yet something beats anew
...
And I'm beyond recognition
Gone to some small space in silent stillness
Yet something beats anew
Somewhere
I'm waiting to be reborn
Only this time, only this time, only this time
Born in darkness
None can dim my light
None. Can. Dim. My. Light.
- Lamb Darkness

We want you!
I would like to compile and archive user submitted articles, tutorials, solutions to problems, etc on the site.  Your article will be featured and then move on to an archive where in can be searched for and read by generations of Reason users to come!  Don't be shy if you think you can't write or make it look all pretty, we can do the editing and word smithing for you!

Reason Challenge #2 (postponed for 2 weeks)
Getting the backend of the site up took significantly longer than I had anticipated.  I am going to spend a little time on the presentation of the site itself.  Get all the sections in place and get some content hanging on the bones.

Reason Challenge #1 Entries Posted
Well, we only had a few entries for the initial kick off.  You can take a listen here.  Thanks go out to those who entered. The voting will start on Wed so swing back to cast your vote.  It looks like each one of the entries will win something! 

Welcome
Welcome to reasonexchange.com.  This site has been put together to share ideas about making music with Propellerhead's Reason.

Inspire and be Inspired
The Community Site has gone live!  Feel free to join and upload your solution to the Reason Challenge.

What Next? The ReasonExchange will be accepting submissions until 11:59PM Friday night (Sept 29, 2006). Submission date extended to Sunday Oct 1, 11:59PM Eastern Time.  At that time, Challenge One will be closed.  On Monday, all of the submissions will be made available on The ReasonExchange.  You will be able to browse through the site and listen to mp3s of the submissions.  If one tickles your fancy, read the comments the artist attached to the entry, download the rns file, and poke around.  While you are doing that, others in the community will be checking your stuff out.  Inspire and be Inspired.  You will have the opportunity to listen for a week and pick out your favorites.  You will be asked to vote for what you feel was the most creative and unique submission.  The top submitter will be awarded his or her choice of a $50 gift certificate to iTunes or Amazon.com.  Feel like you don't have the skills quite yet in Reason?  Not a problem at all... two entry will be chosen at random just for submitting and will also be awarded a $25 gift certificate to iTunes or Amazon.com.  We will also be kicking up a new Challenge on Monday, with a submission date two weeks out from that.  There will also be some great awards given out in that round as well!

Why would you do this?  All entries will be archived on the site for generations to come, explore, and learn.  This is a community site I do not plan on throwing ads up and doing any marketeering.  This is for us.  As a thank you to you for offering this unique teaching opportunity to others, you will be able to maintain a sub-domain at one of the three following community sites: reasonlounge.com, reasonartist.com, or reasonexchange.com.  This will allow you to host a few of your favorite songs on our servers and have your own unique sub-domain address.  For example, in my case, I could choose to have defconx.reasonlounge.com or defconx.reasonartist.com.  You will have the ability to customize the landing page and as I said, feature some of your favorite songs.  No ads, no strings, no fine print, lets just enjoy.  Depending on the response, I will see how much space I can afford each user, and the amount of one-on-one customization I can help out with.

Are you whacked?  I am excited about this.  I think it will be a great opportunity and resource.  I have put a lot of time, sleepless nights, and resources into this.  I have coded the entire site from scratch in hopes of offering something unique.  The framework of this site was built with music collaboration in mind.  There is a lot there that is not visible yet.   This is not an attempt to compete with the great Reason resources that are already out there.  I am hoping to grow a near-real-time collaboration platform for Reason users.

It is a pleasure working and collaborating with you.  This resource is ours... enjoy.

- defconx

The Reason Challenge
The spirit of the Reason Challenge.  The Reason Challenge was born out of a spirit of community, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.  It provides a forum for Reason users to enter into a friendly competition where they engage their peers by sharing their implementation / composition to a challenge that has been proposed.  Although some proposed challenges may appear at surface to be trivial or "easy to implement", these may provide the most effort in creativity. How do you take something that is taken for granted, such as a drum riff, and creatively showcase that to stand on its own? What new ideas can you allow to break out?  I read an interview with BT where he stated, that as a music student, one of the most challenging assignments he was given was to create an entire score with only a few instruments.  He went on to say, that the students had always felt challenged to utilize as many instruments as they could, but now they were being forced to solve a different problem.  What would the more difficult assignment be, create a large painting utilizing as many colors as you like, or to create the same painting with a single color. 

The second part of the Reason Challenge is the community which it hopes to foster.  How wonderful is it when we can break down borders, reign back our egos and truly share with each other.  This is the true spirit of education!  Not the sentiment that my way or idea is right or better than yours, but simply to appreciate and enjoy the diversity that we find in each other.  For me personally, I can be moved by a complex musical piece with many parts and I can equally be moved by the artist who approached something simplisticly and had the strength to know that more would not have been better, that it would have just been more.  We all have something we can share with each other.  I have been both a sudent and a teacher in my life and I have never learned more than when I took the role of teacher.  Appreciate the child who constantly questions, "But Why?".

The Reason Challenge will present a challenge to the Reason community such as, "Compose a 30 second song which higlights a unique and creative way to utilize the Vocoder." Or perhaps, "Compose the most realistic sounds of waves crashing on a beach using only a single Subtractor." The participants will be asked to submit their composition along with a description describing how they went about solving the challenge.  After the submission date, the entries will be anonymously posted to ReasonExchange.com for one week, to be voted on by their peers.  After one week of voting the top solution will be named.  All challenges and compositions (all entries) will remain on the site for future reference and information.

Proceed to the first Reason Challenge.

Please feel free to provide feedback or suggestions...

- defconx