"we started as being fans of Propellerhead Reason
as it turned out, Propellerhead became our fan
this is ReasonBanks' ReCycled history of 3 years and counting"

by Marco Raaphorst

I think it was early 2002 and I was working at Getronics as Global Webmaster. Eric Corminier send me an e-mail about the idea of Andras Haasz to start a website by the three of us for creating sounds and patches for Reason. Of course I loved the idea very much.

Andras came up with the idea to create the rack-GUI which and build most of the site.
The SUBMA•RINE contest was the thing which started it all. It was a 'Subtractor & Malström only' contest and our idea to put ReasonBanks on the map. It was a huge success and we had many daily visitors which turned into fans real quickly.

In March 2003 I stopped working at Getronics and started my own company Melodiefabriek. I wanted to put most of my time into composing and sound design.

At ReasonBanks we started the Analogue Monsters series in July 2003. Morphing analogue synths into Reason. Smaller packages were released from time to time as free ReFills. This was a big success, mainly because these free Refills contained exactly the same samples as the final huge Analogue Monster volume X would contain. So the quality was key, not quantity. These free Refills became one the most used free ReFill-packages around.

I am not going to sum up every ReFill we did, but our first big Refill, QuickSilver turned out great. Cool sounds and the fan-base was starting to grow fast!

PRO.TON was another fine idea of Andras. Thanks to the fantastic NN-XT sampler which was added to Reason in version 2, Andras was able to create very small 1-cycle samples which turned the NN-XT into a wave-table synth. Our users totally adored the concept. Fredrik Hägglund complimented our work in the 'Take it to the NN-XT level' episode of Discovering Reason:

"Those who dig beneath the surface (like the creators of the new Proton ReFill which turns the NN-XT into a multi-oscillator analog synth)..."

Just before the summer of 2004, Kristoffer Wallman Content Manager of Propellerhead asked me if we were interested to do sound design for the next version of Reason, version 3. Of course we were interested :)

This Patching for Reason 3 project turned out very well. We licensed over 100MB Analogue Monsters samples. We also licensed a couple of loops. During the project we were very lucky to be inspired. So we created many patches which got excellent reviews from the other programmers who were involved in the project as well. Almost all our patches were 'keepers' and were included in new Factory SoundBank.

For PRO.TON2 I created a few extra patches and composed the tune 'from Budapest to The Hague' which got nice reviews around the globe. And then on Monday March 14th another amazing thing happened: Herbie Hancock ordered our Refill!
PRO.TON was released when we were just in the middle of the Patching for Reason 3 project :) And none of our customers knew at the time that were working on this 'secret product'.

When Reason 3 was going to be released in Stockholm, Sweden I was able to visit the Props. I made an appointment with Kristoffer just the day before the official Reason 3 release party would take place. It was nice to meet the Props, have lunch, visit their office and chat about all sorts of future ideas. It's funny that when you meet people you already know through the Internet, you know a lot more about that person. It feels like meeting old friends.

In the beginning of 2005 I started to work on Combi Manifesto 1, a showcase for combined Subtractor and Malström sounds. It took a lot of time to create. I was very happy with the results.

The cool thing about ReasonBanks is that we're not using any paid advertisement (yet). So it was all done by word-of-mouth through the Internet. Fans helped us by talking about ReasonBanks and by linking to our website.

So totally unexpectedly Sound On Sound did a short review for Combi Manifesto 1 (quote):
"Marco Raaphorst, known to the Reason community as Raapie, is a long-standing creator of patches for our virtual studio. He also contributed to the factory Refill for v3.0. His latest work includes a modest but intricately programmed Combinator patch collection, together with a set of all-new patches for the Subtractor and Malström devices that are these Combis’ only sound sources. Combi Manifesto 1 features 22 patches that aim to keep CPU load as low as possible while pushing the device’s signal-routing and sound-design possibilities. Combinator controllers have been thoughtfully set up (some even change pattern parameters on Matrix devices), and a new graphic ‘backdrop’ has been created for each patch. Surf to www.reasonbanks.com, have a listen to the demos and be prepared to fork over a mere £5.50/US$10/Euro 8.25 for the zipped 5.9MB download."

For Peff's Power Tools for Reason 3 we created a free and special Refill: SynthFactory. Andras did all the complicated NN-XT stuff and I did all the combined Subtractor and Malström patches. It turned out great.

ReasonBanks now has about 36000 (!) registered users. And sure, we are absolutely ready for the future!

To sum it all up, our short ReCycled history:
- ReasonBanks was started by fans of Reason
- ReasonBanks created new sounds for Reason and turned Propellerhead into one of their fans

We feel blessed by being part of this amazing story.

to be continued... get ready for 3 years + another 2 !