LinuxMusicians

I was using Reason for EDM production 10-15 years ago. I loved it very much, it was so easy to start creating music.
Then I had a 10-15 years-long break from music production.
Now I have Linux, Ardour, some sequencers and have literally no idea where should I start.

Is there any Reason user here? Or maybe someone could just guide me how to make my first steps and help me to come back to music production?
ATM I'm watching some youtube videos, but there everyone has everything already set up (jack connections, instruments, etc.). I love Reason because it was a one big machine, where you could launch various synths and other stuff, but withing one application. Here I see that every synth is a whole application. I've never used audio-plugin software so I'm totally lost here. It's too abstract for me.

I need very basic instructions, e.g.
- create a drum beat (using midi track, as it was in Reason. Or if there's better way, what is it?)
- create basic bass pattern/melody
- create synth/lead
- add an effect to one of the instruments

If somebody shows me how to do the basic stuff, I will go on by myself, I just need a little help now.

Have a look at lmms

https://lmms.io/download/#linux
Use the 1.2 download, currently that's the best.

I used to use reason many years ago. There's nothing truly comparable in linux (or windows) but there are plenty of ways to make music.

You can certainly do it all self contained with ardour. There are a lot of synths that have plugin versions, you just load them on a track, make sure it is record enabled and play away while recording.

LMMS is also a good suggestion, I don't like it much personally but it's not bad.

You don't mind spending some money then Bitwig would be hard to beat, you can go very deep with it and has synths and samplers and fx built in. It's expensive though.

You could also look at renoise, this is what I use. It's a bit different to what you are probably used to but it's very powerful once you learn how to use it. It's very good for EDM and itself is basically a sampler and synth (via sampled waveforms). Doesn't take long to get used to it but I'm sure you would be hooked if you spent some time with it.

If you want to go with ardour then http://libremusicproduction.com is a great resource, it has tutorials on doing most basic things.

Former Propellerheads junkie here. Your best starting point is LMMS. Some Linux distributions have broken versions of LMMS in their repositories, so I suggest you download it from the oficial website. The newest version is pretty great. There are tons of LMMS tutorials on youtube.

Like sysrqer said, there is no direct comparison to Reason in Linux. However, once you get good at configuring WINE you can run a lot or Propellerhead Software on your Linux machine, although you can probably do everything you need with native Linux tools once you get familiar with their capabilities.

I had a lot of fun with Reason too! What was appealing to me at that time was the modular approach, with the tab key (was it?) to go behind the rack and fiddle with cables and routing. And a sequencer to pilot everything.
Now the big difference is that on Linux, the whole OS is the rack thanks to Jack. Not as sleek as Reason but with:
- Carla as a patchbay/plugin host,
- Seq64 as a pattern sequencer,
- Hydrogen as a drum machine,
- LinuxSampler,
and Ardour for automation/sequencing and recording you have all the basics Reason provides.

But you can go al lot further and throw basically any application that has Midi/OSC/sound I/O into the mix. The hardest part is to learn again everything you once knew.

You can also use Bitwig which runs natively in Linux, although I have no idea how it compares to Reason.

barbouze wrote:Now the big difference is that on Linux, the whole OS is the rack thanks to Jack

I'm maybe going to take this on a tangent, but how do people manage projects using the whole OS as the rack? The heavyweight DAW apps are designed to manage the whole session by themselves, and rewire everything when you load a session file, but they don't have the capability of launching processes that aren't plugins.

For example, Bristol is a super fun analog synth emulator, but in order to use it with a DAW, I have to launch it and wire it up myself as it has no plugin version. For that matter, I don't think that even a Carla session can launch a non-plugin audio component. Maybe that's fine if I only have one track that uses Bristol, but beyond that it becomes unmanageable.

Michael Willis wrote:

barbouze wrote:Now the big difference is that on Linux, the whole OS is the rack thanks to Jack

I'm maybe going to take this on a tangent, but how do people manage projects using the whole OS as the rack? The heavyweight DAW apps are designed to manage the whole session by themselves, and rewire everything when you load a session file, but they don't have the capability of launching processes that aren't plugins.

For example non-session-manager (or there are others also, but I don't know them). Launch all apps with session manager, and it knows what belongs to your session and how to connect them.

tavasti wrote:For example non-session-manager (or there are others also, but I don't know them).

I would recommend RaySession, a drop-in replacement for NSM that appears to be rather more stable.

Michael Willis wrote:[...]I don't think that even a Carla session can launch a non-plugin audio component{...]

Carla can't but Claudia can

barbouze wrote:

Michael Willis wrote:[...]I don't think that even a Carla session can launch a non-plugin audio component{...]

Carla can't but Claudia can

WHAT!? I didn't know Claudia could do that!

Claudia is a LADISH frontend; it's just like Catia, but focused at session management through LADISH.
It has a bit more features than the official LADISH GUI, with a nice preview of the main canvas in the bottom-left.
It also implements the 'Claudia-Launcher' add-application style for LADISH.

Simply click on Application/Run custom

Michael Willis wrote:

barbouze wrote:Now the big difference is that on Linux, the whole OS is the rack thanks to Jack

I'm maybe going to take this on a tangent, but how do people manage projects using the whole OS as the rack?

There's LADISH.

barbouze wrote: - Seq64 as a pattern sequencer,

Seq64 is a Nintendo 64 emulator. I think you mean Seq-24 which is a Midi sequencer for Linux.

Linuxmusician01 wrote:

barbouze wrote: - Seq64 as a pattern sequencer,

Seq64 is a Nintendo 64 emulator. I think you mean Seq-24 which is a Midi sequencer for Linux.

https://github.com/ahlstromcj/sequencer64