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...:) |
|
