Ableton Forum

Hey All...I just picked up reason 4.0 premium. I'm really excited to start using it! I was wondering what is the most efficient way to use it with ableton live? Can it run like a VST plug-in that live will recgonize? Or is there a better way of doing it? Thanks in advance for advice!

Although a VST would be nice, It doesn't work like that.

I walked someone through step by step a few weeks back, hope this helps..

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?p=976423#p976423

right on. Ill give this a whirl. Thanks for the tip!

A good technique (taking shpongle's explanation a bit furthur) is to build yourself a template set in Reason. For instance, I set my template up with 8 of the 14:2 mixers in Reason, each one's audio is routed to a different R/L channel behind the rack (1|2 through 15|16). Then I have my Live template configured so the first 8 MIDI tracks have an External Instrument device with audio coming from those respective Reason audio channels. Then, when you open up Live (then Reason), all you need to do is create your instrument in Reason, Arm the corresponding track in Live, and select the specific Reason instrument that you want to play in the Ext. Instrument's drop down box.

I used to name my Reason instruments 1 through 8.. Then select them in Live and I figured if I opened a different rack in Reason that Live would still recognize 1 through 8, just different instruments, but it didn't.. at least in Live 7.

So what I'm saying is you have Live set A.. the you open Reason set A. If you try opening Reason set B all the routings are fine but inside of each external instrument the name of the instrument "1-8" are greyed out, and I have to go in and select each one..

Idk, it'd work great if you could just make sure to name instruments 1,2,3,4,etc.. and have Live set to the same thing, then once you switch instruments in Reason as long as the names are the same it will just load up, didn't work out for me.

do you know is it possible to take existing midi patterns that i have created and open reason as an external instrument to play my existing midi patterns???

You could use the same method I listed above, and load the MIDI files into clips in live.. So this will send those midi notes to reason, and receive audio back from reason..