And and that's really what theDAW wars is, you know is is that
sort of Friendly joking, butalso real competition in terms
of people trying to evangelizeand convert people to their side
.
Right now, the conversation forreason that's or any of these
that's a really hardconversation, you know it's like
oh hey, you've got eight yearsinvested in Working in logic and
(27:59):
you know logic pro inside andout.
Well, guess what?
There's this one thing thatlive can do, and so you should
Re-learn and do your whole DAWworkflow.
Oh, and also like, maybe someof your plugins aren't gonna
work.
You know like it's a reallyhard conversation to convert
someone to switch from one DAWto the other.
And the thing that became reallyfun about the reason I plug in
(28:21):
for me as someone who interactswith the community so much is Is
the conversation didn't becomethat.
The conversation became do youlove your DAW?
We're so happy you do.
Here is something new for yourdog.
That's gonna like level up whatyou can do with the environment
that you already work in andyeah, it was.
Dave (28:38):
It was it really felt like coming home having all of these
tools which I had spent so manyyears but I just had to set
aside because you know I teachlogic all day, every day.
You know for, for, for students, and so it was.
It was borderline academicmalpractice for me not to get as
good with logic as I was withreason.
(28:59):
So when I could install it as aplug in, I'm like, oh yeah,
there's maelstrom, oh, there'sthe combinator.
Oh there's the inline mixer.
Oh, it's like like slipping ona pair of old jeans, absolutely
there is.
Ryan (29:12):
I mean that, that coming home thing.
That's something I hear from alot of people.
You know we used to get one ofthe biggest feature requests
that used to come into the themail room over in Stockholm At
the reason studios headquarterswas things like For the love of
God, can you please just makescream force distortion a
plug-in, just make just that.
I Miss it.
I'm over in Pro Tools but Iwant scream force, so that you
(29:34):
know, and and for a millionobvious reasons, that it was not
hitting the top of the prioritylist.
You know, over in with the R&Ddepartment.
But but all of a sudden it waslike, oh, then this welcome home
thing happens.
And so now we're hearing.
Instead of that we're hearinglike, oh, for the love of God,
thank you so much for puttingscream for back into Pro Tools
for me.
Dave (29:53):
You know, and yeah, I mean just like the Kong drum
designer, which was way ahead ofits time.
I've got one of these guys,yeah, and and I remember seeing
this on the Kong I'm like, well,that's 16 pads, that makes
perfect sense and that's.
Pc guys had known that for foryears.
Ryan (30:09):
That's such a perfect like micro, a demonstration of that
same ethos I was talking about,where, like you look at Kong
drum designer as an MPC guy andyou don't need the manual, it's
like, oh, okay, bye, this is my,that is my workflow.
I know that it's that same sortof genius Of that, the hardware
metaphor they have with allthat stuff, yeah.
Dave (30:26):
So I am so glad to have kind of reason back in my life
and they're doing amazing things.
The object synth isGroundbreaking, next level.
It still hurts my brain andI've watched your tutorial like
several times.
I'm like I, it was so lucid andnow it is gone.
That's like I don't watch itagain and half speed, right,
right yeah, oh object is youknow, I mean physical modeling.
Ryan (30:49):
It's, it is a true physical modeling synthesizer,
and that's probably the the typeof synthesis technology that we
all have the least experiencewith, you know right and so it
is, and it's a whole differentparadigm.
Dave (31:01):
It's so abstract.
It's not like here's a sound,manipulate sound.
Yeah, here's a sample here,right, so which is my?
Ryan (31:07):
design.
You know, I mean usually thatthat's sort of a pitfall that a
lot of physical modelingsynthesizer designs fall into is
they try to Condense what is areally chaotic like algorithmic
model, the way it actually works.
You know, in the on the techDSP side it's really complicated
and so they try to sort of likepull it into these macros and
these sort of like Physicalabstractions that make sense.
(31:29):
So you, you end up choosing youknow, I want to take a, a
Plastic resonator, and put aanimal skin on it and I want to
hit it with a with a metal rod,you know, and that will make a
sound, but it doesn't be so muchof the actual sound design has
been taken away from you withthese sort of like Relatable
(31:52):
abstractions in physicalmodeling that you don't actually
usually get really greatresults.
And so that was to me when I sawobject.
The genius of object was thatsure it's been, it's been made
approachable.
I mean, the guys that do the,the UX design, are geniuses, but
they're still giving you accessto the true physical modeling
(32:12):
algorithmic Overton and and thewhole the thing that makes
physical modeling work the wayit does impact, exciters and all
that stuff.
They're giving you access tothe actual controls of that and
lo and behold, if you are eithera physical modeling genius or
have enough time to Experiment,to play with it and kind of hone
in on it, you can make wildlyrealistic models of stuff.
Dave (32:33):
So question for you as the resident guy who has to
communicate this to the masseswhen you see something like
object, come on to you.
What is your approach tolearning these new sense, to
learning, like how to work theminto your workflow Beyond?
Just hey, these presets aregood, I guess, and never becomes
anything else, right?
(32:54):
How do you, how do you reallydig into any new instrument like
that's a.
Ryan (32:58):
That's a good question Because I probably have a
process and I probably Iprobably won't do a great job of
explaining right now becauseI've never fully thought about
it.
I can tell you part one is IDon't get brought in on the
earliest design phases Becausethings change and I can actually
get sort of wrong impressionsthat linger like.
In fact I'll give an examplefor object I actually got.
(33:20):
I didn't get this communicatedfrom the actual product
department.
It was designing object butsome other people in the company
kind of passed me a little likea rumor, like hey, they're
working on a new instrument andit's gonna be a physical
modeling instrument for doingStruck metallic objects, which
is like that's true in a smallpie wedge of what object does,
(33:43):
but object does so much.
That's not what this is about,right and so when I actually
then they kind of get looped into start, like you know, getting
briefed on what it is and andworking up kind of my content
plans and stuff, I had this Ihad to like.
It took me a couple weeks tolike separate myself from the
bias of oh, it's a struckmetallic object instrument.
You know I was thinking, ohokay, we'll do stuff with gamma
(34:05):
lines, like maybe I'll go toIndonesia, will record gamma
lines and make a video.
And you know I was sort ofthinking strictly in that thing
and it was wasn't until Matias,who's the, the product manager
for reason, and I were having aconversation and he kind of
caught me.
He was like you know, why areyou fixated on this one sliver
of what?
Dave (34:22):
it is he's talking about.
Yeah so.
Ryan (34:24):
So for that reason and that's a demonstration why I
generally don't do that I I comein when it's more fully baked
and and and Matias and I willhave meetings.
He'll show it to me first in akind of general way, and Then
I'll start working with it alittle bit, and then I'll meet
up with him again and I'll sortof go like here's where I'm not
like, explain to me why thisworks this way or what's the
(34:46):
value of this feature, like I'mjust not seeing it yet.
And and Matias, he's, like Isaid, he's the product manager
for reason, so he makes a lot ofthose big development decisions
.
Matias started, as you know, aspry young lad joining reason.
He again, same thing as me, hewas a reason user that like
through, like in ways that hewasn't gonna question, they
(35:07):
hired him to be a productspecialist, a demo guy, so he
would go out to you know the UKor to other places in Europe and
do demonstrations in you knowmusic stores and stuff
conferences and that kind ofthing.
Yeah, conferences, yeah, allthat kind of stuff and the thing
that, maybe to his frustration,because, for all of our sake is
, he's still utterly amazing atDemoing a product or demoing a
(35:33):
plug-in or something like thatand showing you in a very
natural way what it can do andhow great it can be at it, and
so he's second to none of that.
So he's like my entry, like hedemos it for me and I get into
it right.
Then I start working with itmyself and For me, usually my.
The thing I come at it with isI want to, I Want to break down
(35:55):
for someone what's happeningwithout being like annoyingly
technical about it, but I wantthem to understand on a
fundamental level what'shappening, and so I'm sure I did
that in the object video.
But the one that comes to mind,for example, is Um reason
studios made a synth calledalgorithm.
It's an FM synthesizer and it'slike I think that one is maybe
(36:17):
the one I'm most happy with howI explained just enough FM
synthesis for you to understandhow to use it in algorithm
without getting in this wholerabbit hole of FM synthesis and
what it is and the nuances of it.
But, the thing about algorithmis that it has this really
amazing again the UX guys likeamazing.
(36:39):
It has this great interfacewhere you can really see FM
synthesis algorithm routing in away that you never used to on
like a DX7 and stuff like that.
It was always, I mean, you did,but it was a little graphic.
That was a weird like map of analgorithm.
It looked weird, but you canreally get hands on in algorithm
the plugin.
So yeah, so for me that's sortof the balance.
(37:00):
It's like I wanna take peoplewho know nothing about what I'm
about to tell you, give you justenough that you can now
approach this instrument and nowlet's make some cool music with
it.
Dave (37:08):
Gotcha, gotcha.
