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Keeping it REASONable
In the short time I have been with the corner, I have already received more then a few emails requesting some tips on working with Pro Tools and Reason. Love it or hate it, Reason is a force to be reckoned with in the music production world (I personally love Reason and use it quite a bit). If you are doing any sort of collaboration, using Pro Tools or any other DAW, often you will find Reason acting as common ground, bringing people together regardless of their main platform. That being said, I would like to dedicate this week’s Pro Tools Corner to an everyday workflow using Pro Tools and Reason.
One of the most common questions I encounter when teaching students to work with Reason is, “how do I get the MIDI I programmed in Reason into the Pro Tools sequencer?” A fair question, since many people choose to sequence in Reason when they are away from their Pro Tools rig (Reason can run just fine off of a laptops internal sound card), or sequence in Reason for its ease of use and cool features (such as Redrum’s pattern sequencer).
Moving sequence data (MIDI data) between Reason and Pro Tools is fairly simple once you get the hang of it. This week, I am going to look at a simple example and walk you through step-by-step. For the sake of time, I am assuming that we all know how to chain Reason to Pro Tools using Rewire, so before we start you may want to refresh yourself on that topic. Scott wrote two wonderful tutorials on Rewire in previous PT corner articles: Slaving Reason to Pro Tools Part 1 and Slaving Reason to Pro Tools Part 2.
Just to be clear, we are only moving MIDI data from Reason to Pro Tools. Exporting audio from Reason and bringing it into Pro Tools is an entirely different tutorial.
From Reason To Pro Tools
To start, I have opened up a new Pro Tools session, created a new stereo aux track and inserted the Reason Rewire plug-in (Again, please review the two articles mentioned above if this doesn’t make sense). Remember, in a Pro Tools/Reason workflow, Pro Tools must be launched and running before launching Reason.
In Reason, I have created a new empty song and added the following:
Mixer 14:2
Redrum Drum Computer
Subtractor Analog Synthesizer
Hint: to add elements to the rack use the “Create” menu. If you create your Mixer first, everything will patch into the mixer automatically, saving you tons of time.
If you already have a Reason song file with sequence data, you would open this instead, but I suggest you start with this basic example to get the hang of it.
After loading a patch into Redrum and Subtractor, pencil in a few notes in the Reason sequencer so that you have some midi data to export. Skip this step if you opened up a pre-existing Reason song file already containing midi data.
Once you have some midi notes written into Reason’s sequencer, playback your session and verify that you have audio coming back into Pro Tools, if not go back and check your rewire connections to make sure they are correct.
To recap what is going on at this point: Reason is playing back sequencer data, which is triggering sound from the Reason instruments. This sound is then being passed back into Pro Tools via the Rewire plug-in and playing back through the stereo aux track we created.
Hint: When Reason is slaved via Rewire, Reason will follow the tempo set in Pro Tools.
The next step is to get the data that we have programmed in Reason into Pro Tools.
To Export MIDI Data From Reason:
- In Reason choose: File>Export MIDI file
- Name the file, pick a location you will remember and click save (I chose the desktop so the midi file was easy to find)..
This command will export all of your sequencer tracks in Reason to a standard type 1 (multi-track) MIDI file.
After you have exported the MIDI data from Reason, make sure you mute or delete your tracks from the Reason sequencer. If you skip this step, you will get double triggering from the events being played back in two different places. If you choose to delete the sequencer tracks, make sure you keep the device that it is associated with (also make sure you backup your song file before getting rid of anything!) For Example, if you click on a Redrum sequencer track and hit Delete, Reason will ask you if you want to “Keep” or “Delete” the assigned device, choose “Keep.” You still want the device in Reason, it is what makes the sound, but now that the MIDI data will be coming from Pro Tools, a sequencer track in Reason is unnecessary.
Make sure you mute (or delete) your tracks in reason to prevent double triggering
To Import MIDI Data Into Pro Tools:
There are a number of ways you can do this, but let’s look at one of them.
- In Pro Tools, choose File>Import>MIDI
- Browse to the location where you saved your MIDI file from Reason, select the file and click Open.
- In the dialog box that appears, select “New Track” as the destination and select “Session Start” as the location. If you like, you can select “Import tempo map from MIDI file” to bring in any tempo information from the sequence data.
- Click OK.
In this example, 2 new MIDI tracks will be created with the sequence data from Reason. The tracks will automatically be named “Redrum 1” and “Subtractor 1,” based on the track names from Reason. The tracks will appear grayed out at first, denoting that the MIDI track is not assigned to a valid output.
Hint: try importing MIDI directly to the regions list, without creating new tracks, by dragging it in from the workspace browser.
Now that we have the MIDI data inside Pro Tools, the final step is to point that data to the correct devices in Reason. From your mix window, on the Redrum MIDI tracks OUTPUT, select “Redrum.” Do the same for Subtractor. Here we are telling Pro Tools to send the MIDI data from those two tracks over to the correct devices in Reason. Looking back at the edit window, the MIDI tracks should light up, now that they have been assigned valid output.
So let’s review. MIDI data from the Pro Tools sequencer is being passed into Reason’s Redrum and Subtractor devices. These devices are generating audio and sending that signal over the Rewire bus, back into Pro Tools. The Rewire plug-in inserted on the aux track is accepting that audio signal from Reason and passing the audio through to the interface and out the speakers.
In Closing:
There are a million different variations on this little workflow, so feel free to experiment with the steps and come up with something that works for you. Try taking the midi that you brought over from Reason and use it to trigger different virtual instruments now that it is in Pro Tools. For example, you could program a drum pattern in Reason on your laptop, then bring the MIDI data into Pro Tools and trigger BFD for your final drum sounds. Remember, MIDI data in itself does not contain any sound, so the MIDI file you export from Reason is not actually audio, just note data (sort of like digital sheet music).
Pro Tip #3: Locking Regions
Last week’s Pro Tip had us looking at the Mute Region command, this week’s tip follows some of the same steps but instead of muting a region we are going to lock it.
The Lock Region command in Pro Tools allows you to lock down the selected region, keeping it from being accidentally moved, nudged out of place, trimmed, or deleted. This is a great trick for post-production workflow's where you might have lots of little regions that need to maintain timecode. This also a great tool when collaborating. Often times when sharing work with others, things get moved out of place and you never realize it until your partner says “Hey, why did you move my snare drum?” If you lock all your regions before you send things off, the other user can allows unlock them if they need to, but it is just a friendly reminder that says, “don’t move this please.”
To lock a region in Pro Tools:
- Select the region (double click with the selector tool or single click with the grabber tool).
- Choose REGION>Lock/Unlock or use the key command: CMD+L (Mac) or CNTRL+L (PC) to toggle the region between locked and un-locked status. Remember “L” for Lock.
- The locked region shows a little padlock symbol in the lower left-hand corner.
- To unlock, re-select the region and use the same key command or menu item.
- To lock all regions in a session, double click in your ruler to select all regions then choose Region>Lock/Unlock.
Tip: Even though locked regions cannot be manually moved or deleted, they may still be removed from the playlist if they become overlapped completely by a larger region.
Pro Tools Tidbits
- FXpansion’s website claims that Percussion Pack will be shipping in November.
If you have a Pro Tools related question that you would like me to take a shot at answering or have any feedback, please send it to brian@audioMIDI.com. I will do my best to select the questions that seem to stump the most people.
As always, stay tuned to the audioMIDI.com eNews for the latest reviews and new product info.
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