Sequencing with
Reason
(and Logic)
A page devoted to making products work together
by Rich the Tweakmeister
Go directly to Reason/Logic
Tips
Being
someone who has been sequencing
back to the early days when analog synths were all we had, I was prepared to
be unimpressed when the first signs of Reason dawned on the new age. I downloaded
the demo, did a few sounds, then hastily tried to get it working in Rewire with
Logic. Crash. I could have written it off right there, but
after a night listening to some really hot trance tracks, I decided to dust
off Rebirth and work on it. Of course, Rebirth has the classic 303-808-909
sound that I have enjoyed for years. But there is a lot more to techno
and trance than Rebirth can give. So I decided to go with Reason mainly
to help Rebirth out, whether or not it worked in Logic. I figured at minimum
I could dump the final wav into Logic or Vegas and proceed as usual.
(Ed Note: This article was written back in
1999! But its still strangely relevant. While Reason no longer crashes
in Logic, some of these tips will help. By the way, Reason using rewire
works a treat in Cubase SX.)
Think about it: Pretend a friend decides to
bring in his 8 foot rack of vintage gear to your studio and you're going to
use it in your Logic creation. This is essentially what Reason is in the
virtual software domain.
I am now happily up to speed and have a lot
to tell about it. And, best of all, Reason does work well in Logic using
rewire. In fact, I just finished a tune with Reason and Rebirth
both maxed with data and instruments, controllers, fx playing perfectly in Logic's
audio mixer along with the EXS, Pro52 and ES1 software synths--totaling over
24 software synth tracks. The cool thing was that Reason did not put any
noticeable strain on the system. When I first ran the demo, I mistakenly
thought Reason was CPU intensive. While all the sounds are coming from
the CPU and memory, it does not need to super powerful machine to get up and
running. An average PC will do. But if you are going to rewire with
Logic, a powerful machine will truly open up the vistas of possibility.
| Propellerheads Software |
| Propellerheads Reason
Tweak: Is it cool?
Yes! It does FM, analog, drumboxs, sampling, looping, "on the fly" editing
of knobs, filters, samples, loops. It has its own internal sequencer
to control it all. Intense, and very contemporary. Tweak has it
and likes it. Yep, I use it inside Logic, though you don't have
to. It can stand on its own, no problem, and it will playback
at 96khz if you want. if you have lots of samples and recycle
loops on yer drives, pipe 'em in reason. Particularly recommended
for Techno, dance, dnb. This is very much on the edge. Works
great with Rebirth and Recycle.
|
Cool features of Reason
The Subtractor Software synth.
This my friends is an altogether excellent soft synth--better than the es1 and
pro52 by far! I fell in love with Subtractor when I was able is perfectly
get an exact Oberheim Matrix 12 emulation which outclasses all of my obie samples.
Routing and recording controllers is a breeze. Press record and tweak.
You have to be careful with Subtractor just like you do when using a real analog
synth--the bass will peak and lets hope your speakers weren't running full tilt
or your woofers will be flapping in the wind! This is how analog synths
really are. Don't underestimate the power here. Another outstanding
fature of Subtractor is the FM wave generator which gives you the digital edge
for bizarre FM tweaks like you can get with Dynamo and Reaktor. There's a very
flexible noise generator too, and you can do inverse modulation on the envelopes--choosing
12db Hi-pass, Lowpass and Bandpass (no wonder it sounds like an OBX), 24 db
and notch filters. So many features, it reminds me of the new Novation
analog models. But about 1200 bucks cheaper.
And so far I am only talking about one of Reason's
many Modules. There is also the NN19 software sampler. As
samplers are my specialty, I was expecting far less than what I got. The
NN19 is a sample playback device, not a full fledged sampler. (If you
want to record samples, you will have to do so with a wave recorder which you
undoubtedly have somewhere in your computer.) No, it's not going
to rival an Emu EOS sampler, but it will give many soft samplers a run for their
money. There's plenty of ways to filter and modulate your samples and record
these tweaks either in real time or on graphic displays. If you have a
lot of cool samples on your hard drive you can dredge them into the NN19 fast
and painlessly, add filters, envelopes, controllers, do drum maps, just like
you would on any other sampler. The only unfortunate thing is you can't export
these sample key maps you build to any other sampler like the EXS 24.