So we've talked for half anhour about Reason, but Reason is
really just part of who you are, as a composer, as an artist,
and I was very pleasantlysurprised to learn that you are
a very accomplished banjo player, which I mean, isn't every
(37:32):
Reason user?
Ryan (37:33):
isn't that so Aren't we all?
Dave (37:34):
I mean, I have a Banjo Yucca-Laylee here hanging on the
wall in the background.
But I mean, we're talking likelegitimate banjo player and for
me I am completely fascinatedbecause if there's a Venn
diagram of like types ofmusicians right Reason, edm user
or composer, banjo playerthat's a very, very sliver of
(37:56):
overlap.
Help me understand how yourbrain kind of occupies both and
where do you see the overlap?
And yeah, just unpack that forme.
Ryan (38:10):
In terms of the overlap, anyone can see the overlap on my
Instagram because I have.
There was a thing that actuallywas a through Reason.
There's a Reason user named TobTalk.
He's a house producer in Swedenand he did a little like remix
challenge partnership with theReason community and everybody
was doing remixes of the song hehad called New Levels and I, as
(38:30):
a joke on a live stream orannouncing the challenge or
something, said like ah, maybeI'll do a banjo remix, because
the Reason community, when Ihost live streams, they see the
banjos in the background andthey get all excited about kind
of making fun of it.
Some of them, some of them getit actually.
Dave (38:44):
Yeah, it's kind of like a punchline.
Ryan (38:46):
Yeah, it's accordion bagpipes banjo.
It's not part of it's at thekids table in terms of like the
kids.
Dave (38:51):
Deliverance didn't do us any favors either.
Ryan (38:54):
It did not, it did not so, but I actually did a remix of
the Tob Talk song that I calledthe banjo remix, where I
actually did fuse sort of modernelectronic Reason production
with a top line from the banjoand it actually was kind of cool
.
I mean, it's not gonna take theworld by storm and be a whole
new genre, but it did workbetter than I thought.
Dave (39:12):
Yeah, banjo house, right, I mean it could be a thing, it
could be a thing, but it justfascinates me and I think points
to a bigger picture of you knowthat music is music is music.
And so having space in yourconsciousness, for, hey, I'm
over here, I write lo-fi, but Ialso play the flute, you know,
and that's totally, that'stotally good, and how it
(39:35):
enriches one another.
So, like learning banjoenriches your work in the doll,
which enriches you in the banjospace and in the folk space.
You know, just a few minutesbefore this recording, you
released a video, a duet.
It was beautiful, beautifulsinging.
I mean you're a fantasticsinger, you know, and you and
(39:57):
the singer are out there kind ofin a field, you know she's
playing the car.
Ryan (40:00):
That's right, her name is Mikaela May.
Dave (40:01):
She's a wonderful singer, yeah, and she's so good, it's so
good and it feels diametricallyopposite from like I'm making,
like a house beat.
Ryan (40:10):
And that's so great.
You say that because that isexactly it.
And in terms of what brought meto the banjo and brought me to
acoustic music, I mean I wasalways kind of I was raised with
that influence to some degree,you know, as my parents were
into Kat Stevens and ArloGuthrie and you know there was
sort of this folk influencegrowing up.
But the truth is that I, thatdiametric opposition you talk
(40:35):
about, is exactly the value forme in the music I played the
banjo and the acoustic rootskind of music I played because
the way it started I was, Istarted learning banjo and I was
, you know, kind of was gettinginto it and I went to.
A thing which is very commonwithin that music scene is
(40:55):
jamming group jamming.
You get together with friendsand you or people you don't even
know, you just get togetherwith random people at a local
community center or whatever andyou know you have 15 people
sitting in a little circle andyou play songs together and that
style of music is such and thatstyle of that tradition of
community jamming is such thatyou don't all know the same
(41:16):
songs but the music is such andyour skills develop and such
that you can kind of learn themon the fly and as someone who's
leading the song, a personsinging and leading the song,
you can guide people in realtime on where the chord changes
are coming, and so it's a veryimprovisational style of music.
But I went to my first jam, orfirst couple of jams, and I
(41:39):
would go in the evening.
I would do that and then thenext day I'd be working in
Reason again.
I'd work in Reason all week andthen on, you know, the Thursday
, I'd go to another jam and whatI came to realize was that I
needed that jam because my workin Reason and I'm sure people
can relate to this you know,everything you do when you're
working in a DAW is aboutexacting nature.
(42:00):
You're either timing things tosimply time code for a cue or
you're working to a click grid.
You're quantizing your thingsto make them perfect or you're
deliberately but very exactinglynot quantizing them to try and
get human feel.
You're very aware thateverything you're doing is for
keeps.
It's gonna go out into theworld.
It's gonna be judged by yourpeers.
It's gonna be judged by, youknow, the audio leads on a
(42:23):
project or the directors of afilm or whatever, the
marketplace right.
It counts, everything counts,and it's important, and it's
gotta be just right, and sothat's your whole world, all day
long, has spent doing that.
And then I'd go to the jam andwithout deliberately realizing
it, but I suddenly picked up onthis.
Suddenly, now I'm in a room,I'm with 15 people, we're making
music, and as we make the music, it just drifts off into the
(42:45):
ether and it's gone.
Dave (42:46):
And if someone makes a mistake.
Ryan (42:47):
That's okay, and nobody is judging it except us who are
just, and it's not judgment.
We're just here, we're makingthis music just to enjoy this
moment in real time and thenwe're all gonna go home and it's
just gone.
And that sort of flip side tothe exacting work I was doing in
(43:08):
in reason and in DAW work, youknow, in music production work
was it was just such a nicelittle like head corrective
mindset to be in.
It sort of reconnected me towhy we all get into music in the
first place, which is we justlove making music and the
expression of it and it's notthat we love, you know, like
some of that real exacting sortof, you know, transient
(43:29):
detection and stuff.
Dave (43:30):
It's a slippery slope.
As soon as you start, you know,looking to make a living making
music, you come, you'recommodifying your creativity.
Then you run the risk of justsqueezing the joy out of it
because you got accused to make,and especially in the
production music world, right,exactly, we don't even have the
benefit of, like, seeing ourname on a credit slide.
Right, we're just in thebackground like making royalties
(43:52):
, we're underneath some scene ofa cooking show, you know, and
our names will never be.
But when you think like that,it can wear you down.
It could wear down your muse,wear down your spirit, if you
want to.
So I love that perspective ofhaving some kind of outlet which
connects you to the primal orprimary, feral reason that got
(44:18):
you excited about being amusician and being involved.
Ryan (44:21):
And it feeds back into it too.
You know I come away from.
If I actually did like aquantitative analysis of my
productivine efficiency, I wouldlay money on the fact that the
days that I work after you knowif I'm playing a gig or if I'm,
you know, having a jam or justworking and rehearsing, doing
some acoustic thing withsomebody, like that next
(44:43):
production day is a moreinspired and efficient sound.
Now we're talking aboutcommoditization again, but like
more satisfying, I guess wecould say more.
You know, I'm actually myheart's in it a little more than
it is on the days when I'm,like you know, five days into,
like iterating on revisions.
You know, and it's like, oh,that's not quite right yeah yeah
(45:04):
, you know, that's more justlike okay, let's get this one
done and get the invoice out,you know yeah yeah, yeah,
finding those oases, yourcreative oases, that can help
buoy your soul through a livingmaking music.
Totally In a weird way.
I don't know if this analogy isgonna hold up at all, but it's
(45:24):
almost like you know marriedcouples that have date night to
kind of like continuallyrekindle their thing.
You know it's like for meacoustic music is my musical
date night, and then I love that.
Dave (45:34):
Oh, I love that.
So I encourage any of ourviewers and listeners.
You know what are you doing torekindle.
You know, rekindle the sparkRight, exactly Because I mean it
is work.
You know, as soon as you asksomebody to give you money for
the thing that came, you know,just popped out of your head,
(45:55):
right, you've got to meet themwhere they're at and they get to
assign value and there's awhole philosophical discussion
on that, right.
But being able to like I lovewhat you said being able to go
and make ephemeral music whichis just, it only exists in that
moment and then is gone, it'snot commodifying.
Ryan (46:10):
And you know, and you don't have to play banjo to do
that, I mean you can.
You know there are technologieslike what's it called Ableton
link I think it's called thesync technology that you know.
Anybody with a phone app thatsupports it and your friend with
a.
You know, with a laptop andstuff, you guys can make music
in your technological domains.
(46:31):
Yeah, it is just you're notdoing it with any sort of
longevity in mind and it's worthdoing, you know.
Yeah.
Dave (46:38):
I love that perspective, man.
I really really love thatperspective For me.
I like I did an episode a whileback about I'm learning guitar
and how it's rekindled, the joyof having something new, you
know, because if you're you knowyou've been making videos for
10 years and all that then itjust kind of becomes grindy.
Being a professional drummerand all of that stuff, there's
(47:00):
like there's nothing, there'snot a lot of new territory to
explore, right.
