Use external instruments for Reason!!!

miqueas1 · Post by **miqueas1** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 11:50 pm

Did you know you can do this.. there may be a topic about this..

but just incase not...

Set up a midi tracks in Abe..... name them... bass.. synths... whatever......

put External instruments on each track.... open up reason....

Now get rid of everything in reason other than audio output section..

now you can add instruments under that.. then flip it over and route them to you channels of your choice...

Make sure to name each instrument with the same name as the track in Ableton..

Now... go back to Ext. Instruments on each track... have midi to go to Reason... then under that pick which instrument...

then under audio from pick the channel that that audio is comming from in reason....

Anything that is mono.. you will see there is another option towards the bottom of the list.. that will actually make the mono signal come out of both speakers...

Then poof.. you have routing to reason.... then audio back.. cuts back on the tracks you have open... also gives you the option to add live FX's to the track in Live.... be sure in Reason this is very important.. that the track arming (record) is off!!!

This has made things soo much clearer and easier to work with reason.. I actually use it now.... I haven't used reason b/c before I learned this.. I had to set up two tracks.. one to send the midi and one to get the audio back...

You want to record the signal dry.. set up a resample track... and get the audio dry.. then move the FX from live over to the new audio file...

So ... this may not be the best example of how to do this.. but it will make your life soo much easier if you didn't know this before (which I am sure someone has posted this!!!)...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT ....

Okay.. that is my tip.. never give tips that much... another tip.. want to learn about metarecording for drums and harmonic templates for songs?

Enroll in Berklee school of music online!

Advanced Ableton live... Best information I have learned ever!!! It was worth the 1200 bucks.

:O:)

Have fun... and This beta version of LIve 8 is amazing!!!!

Thank you Abes!!! We love you!!!

~~~

MJ

miqueas1 · Post by **miqueas1** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 11:55 pm

Also.. as long as you save your reason projects in the same folder with Ableton.. you don't have to get bounce everything down to audio..

when you render a track... it will process everything from reason.. and you don't have to do the record in stuff...

You can treat reason when using External instruments... just like that.. an external instrument...

once you get things into arrangement view.. you can go edit the midi sent to Reason and everything.. even automation with certain things... just explore ... see what you come up with....

its all about the routing and signal flow baby... grasp it.. pay attention to it... and you can't go wrong!

john gordon · Post by **john gordon** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 1:20 am

by the way i have reason 4 for sale.

mholloway · Post by **mholloway** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 1:53 am

I've been doing the Ext Inst -Reason4 thing since I started using Live7 a few months back, found out about it on youtube thanks to the Huston Singletary videos (the live manual still says nothing about it last i checked). I agree, it's AWESOME, and makes the setup of reason in program like Cubase seem insanely archaic and horrible by comparison. I was about to push Reason away for good until this came along, now I'm rockin Thor and Combinators etc in every song....

-M.

sdmiddleton · Post by **sdmiddleton** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 9:37 am

I concor, this is awesome...

If you want to get even more excited, try building an insturment rack of external instruments routed to Reason, either a rack of synths, or even a drum rack which can have an unlimited amount of external instruemnts open at a time.

E.g. A kick could be routed to Redrum, snare to an NNXT etc etc and each sound has its own dedicated extern instrument...However, if you want the audio on the same track, i mute all tracks within the rack except the first one, otherwise you end up doubling the volume of each sound as they all route back on every channel within the rack...You can however route each sound to the reason hardware device and route all individual sounds to the extern instrument so it has its own dedicated fader within the rack, but this can get fiddly...actually now i think of it, it would be good to link the Extern instrument GAIN to the FADER on that track in the rack...

But great thing is with each clip you can automate the chain to change the programme in reason for the particular synth you want to play for that new section in the song, all without havng to manually fumble around and remember which patch you used for each song or section of a song...

its not till you start building racks that you realise how deep the rabbit hole goes...

macmurphy · Post by **macmurphy** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 9:59 am

You know, i haven't touched Reason in ages but after reading these tips i shall be doing a lot of experimenting!

Thanks guys

Neil

EmaDaCuz · Post by **EmaDaCuz** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:26 pm

mholloway wrote:I've been doing the Ext Inst -Reason4 thing since I started using Live7 a few months back, found out about it on youtube thanks to the Huston Singletary videos (the live manual still says nothing about it last i checked). I agree, it's AWESOME, and makes the setup of reason in program like Cubase seem insanely archaic and horrible by comparison. I was about to push Reason away for good until this came along, now I'm rockin Thor and Combinators etc in every song....

-M.

Can you post a link? I can't find anything but the usual ReWire+Audio method.
Tnx

sporkles · Post by **sporkles** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:54 pm

Er... so this is this week's news flash, then - using the external instrument
device for external instruments?

Then again, I do love the external instrument, and I completely agree that it's
an invaluable little gizmo as far as Rewire goes.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:47 pm

I like to keep a small reason file, with the instruments I use often, running in the background.

Then you can save the external instrument plugs as presets in the Live browser, and you never need to look at Reason

beatpoet · Post by **beatpoet** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:07 pm

longjohns wrote:I like to keep a small reason file, with the instruments I use often, running in the background.

Then you can save the external instrument plugs as presets in the Live browser, and you never need to look at Reason

That's the best bit for me, I have all my fave reason instruments as presets in Live. Just drag and drop baby. It gets treated exactly like external gear.

EmaDaCuz · Post by **EmaDaCuz** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:39 pm

Mmmmmmh, it looks interesting. But since I'm a novice (and noob as well), could you please link or post a short tutorial?

It would be absolutely great!

Kilroy · Post by **Kilroy** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 4:02 pm

i do the same thing. I have 16 ableton External Instruments tracks, each routed to and from a reason synth. I have each of those tracks receiving on a different midi channel, and I play them all from presets (combis) on a Triton Extreme 88. I use the combis to blend the reason sounds with the sounds from the triton.

K

Marx · Post by **Marx** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 8:48 pm

call me when you figure out how route audio to reason.......

aburgener · Post by **aburgener** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:14 pm

how the hell is anyone going to do that when reason has no ext audio ins?

Marx · Post by **Marx** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:23 pm

aburgener wrote:how the hell is anyone going to do that when reason has no ext audio ins?

lol???? that was my point.......