The Prop-heads are keeping their file format a secret. You can only save
and load into Reason.
Matrix Sequencer Another utterly
cool thing is the matrix step sequencer, which works a lot like a hardware 16
step linear mono sequencer. Sort of like Rebirths 303 sequencer, but flexible,
super easy and fast to set up. Two sweeps of the mouse you can have the
thing working, none of the tedium, but all of the fun. Trance masters,
if you don't have it, you need it. Of course you can assign the matrix
sequencer to any instrument you want in the rack, or copy it 10 times and send
it to 10 different instruments.
The Main Sequencer. Take a
look at the screen shot. That's just one view of the sequencer.
As you see its very graphical and mouse tweaks on knobs and faders are instantly
recorded. This all works great with Reason's internal rack of instruments.
Reason does not control external midi synths.
That is, you can not sequence your proteus 2000 or JV 3080 from Reason.
What you can do, however, is route an external hardware sequencer, like
a Korg Electribe (which i have tested, it works!) or presumably any groovebox
that sends midi clocks to play reason's instruments in addition to its own.
For my Electribe, it is like adding a hip drum machine, sampler, and a lot
more synths.
There's so much more I haven't even mentioned.
The Re-Drum drum machine that you can assign any sample to its pads
that you want. DR. REX looping tool for contorting drum and
sample loops. If you have a recycle and a bunch of acid cd roms you
can turn them into REX loops, which as you might expect can be sliced and
stretched, detuned, and tweaked. You can then, in Dr Rex, alter each
segment of these loops, wierd stuff, like drop the 1st kik drum an octave
and raise all the rest by two, and pan individual hits anywhere, or silence
certain drums in the loop and bring them up gradually, recording the tweak
in real time. Try doing that in Acid!
Reason's FX boxes are very good
sounding. I wish they could be used without Reason as plugins, but
alas, one can't have everything. The delay is very nice and slightly
warmer and "looser" than the Logic delays. The Reverb is thick and
deep, like a fat carpet. The Phaser is Thick and phat. The compressor
sounds to my ears alot like the rebirth compressor, but with more bite.
The Mixer is powerful with sends and returns that come back with
plenty of level, solo in place buttons and if you run out of channels you
simply create another and gang them together. Note that if using rewire
you can bypass the mixer and go straight to the rewire outs for which you
can route directly to your sequencer's mixer strips. In Logic, this
method gave me a a slightly hotter mix.
The coolest thing about Reason is when
you turn the rack around and start messing with cables and control voltages.
This is way more friendly than Logic's more abstracted environment of cables.
Working with Reason is just like being behind a great vintage pro studio
rack that would cost you nearly $25,000 today and be a royal pain to maintain
and operate.
Note: The following pertains to Logic version
4.7 and Reason Version 1 on the PC platform
| How do I install
Rewire?
You don't. It happens automatically.
Logic senses whether Reason is installed on your system through
a file called rewire.dll which is installed with Reason in your
windows directory. Logic automatically creates entries under
"other" in the audio instrument channel menu. We'll get to that
in a bit, but you should have read your reason documentation.
There is nothing you need to do to install rewire other than correctly
install Logic and correctly install Reason. You might want
to
read more about rewire at the propellerhead's site, or read
the
Reason Tech FAQ.
|
Run Logic before Reason Rule::
- Run Logic first. Its a rule.
It won't work any other way. Reason checks for a Rewire application
when it starts, so we want it to find Logic's Mixer, But before
you run Reason, set up the mixer for it.
|
Setting Up Logic's Mixer
for Rewire
- Go to the Audio Mixer in the
environment
- Select 2 "audio instrument"
channels--not audio channels- and set them to MIX L and MIX
R. You access the these in the parameter box to
the left of the audio mixer. If you don't see a parameter
box go to the view menu and click "parameters".
Now it should be there, right?
- You then see the parameters
Icon, Dev,and Cha and more. "Cha" for channel,
is the one you want.
- Click "Cha" and another
menu opens up with the items "track" "input", "instrument" "output".
Go to the one called "instrument". Now another
menu will open--instrument 1, instrument 2., etc, but down at
the bottom you will see one called "other". Congratulations!
You have found the rewire menu. Point to "other" and at
the top you will see MIX L and MIX R. Click on
one.