But learning guitar is waypushed me out of my comfort zone
and it's having effects in theother parts of my creative life.
Ryan (47:13):
Right, you know one of the things I think is particularly
for people that are kind ofstarting out on that journey.
I mean, if you are lucky enoughto have so much success, you
move past this, but and notalways not entirely In terms of
like keeping your love for this.
What you lose in the beginningis you lose the ability to say
no to anything.
You have no discretion over theproject, you know if something
(47:34):
comes your way.
Yes, I will do it Right.
If you're overloaded withprojects and something extra
comes your way, I'll do that too.
I'll make it work.
I don't need to sleep, I'llfigure it out.
And so you know, when you'retalking about kind of getting
into that grind like that's partof the psychological thing too,
because you started makingmusic with only discretion, just
figuring out like I'm justgoing to do the things that
excite me and I like, and thensuddenly it's like oh actually,
(47:56):
you know this holiday commercial, maybe I wouldn't have
voluntarily been doing this outof passion, but I got to do it
because I'm trying to make thiswork.
Dave (48:06):
It's a belcher, isn't it?
You know, when you start off,you just don't know what you
don't know, and then you getinvolved, and then you start
getting gigs, and then there'sthis big chunk where you're
still getting better, but you'realso like you said, you can't
say no to everything Right Onthe other side of that.
That's when you can say okay,this is for me, I'm doing it,
and so I love that perspective.
And, by the way, if folks wantto connect with you, how can
(48:31):
they reach?
Maybe they want to follow yourbanjo journey on Instagram.
I mean, where can they find you?
Ryan (48:38):
Sure, so you can find me on Instagram.
I'm at Ryan Harlan with anunderscore because I was a
little too late to grab theunderscore version.
So it's Ryan Harlan, it's anI-N.
A lot of times people willspell Harlan with a H-A-R-L-A-N
but it's H-A-R-L-I-N underscore.
So that's where I'm onInstagram.
If you want to see the DAWrelated or production more than
(49:03):
technical stuff, the best placeto actually follow me is to
follow Reason Studios, becausethat's where I do all that stuff
.
Dave (49:09):
So that's at Reason Studios on Instagram and Twitter
and all the socials and youalso teach banjo at camps and
that kind of thing.
Right, I do.
Ryan (49:21):
Yeah, that's a relatively new thing for me to move into.
I've been working.
There's a music camp here inNorthern California called
Walker Creek Music Camp thatI've worked at in the capacity
of being a teacher's assistant,where they'll bring in some
teacher of national renown andI'll help out in the classroom
as a sort of assistant to them.
November was the first time, Iguess, I got called up to the
(49:43):
majors and they brought me on tobe the actual on-staff teacher
for that camp.
That was the first camp thatI've taught in person, which was
a wonderful experience, becausea lot of the work that I do,
particularly with Reason, thatcontent, a lot of that's music
education work, but it'sfaceless.
It's just like now I'm talkinginto a lens and people are
(50:04):
watching it, but I don'tactually have the personal
interaction with a roomful ofpeople.
So super fun to do the sameeffectively, that same skill of
trying to make complicatedthings graspable, but to
actually watch the heads nod upand down when they get it, or
the oh face.
You know the aha moments.
Dave (50:22):
Yeah, the super fun.
Ryan (50:25):
I plan to do a lot more of that, and there's a camp that I
can't announce yet, butthere'll be another banjo camp
that it looks like it's nearlyofficial that I'll be teaching
that in June as well.
Dave (50:35):
Yeah, of course we're going to have links to Ryan's
Insta as the kids Instagram andthe YouTube channel, as well as
to the Walker Creek music camp,if you're interested in that.
The next one's coming up inApril.
Will you get that one?
I'll be at that one.
I will be at that one.
Ryan (50:51):
I'll be assisting.
I don't know if they'veannounced to me it, so maybe I
won't.
Actually, by the time I thinkyou will be announced by the
time this would go out.
So, if anyone is into the banjoworld, steve Boffman is going
to be the banjo teacher atWalker Creek in April and he's a
phenomenal just human being butalso phenomenal teacher, so
I'll be thrilled to assist him.
Dave (51:10):
Yeah we're going to have all those links.
Follow him on Instagram if youwant to look for that other camp
.
But, ryan, it was an absolutepleasure talking to you today.
Thank you so much for your timeand I wish you all the success
and congratulations on yoursuccess, and I'm going to go
listen to some more of yourbanjo stuff.
Ryan (51:30):
It's really good.
Dave (51:31):
Awesome.
Thanks so much for having me.
Once again, a huge thanks toRyan for joining me on the
podcast and of course, we'regoing to have all of his links
in the description, so please besure to check that out.
But that is going to do it forme today.
Once again, a huge word ofthanks to the family, friends
and neighbor subscribers of 52Qswho really keep all this going.
(51:52):
They pay their actual real lifemoney and they keep everything
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Thank you so much.
Please know that none of thiswould be possible without your
help, and so, if you want tojoin us, head over to 52Qscom.
Subscriptions start at aroundfour bucks a month.
You definitely want to tune innext week, where I am joined by
(52:15):
52 Cues family member and formerprofessional golfer, shane
Jensen, and we're going to havea chat.
We're going to talk about whatcan we learn about the
production music industry, orwhat are some of the lessons we
can learn from golf.
Now, I am a terrible golfer,but how does being a
(52:38):
professional athlete,specifically in golf, translate
to the skills you would need forproduction music?
So we're going to welcome ShaneJensen to the podcast, but that
is going to do it for me thisweek.
I hope you've had an amazingweek and I am looking forward to
hearing great things about yournext week, your week four.
(53:00):
But just remember, friends, Iknow, trust and believe that the
universe has amazing plans justfor you.
Until next time, peace.
The 52Qs podcast is copyrighted2024 at 18 Studios.
All Rights Reserve.
The music played on the podcastis copyrighted to their
respective owners and is usedwith permission and for
educational purposes only.
(53:21):
For more information, includingjoining the community or
becoming a member subscriber of52Qs, head over to 52Qscom.
So I am so glad to have kind of reason back in my life
and they're doing amazing things.
The object synth isgroundbreaking, next level.
It still hurts my brain.
I've watched your tutorial likeseveral times.
I'm like it was so lucid andnow it is gone.
That's like I gotta watch itagain and half speed, right.
Ryan (00:20):
Right, yeah, oh, object is you know, I mean physical
modeling.
It's, it is a true physicalmodeling synthesizer, and that's
probably the type of synthesistechnology that we all have the
least experience with.
Dave (00:41):
What is happening, everybody, and welcome back to
another episode of the 52 Cuespodcast, your weekly insight
into all things, production andlibrary music.
Whether you're simply curiousabout the sync industry, or
maybe you're ready to pitch topublishers, I promise you you
are in the right place.
My name is Dave Kropf and it isso good to be with you today.
And if you find this videohelpful, then why don't you give
(01:02):
it a thumbs up here on YouTubeor a five star review in your
podcast app?
And please be sure to subscribe, because I talk about library
music like all the time.
Today's episode wouldn't bepossible without the incredible
support of our membersubscribers at 52 Cues, who not
only keep the community aliveand thriving, but as members
they also get access to extrafeatures like workshops, live
(01:25):
streams, office hours, Qbreakdowns, zoom feedback
sessions, hundreds of hours ofarchives and opportunities to
submit to real music library.
So maybe this sounds like you,and or maybe you're feeling
stuck and ready to take yoursync career to the next level.
But why don't you head over to52cues.
com?
It's free to join andmemberships start at like four
(01:45):
bucks a month.
We would love, love to have you.
So it is week three of 2000 and24.
And how's it going?
My weekly check in and I got tosay it's going really well.
Finally, on the other side ofthe holiday, finally getting
some traction, I'm wrapping upan album, got more albums on on
(02:05):
deck and it's just going really,really well, finding a new
pattern right in my calendar.
I've taken on moreresponsibilities and I've
actually gotten a promotion overat full sale, so excited about
that.
But it means that I have to bea lot more deliberate with my
time.
So there are chunks where I'mwriting and chunks where I'm
answering emails, chunks whereI'm in class and all these kinds
(02:27):
of things.
And I'm just being reallydeliberate with those times in
my calendar and just being kindto myself if, if I don't stick
to it, right, Right, it's reallyeasy to kind of set something
up and say this is what I'mgoing to do and then if you
don't do it, whether it'smanaging a calendar or whether
it's exercising or dieting orwhatever, and you can get into
(02:50):
this mindset where you're kindof beating yourself up and I
think that's self-defeating.
So so I'm going to be kind tomyself, I'm going to do the best
I can with the time that I haveand be okay If, if I, if I
don't hit hit my target, that'stotally okay.
Next week I'll try to do better.
But I'm being really deliberate, scheduling and getting the
(03:11):
most out of my writing times andI felt like this year has been
really really productive.
It's week three and I've alreadygot five cues down, so things
are going really really well.
Some of that is motivated byhaving to deliver several cues
by the end of the month, butalso Expedition 52.
