Saving Songs

Saving a Song

You will always be able to save your Songs in Reason Essentials. It doesn’t matter if you’re running in authorized or unauthorized (Demo) mode.

The “Save” function

To save a Song, proceed as follows:

1.	Hold down [Ctrl](Win) or [Cmd](Mac) and press [S], or select “Save” from the File menu.

If this is the first time you’re saving the song, a file dialog will appear where you can specify a name and destination.

2.	Specify a name and destination for the Song and click “Save”.

Once you have saved a song, selecting “Save” will simply save it under the same name and in the same location, without showing a dialog.

It’s also possible to automatically include all samples used by the Reason Essentials devices and make the Song “self-contained”. Refer to “About Self-Contained Songs” for details about how to include samples in your songs.

To reduce the file size of your song, you can use the “Save and Optimize” command described in “Saving and optimizing a Song”.

It’s also possible to include detailed information about your song. Refer to “Including Song Information” for more details.

The “Save As...” function

To save an existing Song under another name and/or in another location:

1.	Hold down [Ctrl]+[Shift](Win) or [Cmd]+[Shift](Mac) and press [S], or select “Save As...” from the File menu.

The “Save As” dialog appears.

2.	Specify a new name and/or new destination for the Song and click “Save”.

Using the “Save As...” function will automatically optimize the Song (see “Saving and optimizing a Song”).

Saving and optimizing a Song

When you record audio in the Sequencer, the recordings are stored in your Song document. If you remove recordings in your song, there might be “empty” areas left in the document, similar to a fragmented hard disk. To “defragment” the Song document, and thus reduce the file size, you can use the “Save and Optimize” command on the File menu. Note that the “Save and Optimize” command can only be used on previously saved Song documents.

Select “Save and Optimize” from the File menu.

The Song will be optimized and saved at the original location.

Note that saving and optimizing a Song could take some time if you have lots of audio recordings in it. Therefore, the best alternative would probably be to use the “Save” command while you’re still working with your Song, and then use the “Save and Optimize” command as a final step when you’ve finished editing.

Using the “Save As...” function automatically optimizes the Song.

In some situations, it’s possible to reduce the file size even further by deleting recordings you haven’t used in your Song. See “Delete Unused Recordings”.

Including Song Information

Selecting “Song Information” on the File menu opens a dialog in which you can add information about your song. For example, if you plan to send the song to other Reason Essentials users, this dialog allows you to add contact information, comments about the song, etc.

Select “Song Information...” from the File menu.

The Song Information dialog opens.

The Song Information dialog contains the following items:

•	Text in window title:

The text you add here will be displayed directly after the file name in the song window’s title bar.

•	More information:

This is where you could add notes and comments about your song.

•	Song splash:

This allows you to add a picture to the song. The picture will be displayed when the song is opened.

To add a splash picture, click the folder button at the upper right corner, locate and open the picture file in the file dialog that appears.

Splash pictures must be JPEG files (Windows extension “.jpg”) with a size of 256 x 256 pixels.

To remove the splash picture from the song, click the “cross” button at the upper right corner.

Tick the “Show splash on song open” check box to make the splash appear every time the song is opened.

•	Author’s web page:

Here, you can type in your web site URL. When a user opens your song, he/she can go directly to your web site by clicking the Browse button that appears in the splash (provided there’s an Internet connection available).

•	Author’s e-mail address:

Here, you can specify your e-mail address if you want other Reason Essentials users to e-mail you their comments, etc.

About Self-Contained Songs

The Song is the main file format in Reason Essentials. A Song contains the device setup and all settings and connections in the Rack, all Main Mixer Channel settings as well as everything you have recorded in the Sequencer. However, this is not always sufficient. If you want to open your song on another computer, or send it to another Reason Essentials user, you will also need to include all samples and REX files used by the devices in the Song. To make this easier, Reason Essentials allows you to create “self-contained” songs. A self-contained song contains not only the references to the used samples and REX files, but also the files themselves. You can choose exactly what files should be included in the self-contained song.

An alternative to self-containing samples and/or REX files could be to bounce Mixer Channels to Audio Tracks. This way, you could “convert” samples to audio so that your song would always sound the same, no matter on which computer you play it back. See “Bouncing Mixer Channels” for details.

To specify which files should be included in the self-contained song, proceed as follows:

1.	Select “Song Self-Contain Settings...” from the File menu.

The “Song Self-Contain Settings” dialog appears, listing all samples and REX files used in the song:

2.	Tick the checkboxes to the left of the “Name” column for the files you want to contain in the song.

You can use the “Check All” button to tick all checkboxes in one go.

Similarly, the “Uncheck All” button unchecks all checkboxes.

3.	When you have marked the desired sounds, click “OK” to exit the dialog.

The next time you save your Song, the specified sounds will be automatically included in the Song file.

Note that a self-contained song file will be larger than the original song file. However, samples included in a self-contained song are automatically compressed by approximately 50% of their original size. Since the compression is lossless, this does not in any way affect the sound quality.

“Un-self-containing” a Song

If you have opened a self-contained song which contains one or several sounds embedded in the song file, you may want to extract these sounds and make the song refer to them on disk as usual. This is done as follows:

1.	Select “Song Self-Contain Settings...” from the File menu.

The “Song Self-Contain Settings” dialog appears.

2.	Locate the sounds you want to extract from the song file, and deactivate their checkboxes (or click the “Uncheck All” button).

3.	Click “OK” to close the dialog.

Now, Reason Essentials will check for each “extracted” sound file whether it is available (at its original, stored location) or not.

•	If the program finds the sound file at the location stored in the song, it is simply removed from the song file, and the original file reference path is used.

This would be the case if you made the song self-contained yourself, and un-self-contain it on your own computer (provided that you haven’t removed the original sound files from disk since you made the song self-contained).

•	If the program doesn’t find the sound file, a file dialog appears, allowing you to select a folder and name for the sound file.

The extracted file will be saved in the specified folder, and the path in the song will be adjusted. This would be the case if you were given the self-contained song by another user, for example.

Note that it is not possible to un-self-contain samples that originate from ReFills!

If you un-self-contain samples that were modified in the Edit Sample Window and feature Start and End Markers and/or loop crossfades, the Lossy Sample Export dialog appears. The available options are described further down in the “Exporting samples” section in the Sampling chapter. Note that the option you select in the Lossy Sample Export applies to all samples you have deselected in the Song Self-contain Settings dialog!

Making a Song appear as a Template Song

If you want Songs you have created to appear on the “New Song from Template” sub-menu, and be available for selection when you use the “New Song from Template” command (see “Creating a new Song from a template”), you need only move or copy the Song(s) to the Template Songs folder in the application folder on your hard drive. The easiest way to get to this folder is by selecting File|New from Template|Show Template Folder. This brings up the Template folder in Windows Explorer or Finder on Mac.

A note about saving Songs as audio files

It’s also possible to export your Songs as audio files in WAV or AIFF format. Refer to “Exporting Songs or parts of Songs” for more information.