For immediate release

Composer Joachim Horsley Scores Three Sundance Films and Wins the Grand Prize at the Recent John Lennon Songwriting Competition Using Reason

Composer Joachim Horsley Scores Three Sundance Films and Wins the Grand Prize at the Recent John Lennon Songwriting Competition Using Reason

(Stockholm, Sweden, August 06 , 2009) A multi-talented, prolific musician, composer, producer and award winning songwriter, Joachim Horsley is an avid user of Reason. Horsley considered Reason an important musical component while scoring his original music for three films screened at this years Sundance Film Festival. The Horsley scores of “Hug” written and directed by Khary Jones, “Concerto” directed by Filippo Conz and “Pal/Secam” written and directed by Dmitry Povolotsky, all have the power of Reason behind them.

Joachim finds Reason is easy to use, convenient - he uses it when he’s on the road to create demos and sketches - and relies on the great sound selections he needs and has come to expect. “Though Reason is easy to use and integrates well with my Pro Tools sequences, it's the sound selections that really matter most,” says Joachim. “Reason is always reliable for having the sounds that work just right in my mixes.”

Joachim credits Reason for helping him create his song, “I want your Love” - which won the Grand Prize at the 2007 John Lennon Songwriting Contest - Pop Category, Session 11, 2007, - from the album “Strangers in the Valley, performed by his band, Little Horse. “The original demo of the song was done almost entirely in Reason. Many of those elements stayed in the final mix, most prominently the "syntovox" and "ambivalent" patch (on the Subtractor) are used to double and enhance the background harmony vocals in the chorus, and many key percussion sounds come out of Redrum,” says Horsley.

Joachim started using software synths five years ago and even now, he enjoys finding new uses for Reason. “When I moved my studio, Little Horse Music and Audio, from Boston and re-launched in New York City in 2004, I made the decision to replace my hardware synths with the best soft-synth sounds,” explains Horsley. “I knew that Reason was the future for my work. The sounds are terrific, and even though I've been using the software for years, there are still new uses for the vast selection of preset sounds and patches that I've customized myself.”

Joachim reveals some favourite Reason sound patches, “The Subtractor bass patches and the keyboard sounds for the NN-19 patches are my "go-tos" in Reason, especially when I start song demos or film score sketches. The drum sounds are also extremely strong, especially for giving an acoustic drum set more impact in the context of rock and pop style tracks.”

He also lets us in on a few of his favourite features in Reason, “Since most of my music uses acoustic instruments in the core of the arrangement (piano, guitar, string sections, etc.), I enjoy using Reason to enhance the tracks and or add an electronic dimension. Sometimes this means a transparent synth pad to fill sections out, sometimes this means doubling the bass of an orchestra with the Subtractor sub bass sounds, sometimes using Redrum to fatten an acoustic drum track. If I were visual artist, Reason would be my general tool for shading and adding vibrancy to the color.”

What’s in Joachim’s Reason rack? “Redrum, Subtractor, several NN-19’s, the RV7000, but lately I've been using the Thor (synthesizer) quite a bit. Reason 4.0.1 is a great release and there are still many new features I need to explore!”