So the cue that I'm writingthis week for the Expedition 52
(03:34):
check-in it's called Loch NessLookout and it is an Irish or a
Scottish or a high I called itHighland Tension, Right so it's
using Yulean pipes, it's usingthis kind of Celtic vocal type
sound and Boron samples andBoron recordings.
(03:55):
So this is my cue for 2024,week four 2024, Expedition 52.
This is Loch Ness Lookout.
So that was Loch Ness Lookoutand if you want a breakdown of
(06:29):
this cue then tune in to the cuebreakdown on Friday or tomorrow
at over for the friendssubscribers.
I've got a complete breakdownof that coming right up.
If you've watched any musicproduction tutorials out there
on the internet, whether youlike Reason or you use Reason or
(06:51):
not, I guarantee you you've atleast heard this man's voice.
My guest joining me today is asinger, a songwriter, producer,
music educator, the seniorcreative lead at Reason Studios.
I am so happy to welcome to thepodcast Mr Ryan Harlan.
Ryan, What is happening, my man?
(07:12):
How
Ryan (07:13):
Thanks for having me.
That's a good little wind upthere.
So, I'll clip that out and justmake that my alarm each morning
and your ringtone.
Dave (07:21):
Get myself going Welcome from one YouTuber to another,
from one eyewear aficionado toanother.
No, it's game, recognizing game.
But I got to tell you I've beena longtime fan of yours.
Long before we saw your face,you were really the voice of
(07:41):
Reason.
Ryan (07:43):
Well, you know it's funny, I guess in some sense thank you
for saying that.
It's funny to hear that becausewhen I came in when I so my
journey with Reason and thecontent that I did with him is
for a number of years I waswriting the content but it was
being narrated by that we had avoice over artist named Frank
(08:03):
and he would do all the stuffand he was referred to as the
voice of Reason.
And then, because of certainlogistical reasons, both in sort
of the tone and the way thatthe script was going, there was
one of them where I thought, youknow what, actually it makes
more sense for it to be my voicedoing this and not sort of the
authoritative Reason voice, thegeneric Reason voice that they
(08:23):
knew.
And let me tell you the revoltin the comments when that switch
happened, because who is thisvoice?
He's not the voice of Reason.
Dave (08:33):
You know, we need Frank back, it was a whole whole thing
.
Ryan (08:39):
And so, and for a little while I kind of would do both,
some stuff, I would do mine,some stuff we'd use Frank.
And then over time it startedto transition and the real
transition happened when YouTubetransitioned to you can't be a
faceless person anymore, youknow, we want to know the
personality, and so that wassort of the real kickoff to be
like all right, I got to get oneof these things here.
Dave (09:01):
Yeah, lights and camera, yeah, exactly.
Ryan (09:04):
I mean my, you know this is my living space and working
space and it's really becomejust a live in YouTube studio
that I, you know, bargained withmyself to fit a bed in there
somewhere, you know.
Dave (09:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
This is.
This is my production studio.
It's just a room over a garageand like some Amazon lights, you
know, and I researched andfound like a good camera, but
it's not.
It's not like a red camera oranything crazy like that, just
to make it look a little.
You know, I'm about to ask youto sit there and watch me, for I
mean, these podcast episodescan go an hour at a time.
(09:34):
The least I could do is do alittle bit of research on my
lighting.
Ryan (09:37):
Exactly.
Yeah, no hard shadows, you know?
Yeah, exactly Cool background.
Dave (09:43):
We have a fill light, a overhead and a hair light.
Yeah, I went, I went all in,Isn't it?
Ryan (09:47):
funny that you know the things that you.
You know all of us this is true, I think, for everyone that
probably would watch and listento this is that you know the
skills that you have Didn'texpect you'd have to build just
to do the skill that you want todo you know.
It's like I remember early onwhen I was in college for audio
engineering and we had a Studioowner local studio owner, big
(10:08):
studio in Liverpool, englandcame to talk to the students and
His big advice he stuck thestuck with me was he said listen
, you're gonna go out into theworld, you guys might start
studios, you might startbusiness enterprises with other
business partners.
Figure out which one of you isgonna end up doing the thing you
don't want to do, becausethat's what's gonna happen.
One of you is gonna become theaccountant and the marketer and
(10:30):
you know the the event planner,and then the other guy's gonna
get to do the stuff that youwere trying to get in on.
Dave (10:34):
So some somebody scooping out cat the cat box, right yeah,
he's got to do that, absolutelyyeah, and I'm really excited
about the democratization ofsome of the tools.
Like, if you were to rewind tenyears ago in the video
production space, like theselights which, which I got for
like 60 bucks for a whole set oflights, I would have had to go
(10:56):
in like a photo store.
Yeah, I would have had to dropall kinds of real money on these
, Absolutely.
And I mean they're not heirloomlights, I mean I'm not handing
them down to mygreat-grandchildren, but they
work really well.
They work really well so youknow it's.
Ryan (11:11):
I can.
I can speak from experiencebecause I was in the video game
10 years ago and I wasn't I meaneven you know, 15 and 16 years
ago and a friend of mine who wedid a lot of our early
documentary production worktogether and we used to have
this thing when we started outwe had this dream in life and it
was to be we.
We sort of referred to it as onetrip production, so what it
(11:34):
meant was we were someday we'dbe able to unload the car and
load into a an interview or ashoot in one trip from the car.
Like that Was the dream.
But of course at that time itwas, you know, three, four or
five trip productions, and Not,you know, just seven years later
or something.
He and I did a big project witha band where we were touring
all around the world and thewhole thing was in our backpacks
(11:56):
and it was like such a Sort ofmilestone for us to realize even
how far we'd come then.
And then we started dreamingabout I think we start calling
it a Cargo shorts productionswhen we get it down to like how
small can we get this?
you know gonna fit it in theFanny pack, right, and you know
it's actually.
I mean, some of the video stuffis crazy what's happening right
now.
There's a new thing that justcame out recently called the the
(12:16):
Osmo pocket Osmo, the newestgeneration.
That the thing is.
You know Looks like a pezdispenser and shoes video.
That's better than a lot of theentry-level kind of DSLR.
Dave (12:27):
I know I mean not to mention the thing that we all
have in our, in our, in ourpocket.
Ryan (12:31):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Dave (12:32):
Yeah, and so, like this camera right here is a DSLR
camera with a, with a, with anice lens on it, but it's like
that big right.
Yeah, full movies are shot onthese cameras which look like
like mini cam, like those littlewhat?
Those disc cameras?
You remember those?
Ryan (12:50):
yes, right, right, right I mean the thing about this,
actually, what I think was it'ssort of exciting and relevant
and certainly to your audience,is, with the democratization and
the miniaturization of all thistechnology, what it really is
doing is expanding the number ofpeople that are creating this
content.
That's right and and To to away that is good for us.
The thing that hasn't yet beenAI'd and and cracked and and
(13:12):
redundant you know all that isthat a quality Q, a quality
score, you know to go withcontent, elevates it in a way
that's like it's just enormous.
So I'm all in favor of gettingthese cameras out to as many
hands as possible, as manystorytellers as possible.
Dave (13:28):
That's right, yeah and speaking of democratization of
tools.
This brings me to reason now,some 20 years ago 22.
Ryan (13:41):
Years ago, yeah.
Dave (13:42):
I was teaching reason at a college in Memphis and I had my
choice.
I could teach like pro tools, Icould teach, you know, digital
performer, all these other, andI specifically chose reason
because I I am of the age whereI still appreciate a good
tactile Feel like knobs andfaders.
(14:03):
I still even right over here, Icould.
I could do all this virtualbusiness, but I run my entire
studio out of a physical mixeras far as the live and
everything.
Yeah, and reason had thatAbsolutely in spades and it
embraced it.
You know you get flipped theback and, and so Reason was my
first kind of big boy grown-updoll.
You know, before it was, youknow, reason with reason record
(14:26):
and then all of that kind ofstuff, sure, and so, as a person
who has spent Countless hour,you, you have put your 10,000
Malcolm Gladwell hours intoreason.
I probably have, yeah, yes, youare, are the resident Zen
master of reason.
What are some of its biggestadvantages?
(14:49):
That you could see that thatmight and this isn't a
commercial for reason here.
Ryan (14:53):
Yeah, you didn't pay me to do this, or anything.
Dave (14:57):
But what are some of some of the things that really kind
of drew you to reason and beingable to to pour so much of your
creative energy into that's.
Ryan (15:05):
I think that's actually that's great.
I'm glad you mentioned you likethis isn't a commercial for it
because actually, like I have toremind myself that when I talk
about reason because I I am areason user that through
happenstance and luck hooked upwith the company and happened to
be a video producer and andHappened to live in Los Angeles
(15:26):
when they needed one, and thenhappened to work with them
enough that they, you know,started working with me on a
more sort of regular andfull-time basis, and so so to me
that is all like Secondary.
I sort of feel like I there'ssome loophole trick where I,
like I got to be a reason userwho gets paid by reason and just
Kismet man, you know.