- Now run Reason. You don't
have to do anything here. Just watch the screen as Reason
maps itself to Logic.
Now that you a Re-wired, you can
go about making music. The two transports are in sync, but
it is best to always use Logic's transport. Happily, the cycle
functions translate perfectly between the two programs. When
you are working on bar 17 to 33 you will see markers move perfectly
in each program. Timing is dead on in playback. |
| If Problems
Occur If you get a message
that Reason's audio engine won't start and you need to reinstall...try
this
- 1. Press Play in
Logic before starting Reason.
- 2. Now run Reason while
Logic is playing
If you are running versions of
Logic before 4.73 you may need to do this, it may also happen in
Win XP. If you are running 4.72 or lower do your self a favor and
go download the 4.8.1 update from. If you are on WinXP, at least
for now, you might have to press play. I do. This rule also applies
to rewire applications in Logic 5 and 6
If you don't see the MIX L and
MIX R in Logic's Mixer, it is possible you don't have rewire.dll
in your windows directory. You might reinstall reason again
so it gets to the right place.
If you have recently migrated to
Windows XP, make sure you completely reinstall Reason in
XP. On my system, the old win98 install of Reason still worked
fine in XP until I tried using Rewire. I found the rewire
channels did not show up in Logic until I reinstalled Reason. |
|
Song Construction Tip:
The process works best, I think,
if you construct your reason parts that require MIDI input (i.e.,
anything you might record in real time) when using Reason as a stand
alone product. When your Reason tracks are just about done
is the best time to start running Reason in Logic. You can
add plugins to your reason tracks just like you can your Logic audio
tracks. When you like what you hear you are ready to Bounce tracks
from Reason into Logic. |
|
Unique Ways Reason Extends Logic's power
Logic as good as it is, does not have
a built in drum machine. Of course you can do extensive
things with drum tracks, but there's no preset pattern machine emulating
a hardware drumbox. Reason's ReDrum is excellent.
it responds to rewire of course and it will play the same pattern
till you change it. ReDrum has 10 assignable pads in each
kit. You can put any wave file you want on a pad, so you can
get crazy if you want. The patterns are programmed much like
in Rebirth, but this is better, the pads a bigger. Each kit
holds 32 patterns and you can load and save to hard disk of course.
There's an absolutely great Dr. Rythm DR110 Redrum kit online that
is a must have.
Dr. Rex. In Logic,
the re-pitching of audio Loops is done in the Time and Pitch machine
which is capable of very exacting transformations of pitch and tempo.
However, it's not real time. Dr Rex is a fast and creative
way to stretch your loops automatically to the songs current BPM.
If you own Recycle and have a lot of .rex2 files around you can
load them into Dr. Rex and tweak the loop with real time controllers,
envelopes, filters and Lfos. For example to could pan only
the 3rd and 7th snare in a 4 bar drum pattern, or lower the pitch
of every 6th kik. Very cool for hip hop stuff |
| Bounce Tips
How to bring Reason's audio tracks
into Logic
Ok, I assume at this point you
have Reason configured in Logic's Mixer, and you have some tracks
playing in reason and now you want to move those tracks as audio
into Logic.-
- 1. Set your reason channels
you want to mix to the stereo output of choice in Logic, for
example Output 1-2.
- 2. Go to the Master Fader
for output 1-2 in Logic and press the Bounce (Bnce) button
- 3. In the box that comes up
in logic, set the range of bars to bounce, then click bounce
- 4. Select an unused audio
track (not an audio instrument track) and set the song position
line where you want the reason track to start.
- 5. In the Audio menu
in Logic click Import Audio File, select the file,
and it will appear on the track you selected at the song position
line.
Many of you will probably want
to bounce just individual instruments to Logic so you can have a
track for just kiks, hats, strings, etc. This is very easily
done by simply soloing the instruments you want to bounce
in Reason's mixer and carrying out the above operation. This is
a very effective method because you can tweak each instrument in
Logic, rather than just bouncing the whole reason mix to a stereo
file in Logic |
| Don't
Crash you head into the monitor again Tip:
Make sure you exit reason before
you exit Logic. You'll crash Reason if you quit Logic 1st.
Make sure to remember that, next time, OK? OW my bruised TweakHead...:) |
|
