Doc Weiler's Communitism Experience

In retrospective view I have to ask myself why I chose a community about a program so time-consuming that I wouldn’t even be able to use the community appropriately. But first things first.

ReasonStation made the decision to join very easy. The registration process is very short; you can access the site’s content within two minutes. Furthermore, the topics visible in the forum seemed interesting for a music nerd (and self-taught Reason expert) like me. Little did I know that these interesting topics would only be the exception, and that most people use the “community” only for showcasing their own music; just like MySpace restricted to a single method of creating the music. The amount of actual discussion is not very high. In consequence, I had no chance to see a moderation system in action, as most topics are of a quite technical nature and everyone just behaves.

This is one of the two things that made active participation difficult. The other thing is the unclear structure of the website. It features quite comprehensive upload sections for your music files as well as program packages (with samples, loops), but in turn the forum consists of several subforums and subsubforums without a general overview. This way you are very successfully blocked from getting an overview of what you can do on the site. For regular users the standard “last 48 hours” thread list might be enough, but otherwise you miss many topics. Granted, I had a little time to spend in the community, but considering a participation would require much time spent on the actual software in question I quickly mutated into a lurker of sorts, searching for interesting stuff, often to no avail.

So basically that would have been it, were it not for the uploaded member-generated content. A Reason music file is, very much like a MIDI file, only a few kilobytes in size, so it downloads rather quickly. Same goes for most program packages. As I had no reason to participate in the forum, I downloaded all even remotely interesting stuff from the archives. Not that I had time to actually try all of them out, but it was comfortable and fast.

The question remains how long ReasonStation can stay the way it is. Its revenue model relies heavily on donations by members and some small targeted ads (not on the main site), and a recent fundraiser didn’t bring in as much money as expected. As ReasonStation is nowhere near a general purpose community, the possibilities for applying most commercial models are quite low, as a critical mass of members might never be reached. I could imagine a partnership with Propellerheads Software, the producer of Reason. ReasonStation provides some features the original Propellerheads website doesn’t offer to non-registered customers, and so it could broaden the range of people using Reason. Additionally, linking to MySpace pages of the artists posting songs on ReasonStation could bring in some extra revenue.

If I was in charge of ReasonStation, I’d first introduce a personal profile page. At the moment, all the music and content is simply there and has no real “face”, and providing a more personal point of view would benefit the overall attractiveness of the whole site. Furthermore, there is too little happening on the site. Apart from the usual problems or music pieces, nothing is going on there. I’d start contests of things like the most out-of-the-world sound effect, the most impressive orchestral arrangement or the drum loop with the highest complexity. Finally, in order to connect ReasonStation to other sites and thus create more awareness, I’d build in a linking feature, connecting your (new) profile page to your Facebook profile, your Twitter page or your Google account.

If I only had the time. I can imagine I’d have been a far more active member in this community if, between building a community concept for one course and building a physical therapist management software for another, I’d have had enough time to actually use the ressources provided on ReasonStation. The community and the software both require more than I was able to offer at that time.

Maybe in the future.

For those to whom the heading didn’t make it clear: I have a problem with problems. That might be a given for most people, but in this context I have to say I have a problem with participating in the solving of other Reason users’ problems. That is, those problems are on a complexity level unreachable for my experience because they deal with configurations and controlling devices I’ve never used. Regarding the program itself it would be easy to assist in solving problems, but problems using two MIDI keyboards or the interconnections between three different programs are nothing I can contribute to.

Additionally, due to various commitments, most of which have something to do with modules in Maastricht, I simply don’t have time to actually make music. That is quite a handicap if you’re a member of a music making community. I hope that changes when the three weeks break comes.

In a way, a community for users of a multimedia production software product often comes down to not being a real community, but rather a mixture of some kind of “living manual” and personal showcase. The ReasonStation forum is no exception, so this week I was the classic lurker and concentrated on this community’s non-community stuff. In short terms, I filled my harddrive with some of the aforementioned ReFill packages. This became surprisingly easy, as most ReFills are only a few kilobytes in size (after all, it’s only setup data for virtual synthesizers), and all of a sudden I had hundreds of new sounds I could experiment with.

The coolest feature, however, is the tutorial section of the website, and that’s where the community spirit begins to shine. Whereas in the forums, people mostly ask for opinions on their latest tracks or battle each other with reasoning skills (get it?), here users can show others how they accomplished a certain technique with Reason, like creating a cool drum fill-in. In my little spare time, I tried to recreate a very cool vocoded feedback loop effect, but the creator of the tutorial must have left a certain cable connection* out. Maybe I could remind him some time during the next days, provided of course that I can discover what went wrong.

* I forgot to describe Reason in detail. Come again in a few days. For now, it shall only be said that in Reason you have virtual instruments (like synthesizers, samplers, …) and they’re interconnected by using virtual cables that work just like real ones.

Today has been a good day so far. The weather is marvellous, no traffic noise can be heard (I’m at my parents’ house at the moment) and I’ve picked and joined a community, set up a blog and gone to the haircutter, and that after sleeping until noon.

Only two of these things are actually important right now. Setting up this Wordpress blog was kind of a no-brainer, and finding a community wasn’t too difficult either. Although I didn’t want to do the quick “I like x, so I join a community about x”, I found a good community approximately five seconds after beginning the search.

And the winner is ReasonStation, a community of users of the popular electronic music production software Propellerhead Reason. As I’ve created music since I was 13 and used Reason for eight years now, the personal interest was a given. I actually don’t know why I’ve never joined a similar community before. From what I’ve seen so far, at ReasonStation you can upload your own music, share tips and ideas about the various ways to use the program, listen to a virtual radio channel consisting of the work of other users and even download so-called ReFills, little sound modules you can integrate into Reason and use for yourself. There is so much to explore that I probably will stay active in the community even after the Community Building module is over.

Seems I’m having a good start. Keeping you updated on the details, I’m off for now.