(15:46):
But I still very much like whenI talk to, when I'm hosting live
streams, I'm talking to thereason community.
Or when I, and whenever I go toan event like I was at Super
booth in May and meet with theReason community, I'm not there
as a reason representative, I'mthere as a reason user, hanging
out with my, my friends, youknow, and I still very much
think of it that way.
So it's always, it's almostweird when I have to think, oh
(16:08):
wait, what it?
What is the official companyline on this?
Or what is the what is themarketing talking point?
Like I don't, that's not myworld.
Dave (16:15):
My world is just as a reason user and so yeah, and
you're and you're notnecessarily here as a
representative.
Like reason didn't send you.
Like I didn't like pitch theirmarketing and they sent.
Well, here's here's Ryan.
Ryan (16:23):
Yeah right, talk to our product specialist or whatever.
Yeah right?
Dave (16:26):
No, that's not what we're doing here.
I, you're a lover of reason, auser of reason who, like like
you said, has moved into this.
So what was it about reason?
That just resonated with you,yeah that's a it's a good
question.
Ryan (16:38):
Well, so in some sense I came into reason at the same
time you did.
I was a A relatively young kidgetting into audio engineering
in the 90s.
I was the kid that would youknow, like the little studio rat
that would hang out and be likeCould I wrap cables and make
coffee and just just to be nearthe action at the recording
studios in Philadelphia.
And Because of that I wasgrowing up.
(17:01):
I mean, I didn't know it at thetime, but I was growing up and
training at the tail end of thehardware world.
You know, I learned how to, youknow, calibrate a About two
inch 24-track tape machine andthen never used one to actually
record because, like, by thetime, I knew how to do it.
That was like that moment inpast you are me.
Dave (17:18):
I took classes in college on splicing like.
I took a radio productionsclass about splicing tape and I
never got to use it.
Ryan (17:25):
Exactly, exactly that exact same thing.
Yeah, I could, I could splicetape really slowly and awkwardly
If I had to, but yeah, I'venever actually done it in
practice and so, um, but what Idid come up in is the world of
the.
Well, now we're gonna call itthe hardware metaphor, but it
was hardware.
And so using a patch bay andunderstanding signal flow via a
(17:46):
cable and the, the simplicity ofthat did.
A cable has two points it goesfrom something to something, and
there's no ambiguity about that, and you don't have to
right-click to see what it'sdoing and you know you don't
have to go into some likerouting matrix to make that
happen.
It's just, it's it's tactile,it's just that.
And so there was this veryartful simplicity to the way
(18:08):
recording studios worked as Iwas coming up and learning.
But I also was young enoughthat I was on the, on the Entry
edge, the sort of that, thatbleeding edge of the DAW stuff.
So I was, when I was going toschool for audio engineering, I
was the kid that had Pro Tools 3, which what was what it was at
the time, and a little I can'tremember the name of the card
(18:30):
bus Technology that you had toput in your computer to make it
run, but it was like it was oneof those year or whatever.
It was a scuzzy drive and thenbut there was a name like it had
.
I would.
If I googled it I'd find it.
But there's some name for thespecial card yet but it wasn't a
PCI card, that we didn't havethose yet.
It was like that's somethingelse.
But yeah, so I was.
I was sort of on the early edgeof that and when students we had
(18:50):
one class where we werelearning I I think it was Otari
made a disc based digitalrecorder For use and the idea
was we took a class for learninghow to use it for
post-production sound, you know,sound effects and slipping
things in Dialogue and that kindof stuff.
And I started using it torecord and produce music.
And I remember people thinkingwas kind of weird.
I was like guys, like I meanyou get it right, like I can
(19:13):
copy this chorus and paste itover here and I can like loop
this part and I can fix this,you know, and there's a lot of
things.
So so I was, I was sort ofcoming up in this world of
cables and hardware, embracingthe digital, and Right after I
got out of school and kind ofentered the world of actually,
you know, professionally makingmusic and and and making and
(19:34):
recording and producingReasonlanded and it was what was
so Brilliant to particularlypeople of my era at that time
was it was you know what I cannow call the hardware metaphor,
which was it?
I looked at that and I didn't.
I didn't need a manual.
Dave (19:53):
I just looked at went, oh, got it.
Ryan (19:54):
I mean, the only manual thing you needed to know was you
hit the tab key to flip to theback of the rack Right and then,
once you know that, then therouting is, it's like
instinctual.
Dave (20:05):
Yeah, knobs look like knobs.
Ryan (20:08):
Yeah, you know the compressor looks like the
compressor that I have over here, you know, and yeah, and it
behaves like it.
That's the other thing too, andso it just.
It just was a this no-brainersort of transition in terms of
that now at the time, and thenstill, you know, I Can use logic
and pro tools and live, I mean,alive at that time wasn't quite
(20:29):
out and cooking yet, but youknow I Dabble in all these Dawes
and use all these Dawes.
But what clicked for me at thetime that I started using reason
more Exclusively or moreheavily, was that my creative
output was more efficient andbetter working in reason, and
(20:49):
and may that might not be truefor everyone, I don't want to
like say that like it's aguaranteed fix for anyone.
Dave (20:56):
Yeah, the tool, the tool and the workflow just resonated
with you.
Ryan (21:00):
It's that matter, it's, it's like what's the?
Dave (21:02):
difference between a three thousand dollar Yamaha
saxophone or a three thousanddollar like Selmer saxophone.
Ryan (21:08):
Right, it's just, they're both great instruments, but one
of them is just gonna feelbetter in your right, and I've
thought about that in my youknow as, as you sort of say, I
sort of in a sense, through mycontent, become some type of
like you know avatar or you knowthe human avatar of the reason
community.
And so I think a lot about thatquestion because I get asked it
(21:29):
a lot and so and so in the inthe more recent years I, when
I'm working in reason, I do sortof think about like well, what
is it?
Like, I say it's more efficientfor me creatively.
But why?
What is that?
And what I have come to realizeis there's certain things about
it like it's.
It's an open, blank canvas,it's it's a virtual studio rack
on your screen.
And so when I drag aninstrument in, it just lives
(21:51):
alongside the other gear, whichis, you know, if someone's not
used to that workflow, theymight come into that and find
that to be almost sort ofchaotic.
Where it's like well, why isthis instrument sitting next to
this one?
But they're on different tracksand they've got different you
know Automation lanes and why,why are they just right next to
each other?
But for me it's like that's a,that's a feature, not a bug,
that right next to each other Ican move so quickly without
(22:12):
having to like keep going backto the sequencer and selecting
another, you know, or a channelin the mixer, and and toggling
back and forth.
And when I use some of theseother does I'm often doing.
I'm amazed at how many of theselittle like Sort of
transitional clicks I need to doto like, oh, I got to go back
to this other page view to clickthe channel that I want, then I
got to click the the button toselect the plugin that I want to
(22:33):
open, and then I got to go downLower here and click the little
wrench thing to make the popand it's like that, just that
process right there, like greatideas can die in that, that's
right.
Leading moment.
Dave (22:45):
And yeah, because you're, you're pulling yourself out of
the flow state right.
And so now it would be like youknow, talking about saxophone,
the saxophone is going oh, whatwas the fingering on that scale?
And now, suddenly right,thinking creatively.
Ryan (22:56):
Now you're thinking how many times I'm sure anyone you
know listen to this how manytimes have you had a great
musical idea and Forgotten itwhile you're trying to get the
voice memos app open on yourphone?
You?
Dave (23:06):
know.
This is why I keep a microphonePlugged in, ready to go at any
time.
So if I want to go hey, I needto, I'm gonna, I'm gonna record
shaker, yeah, then I just grabthe shaker, grab the mic and get
it, yeah.
Ryan (23:17):
So in that sense, the other, that open canvas of the
reason rack, I just move aroundthrough it so quickly and so the
yeah and the proof is in thepudding.
I just make more and bettermusic and reason.
Yeah, and I was, you know.
Dave (23:28):
I did a whole episode of a video on.
I called it doll wars, likewhich is the best doll, and it
was like it was kind of clickbaity and shit.
But it's really.
You can obviously tell thefolks who just read the title
and then, like like carpet, bondme in the in the comments,
right, versus people who watchthe video, because the video
says the doll that you know isthe best doll to use, right,
(23:50):
there is no one doll which islike top of the mountain or any
of that.
When I, when I moved to Floridaand I took a gig at full sale,
they're they're logic.
They're logic and pro tools andso I sadly had to set reason
aside because I had to go likeall in, I was reason and Ableton
.
I did Ableton for a lot of myremix work and that kind of
(24:12):
thing, and reason forpractically everything else,
especially before the recorddays, you know yeah, right when
you couldn't record live audioin.
Ryan (24:20):
Yeah, yeah, it was just virtual instruments.
Dave (24:22):
Yeah, and but the fact that it was a closed
architecture, that's what soldme on it to my, to my students
in Memphis.
I was like, here it is, youdon't need any plugins, you
don't need VSTs, here's, you gomake music anyway.
So I, kind of, you know, had toset reason aside, but
Thankfully the prodigal returnedwhen reason Created the reason
(24:44):
rack as a VST.
Yes, I just chef's kiss, thatwas exactly what I was, what I
was looking for, because all ofthe things that I loved about
reason the, the actual DAWitself, like if there was a
Mount Rushmore it would be, Iguess, kind of like not even up
there, the sounds I loved the,the board and SSL board and all
(25:06):
that stuff, but but havingreason rack, that, knowing
you're not a representative,blah, blah, blah, but that, that
feels like a tectonic shift inThinking for what was then, I
guess at the time, propellerheads.
I think they were stillpropeller heads at that time.
Ryan (25:24):
I had they had.
Dave (25:24):
They shifted over to reason studios.
Ryan (25:26):
They might have done that switch at the same exact time.
It was reason 11.
That was when the reason rackplugin became an option, and I
think that might have been thesame time that they switched
from propeller head to.
Dave (25:39):
Reason yeah, how did that resonate throughout the
community, the fact that, hey,you can buy it as a plug-in?
And did you have folks likeScreaming you're abandoning the
DAW, or folks who are like me,who are like praise Jesus right?
Ryan (25:52):
where you're back.
Yeah well, it won't surpriseyou or viewers to hear that
anything you do with the toolsomeone uses is gonna invite
every spectrum of opinion.
So, yes, there was, there wascertainly that was represented.
There was people that thoughtthere's still people that think
that there's some nefarious Likesix-year plan to like walk away
(26:14):
from all this and I don't quiteknow for the yes right.
Yeah it's like, oh, they'regonna do this and then they're
gonna do that, and then they'regonna do this and then it's
gonna all be over and it's like,wait, why?
No, that's.
You know, the goal is to togrow and get music makers to
come to reason, not to, you know, sort of Sort of sneak out of
the room when no one's looking.
And so there was certainlythere was some of that
(26:34):
conspiratorial thinking.
There was people who Worriedabout where the focus would fall
.
You know it's like are you, areyou gonna be just focusing on
the on the rack plug-in and notfocusing on the DAW?
I think, at least as a DAW users, you know, because I still
primarily produce in the reasonDAW, that hasn't been the case.
(26:56):
So I think people kind of, oncethat Time, a little time passed
, they realized that it wasn'tnot, it wasn't being backburner,
yeah, and and the big thing wasthat you know you talk about
the DAW wars, and that was themost fun for me, and I think
other reason users figured outthat like, oh, this totally
changes the the conversation,because in the DAW wars, that
(27:16):
the DAW wars is rooted in theseconversations that we all have,
as Musician to musician, friendto friend right, and if you're
using FL studio and I'm usinglive, it's a good chance that
part of our friendship is basedon kind of ribbing you and
trying to Convince you to cometo my side of the fence and
you're trying to get me to go toyour side of the fence and it's
all like, oh yeah, can you dothis in live.
Oh, can you do this in FL studio.
(27:37):
And and that's really what theDAW wars is, you know is is that
sort of Friendly joking, butalso real competition in terms
of people trying to evangelizeand convert people to their side
.
Right now, the conversation forreason that's or any of these
that's a really hardconversation, you know it's like
oh hey, you've got eight yearsinvested in Working in logic and
(27:59):
you know logic pro inside andout.
Well, guess what?
There's this one thing thatlive can do, and so you should
Re-learn and do your whole DAWworkflow.
Oh, and also like, maybe someof your plugins aren't gonna
work.
You know like it's a reallyhard conversation to convert
someone to switch from one DAWto the other.
And the thing that became reallyfun about the reason I plug in
(28:21):
for me as someone who interactswith the community so much is Is
the conversation didn't becomethat.
The conversation became do youlove your DAW?
We're so happy you do.
Here is something new for yourdog.
That's gonna like level up whatyou can do with the environment
that you already work in andyeah, it was.
Dave (28:38):
It was it really felt like coming home having all of these
tools which I had spent so manyyears but I just had to set
aside because you know I teachlogic all day, every day.
You know for, for, for students, and so it was.
It was borderline academicmalpractice for me not to get as
good with logic as I was withreason.
(28:59):
So when I could install it as aplug in, I'm like, oh yeah,
there's maelstrom, oh, there'sthe combinator.
Oh there's the inline mixer.
Oh, it's like like slipping ona pair of old jeans, absolutely
there is.
Ryan (29:12):
I mean that, that coming home thing.
That's something I hear from alot of people.
You know we used to get one ofthe biggest feature requests
that used to come into the themail room over in Stockholm At
the reason studios headquarterswas things like For the love of
God, can you please just makescream force distortion a
plug-in, just make just that.
I Miss it.
I'm over in Pro Tools but Iwant scream force, so that you
(29:34):
know, and and for a millionobvious reasons, that it was not
hitting the top of the prioritylist.
You know, over in with the R&Ddepartment.
But but all of a sudden it waslike, oh, then this welcome home
thing happens.
And so now we're hearing.
Instead of that we're hearinglike, oh, for the love of God,
thank you so much for puttingscream for back into Pro Tools
for me.
Dave (29:53):
You know, and yeah, I mean just like the Kong drum
designer, which was way ahead ofits time.
I've got one of these guys,yeah, and and I remember seeing
this on the Kong I'm like, well,that's 16 pads, that makes
perfect sense and that's.
Pc guys had known that for foryears.
Ryan (30:09):
That's such a perfect like micro, a demonstration of that
same ethos I was talking about,where, like you look at Kong
drum designer as an MPC guy andyou don't need the manual, it's
like, oh, okay, bye, this is my,that is my workflow.
I know that it's that same sortof genius Of that, the hardware
metaphor they have with allthat stuff, yeah.
Dave (30:26):
So I am so glad to have kind of reason back in my life
and they're doing amazing things.
The object synth isGroundbreaking, next level.
It still hurts my brain andI've watched your tutorial like
several times.
I'm like I, it was so lucid andnow it is gone.
That's like I don't watch itagain and half speed, right,
right yeah, oh object is youknow, I mean physical modeling.
Ryan (30:49):
It's, it is a true physical modeling synthesizer,
and that's probably the the typeof synthesis technology that we
all have the least experiencewith, you know right and so it
is, and it's a whole differentparadigm.
Dave (31:01):
It's so abstract.
It's not like here's a sound,manipulate sound.
Yeah, here's a sample here,right, so which is my?
Ryan (31:07):
design.
You know, I mean usually thatthat's sort of a pitfall that a
lot of physical modelingsynthesizer designs fall into is
they try to Condense what is areally chaotic like algorithmic
model, the way it actually works.
You know, in the on the techDSP side it's really complicated
and so they try to sort of likepull it into these macros and
these sort of like Physicalabstractions that make sense.
(31:29):
So you, you end up choosing youknow, I want to take a, a
Plastic resonator, and put aanimal skin on it and I want to
hit it with a with a metal rod,you know, and that will make a
sound, but it doesn't be so muchof the actual sound design has
been taken away from you withthese sort of like Relatable
(31:52):
abstractions in physicalmodeling that you don't actually
usually get really greatresults.
And so that was to me when I sawobject.
The genius of object was thatsure it's been, it's been made
approachable.
I mean, the guys that do the,the UX design, are geniuses, but
they're still giving you accessto the true physical modeling
(32:12):
algorithmic Overton and and thewhole the thing that makes
physical modeling work the wayit does impact, exciters and all
that stuff.
They're giving you access tothe actual controls of that and
lo and behold, if you are eithera physical modeling genius or
have enough time to Experiment,to play with it and kind of hone
in on it, you can make wildlyrealistic models of stuff.
Dave (32:33):
So question for you as the resident guy who has to
communicate this to the masseswhen you see something like
object, come on to you.
What is your approach tolearning these new sense, to
learning, like how to work theminto your workflow Beyond?
Just hey, these presets aregood, I guess, and never becomes
anything else, right?
(32:54):
How do you, how do you reallydig into any new instrument like
that's a.
Ryan (32:58):
That's a good question Because I probably have a
process and I probably Iprobably won't do a great job of
explaining right now becauseI've never fully thought about
it.
I can tell you part one is IDon't get brought in on the
earliest design phases Becausethings change and I can actually
get sort of wrong impressionsthat linger like.
In fact I'll give an examplefor object I actually got.
(33:20):
I didn't get this communicatedfrom the actual product
department.
It was designing object butsome other people in the company
kind of passed me a little likea rumor, like hey, they're
working on a new instrument andit's gonna be a physical
modeling instrument for doingStruck metallic objects, which
is like that's true in a smallpie wedge of what object does,
(33:43):
but object does so much.
That's not what this is about,right and so when I actually
then they kind of get looped into start, like you know, getting
briefed on what it is and andworking up kind of my content
plans and stuff, I had this Ihad to like.
It took me a couple weeks tolike separate myself from the
bias of oh, it's a struckmetallic object instrument.
You know I was thinking, ohokay, we'll do stuff with gamma
(34:05):
lines, like maybe I'll go toIndonesia, will record gamma
lines and make a video.
And you know I was sort ofthinking strictly in that thing
and it was wasn't until Matias,who's the, the product manager
for reason, and I were having aconversation and he kind of
caught me.
He was like you know, why areyou fixated on this one sliver
of what?
Dave (34:22):
it is he's talking about.
Yeah so.
Ryan (34:24):
So for that reason and that's a demonstration why I
generally don't do that I I comein when it's more fully baked
and and and Matias and I willhave meetings.
He'll show it to me first in akind of general way, and Then
I'll start working with it alittle bit, and then I'll meet
up with him again and I'll sortof go like here's where I'm not
like, explain to me why thisworks this way or what's the
(34:46):
value of this feature, like I'mjust not seeing it yet.
And and Matias, he's, like Isaid, he's the product manager
for reason, so he makes a lot ofthose big development decisions
.
Matias started, as you know, aspry young lad joining reason.
He again, same thing as me, hewas a reason user that like
through, like in ways that hewasn't gonna question, they
(35:07):
hired him to be a productspecialist, a demo guy, so he
would go out to you know the UKor to other places in Europe and
do demonstrations in you knowmusic stores and stuff
conferences and that kind ofthing.
Yeah, conferences, yeah, allthat kind of stuff and the thing
that, maybe to his frustration,because, for all of our sake is
, he's still utterly amazing atDemoing a product or demoing a
(35:33):
plug-in or something like thatand showing you in a very
natural way what it can do andhow great it can be at it, and
so he's second to none of that.
So he's like my entry, like hedemos it for me and I get into
it right.
Then I start working with itmyself and For me, usually my.
The thing I come at it with isI want to, I Want to break down
(35:55):
for someone what's happeningwithout being like annoyingly
technical about it, but I wantthem to understand on a
fundamental level what'shappening, and so I'm sure I did
that in the object video.
But the one that comes to mind,for example, is Um reason
studios made a synth calledalgorithm.
It's an FM synthesizer and it'slike I think that one is maybe
(36:17):
the one I'm most happy with howI explained just enough FM
synthesis for you to understandhow to use it in algorithm
without getting in this wholerabbit hole of FM synthesis and
what it is and the nuances of it.
But, the thing about algorithmis that it has this really
amazing again the UX guys likeamazing.
(36:39):
It has this great interfacewhere you can really see FM
synthesis algorithm routing in away that you never used to on
like a DX7 and stuff like that.
It was always, I mean, you did,but it was a little graphic.
That was a weird like map of analgorithm.
It looked weird, but you canreally get hands on in algorithm
the plugin.
So yeah, so for me that's sortof the balance.
(37:00):
It's like I wanna take peoplewho know nothing about what I'm
about to tell you, give you justenough that you can now
approach this instrument and nowlet's make some cool music with
it.
Dave (37:08):
Gotcha, gotcha.
So we've talked for half anhour about Reason, but Reason is
really just part of who you are, as a composer, as an artist,
and I was very pleasantlysurprised to learn that you are
a very accomplished banjo player, which I mean, isn't every
(37:32):
Reason user?
Ryan (37:33):
isn't that so Aren't we all?
Dave (37:34):
I mean, I have a Banjo Yucca-Laylee here hanging on the
wall in the background.
But I mean, we're talking likelegitimate banjo player and for
me I am completely fascinatedbecause if there's a Venn
diagram of like types ofmusicians right Reason, edm user
or composer, banjo playerthat's a very, very sliver of
(37:56):
overlap.
Help me understand how yourbrain kind of occupies both and
where do you see the overlap?
And yeah, just unpack that forme.
Ryan (38:10):
In terms of the overlap, anyone can see the overlap on my
Instagram because I have.
There was a thing that actuallywas a through Reason.
There's a Reason user named TobTalk.
He's a house producer in Swedenand he did a little like remix
challenge partnership with theReason community and everybody
was doing remixes of the song hehad called New Levels and I, as
(38:30):
a joke on a live stream orannouncing the challenge or
something, said like ah, maybeI'll do a banjo remix, because
the Reason community, when Ihost live streams, they see the
banjos in the background andthey get all excited about kind
of making fun of it.
Some of them, some of them getit actually.
Dave (38:44):
Yeah, it's kind of like a punchline.
Ryan (38:46):
Yeah, it's accordion bagpipes banjo.
It's not part of it's at thekids table in terms of like the
kids.
Dave (38:51):
Deliverance didn't do us any favors either.
Ryan (38:54):
It did not, it did not so, but I actually did a remix of
the Tob Talk song that I calledthe banjo remix, where I
actually did fuse sort of modernelectronic Reason production
with a top line from the banjoand it actually was kind of cool
.
I mean, it's not gonna take theworld by storm and be a whole
new genre, but it did workbetter than I thought.
Dave (39:12):
Yeah, banjo house, right, I mean it could be a thing, it
could be a thing, but it justfascinates me and I think points
to a bigger picture of you knowthat music is music is music.
And so having space in yourconsciousness, for, hey, I'm
over here, I write lo-fi, but Ialso play the flute, you know,
and that's totally, that'stotally good, and how it
(39:35):
enriches one another.
So, like learning banjoenriches your work in the doll,
which enriches you in the banjospace and in the folk space.
You know, just a few minutesbefore this recording, you
released a video, a duet.
It was beautiful, beautifulsinging.
I mean you're a fantasticsinger, you know, and you and
(39:57):
the singer are out there kind ofin a field, you know she's
playing the car.
Ryan (40:00):
That's right, her name is Mikaela May.
Dave (40:01):
She's a wonderful singer, yeah, and she's so good, it's so
good and it feels diametricallyopposite from like I'm making,
like a house beat.
Ryan (40:10):
And that's so great.
You say that because that isexactly it.
And in terms of what brought meto the banjo and brought me to
acoustic music, I mean I wasalways kind of I was raised with
that influence to some degree,you know, as my parents were
into Kat Stevens and ArloGuthrie and you know there was
sort of this folk influencegrowing up.
But the truth is that I, thatdiametric opposition you talk
(40:35):
about, is exactly the value forme in the music I played the
banjo and the acoustic rootskind of music I played because
the way it started I was, Istarted learning banjo and I was
, you know, kind of was gettinginto it and I went to.
A thing which is very commonwithin that music scene is
(40:55):
jamming group jamming.
You get together with friendsand you or people you don't even
know, you just get togetherwith random people at a local
community center or whatever andyou know you have 15 people
sitting in a little circle andyou play songs together and that
style of music is such and thatstyle of that tradition of
community jamming is such thatyou don't all know the same
(41:16):
songs but the music is such andyour skills develop and such
that you can kind of learn themon the fly and as someone who's
leading the song, a personsinging and leading the song,
you can guide people in realtime on where the chord changes
are coming, and so it's a veryimprovisational style of music.
But I went to my first jam, orfirst couple of jams, and I
(41:39):
would go in the evening.
I would do that and then thenext day I'd be working in
Reason again.
I'd work in Reason all week andthen on, you know, the Thursday
, I'd go to another jam and whatI came to realize was that I
needed that jam because my workin Reason and I'm sure people
can relate to this you know,everything you do when you're
working in a DAW is aboutexacting nature.
(42:00):
You're either timing things tosimply time code for a cue or
you're working to a click grid.
You're quantizing your thingsto make them perfect or you're
deliberately but very exactinglynot quantizing them to try and
get human feel.
You're very aware thateverything you're doing is for
keeps.
It's gonna go out into theworld.
It's gonna be judged by yourpeers.
It's gonna be judged by, youknow, the audio leads on a
(42:23):
project or the directors of afilm or whatever, the
marketplace right.
It counts, everything counts,and it's important, and it's
gotta be just right, and sothat's your whole world, all day
long, has spent doing that.
And then I'd go to the jam andwithout deliberately realizing
it, but I suddenly picked up onthis.
Suddenly, now I'm in a room,I'm with 15 people, we're making
music, and as we make the music, it just drifts off into the
(42:45):
ether and it's gone.
Dave (42:46):
And if someone makes a mistake.
Ryan (42:47):
That's okay, and nobody is judging it except us who are
just, and it's not judgment.
We're just here, we're makingthis music just to enjoy this
moment in real time and thenwe're all gonna go home and it's
just gone.
And that sort of flip side tothe exacting work I was doing in
(43:08):
in reason and in DAW work, youknow, in music production work
was it was just such a nicelittle like head corrective
mindset to be in.
It sort of reconnected me towhy we all get into music in the
first place, which is we justlove making music and the
expression of it and it's notthat we love, you know, like
some of that real exacting sortof, you know, transient
(43:29):
detection and stuff.
Dave (43:30):
It's a slippery slope.
As soon as you start, you know,looking to make a living making
music, you come, you'recommodifying your creativity.
Then you run the risk of justsqueezing the joy out of it
because you got accused to make,and especially in the
production music world, right,exactly, we don't even have the
benefit of, like, seeing ourname on a credit slide.
Right, we're just in thebackground like making royalties
(43:52):
, we're underneath some scene ofa cooking show, you know, and
our names will never be.
But when you think like that,it can wear you down.
It could wear down your muse,wear down your spirit, if you
want to.
So I love that perspective ofhaving some kind of outlet which
connects you to the primal orprimary, feral reason that got
(44:18):
you excited about being amusician and being involved.
Ryan (44:21):
And it feeds back into it too.
You know I come away from.
If I actually did like aquantitative analysis of my
productivine efficiency, I wouldlay money on the fact that the
days that I work after you knowif I'm playing a gig or if I'm,
you know, having a jam or justworking and rehearsing, doing
some acoustic thing withsomebody, like that next
(44:43):
production day is a moreinspired and efficient sound.
Now we're talking aboutcommoditization again, but like
more satisfying, I guess wecould say more.
You know, I'm actually myheart's in it a little more than
it is on the days when I'm,like you know, five days into,
like iterating on revisions.
You know, and it's like, oh,that's not quite right yeah yeah
(45:04):
, you know, that's more justlike okay, let's get this one
done and get the invoice out,you know yeah yeah, yeah,
finding those oases, yourcreative oases, that can help
buoy your soul through a livingmaking music.
Totally In a weird way.
I don't know if this analogy isgonna hold up at all, but it's
(45:24):
almost like you know marriedcouples that have date night to
kind of like continuallyrekindle their thing.
You know it's like for meacoustic music is my musical
date night, and then I love that.
Dave (45:34):
Oh, I love that.
So I encourage any of ourviewers and listeners.
You know what are you doing torekindle.
You know, rekindle the sparkRight, exactly Because I mean it
is work.
You know, as soon as you asksomebody to give you money for
the thing that came, you know,just popped out of your head,
(45:55):
right, you've got to meet themwhere they're at and they get to
assign value and there's awhole philosophical discussion
on that, right.
But being able to like I lovewhat you said being able to go
and make ephemeral music whichis just, it only exists in that
moment and then is gone, it'snot commodifying.
Ryan (46:10):
And you know, and you don't have to play banjo to do
that, I mean you can.
You know there are technologieslike what's it called Ableton
link I think it's called thesync technology that you know.
Anybody with a phone app thatsupports it and your friend with
a.
You know, with a laptop andstuff, you guys can make music
in your technological domains.
(46:31):
Yeah, it is just you're notdoing it with any sort of
longevity in mind and it's worthdoing, you know.
Yeah.
Dave (46:38):
I love that perspective, man.
I really really love thatperspective For me.
I like I did an episode a whileback about I'm learning guitar
and how it's rekindled, the joyof having something new, you
know, because if you're you knowyou've been making videos for
10 years and all that then itjust kind of becomes grindy.
Being a professional drummerand all of that stuff, there's
(47:00):
like there's nothing, there'snot a lot of new territory to
explore, right.
But learning guitar is waypushed me out of my comfort zone
and it's having effects in theother parts of my creative life.
Ryan (47:13):
Right, you know one of the things I think is particularly
for people that are kind ofstarting out on that journey.
I mean, if you are lucky enoughto have so much success, you
move past this, but and notalways not entirely In terms of
like keeping your love for this.
What you lose in the beginningis you lose the ability to say
no to anything.
You have no discretion over theproject, you know if something
(47:34):
comes your way.
Yes, I will do it Right.
If you're overloaded withprojects and something extra
comes your way, I'll do that too.
I'll make it work.
I don't need to sleep, I'llfigure it out.
And so you know, when you'retalking about kind of getting
into that grind like that's partof the psychological thing too,
because you started makingmusic with only discretion, just
figuring out like I'm justgoing to do the things that
excite me and I like, and thensuddenly it's like oh actually,
(47:56):
you know this holiday commercial, maybe I wouldn't have
voluntarily been doing this outof passion, but I got to do it
because I'm trying to make thiswork.
Dave (48:06):
It's a belcher, isn't it?
You know, when you start off,you just don't know what you
don't know, and then you getinvolved, and then you start
getting gigs, and then there'sthis big chunk where you're
still getting better, but you'realso like you said, you can't
say no to everything Right Onthe other side of that.
That's when you can say okay,this is for me, I'm doing it,
and so I love that perspective.
And, by the way, if folks wantto connect with you, how can
(48:31):
they reach?
Maybe they want to follow yourbanjo journey on Instagram.
I mean, where can they find you?
Ryan (48:38):
Sure, so you can find me on Instagram.
I'm at Ryan Harlan with anunderscore because I was a
little too late to grab theunderscore version.
So it's Ryan Harlan, it's anI-N.
A lot of times people willspell Harlan with a H-A-R-L-A-N
but it's H-A-R-L-I-N underscore.
So that's where I'm onInstagram.
If you want to see the DAWrelated or production more than
(49:03):
technical stuff, the best placeto actually follow me is to
follow Reason Studios, becausethat's where I do all that stuff
.
Dave (49:09):
So that's at Reason Studios on Instagram and Twitter
and all the socials and youalso teach banjo at camps and
that kind of thing.
Right, I do.
Ryan (49:21):
Yeah, that's a relatively new thing for me to move into.
I've been working.
There's a music camp here inNorthern California called
Walker Creek Music Camp thatI've worked at in the capacity
of being a teacher's assistant,where they'll bring in some
teacher of national renown andI'll help out in the classroom
as a sort of assistant to them.
November was the first time, Iguess, I got called up to the
(49:43):
majors and they brought me on tobe the actual on-staff teacher
for that camp.
That was the first camp thatI've taught in person, which was
a wonderful experience, becausea lot of the work that I do,
particularly with Reason, thatcontent, a lot of that's music
education work, but it'sfaceless.
It's just like now I'm talkinginto a lens and people are
(50:04):
watching it, but I don'tactually have the personal
interaction with a roomful ofpeople.
So super fun to do the sameeffectively, that same skill of
trying to make complicatedthings graspable, but to
actually watch the heads nod upand down when they get it, or
the oh face.
You know the aha moments.
Dave (50:22):
Yeah, the super fun.
Ryan (50:25):
I plan to do a lot more of that, and there's a camp that I
can't announce yet, butthere'll be another banjo camp
that it looks like it's nearlyofficial that I'll be teaching
that in June as well.
Dave (50:35):
Yeah, of course we're going to have links to Ryan's
Insta as the kids Instagram andthe YouTube channel, as well as
to the Walker Creek music camp,if you're interested in that.
The next one's coming up inApril.
Will you get that one?
I'll be at that one.
I will be at that one.
Ryan (50:51):
I'll be assisting.
I don't know if they'veannounced to me it, so maybe I
won't.
Actually, by the time I thinkyou will be announced by the
time this would go out.
So, if anyone is into the banjoworld, steve Boffman is going
to be the banjo teacher atWalker Creek in April and he's a
phenomenal just human being butalso phenomenal teacher, so
I'll be thrilled to assist him.
Dave (51:10):
Yeah we're going to have all those links.
Follow him on Instagram if youwant to look for that other camp
.
But, ryan, it was an absolutepleasure talking to you today.
Thank you so much for your timeand I wish you all the success
and congratulations on yoursuccess, and I'm going to go
listen to some more of yourbanjo stuff.
Ryan (51:30):
It's really good.
Dave (51:31):
Awesome.
Thanks so much for having me.
Once again, a huge thanks toRyan for joining me on the
podcast and of course, we'regoing to have all of his links
in the description, so please besure to check that out.
But that is going to do it forme today.
Once again, a huge word ofthanks to the family, friends
and neighbor subscribers of 52Qswho really keep all this going.
(51:52):
They pay their actual real lifemoney and they keep everything
going the channel, the community, the podcast.
Thank you so much.
Please know that none of thiswould be possible without your
help, and so, if you want tojoin us, head over to 52Qscom.
Subscriptions start at aroundfour bucks a month.
You definitely want to tune innext week, where I am joined by
(52:15):
52 Cues family member and formerprofessional golfer, shane
Jensen, and we're going to havea chat.
We're going to talk about whatcan we learn about the
production music industry, orwhat are some of the lessons we
can learn from golf.
Now, I am a terrible golfer,but how does being a
(52:38):
professional athlete,specifically in golf, translate
to the skills you would need forproduction music?
So we're going to welcome ShaneJensen to the podcast, but that
is going to do it for me thisweek.
I hope you've had an amazingweek and I am looking forward to
hearing great things about yournext week, your week four.
(53:00):
But just remember, friends, Iknow, trust and believe that the
universe has amazing plans justfor you.
Until next time, peace.
The 52Qs podcast is copyrighted2024 at 18 Studios.
All Rights Reserve.
The music played on the podcastis copyrighted to their
respective owners and is usedwith permission and for
educational purposes only.
(53:21):
For more information, includingjoining the community or
becoming a member subscriber of52Qs, head over to 52Qscom.
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