REASON - Please Direct Reason questions here

[klm09]

Thanks Tossy that makes a lot of sense now, I was looking at it in the totally opposite direction.

Just wondering, what is the benfits of using Cubase Rewired with Reason other than just tempo changes. What exactly is the true power of Cubase that would make someone want to go through the trouble of having these two programs linked together? The tempo automation is a good one, but that is the only thing I know of, perhaps adding VST's which Reason cannot do either, but in general, why is Rewire such a "cool" thing?

In addition to the things you mentioned there's for example that you can record direct into Cubase; have the backing playing live to headphones while recording live, like most pro recording is done. The recording process is auto-synced so you just have to sing/play at the right time and that's it, no wave exporting/importing etc. necessary. Other things (that I can think of) are more "working method" oriented, ie. that you can for example do a quick doodle with a synth line with the Subtraktor and Matrix, record that over Rewire into a Cubase audio track, work with in there, adding effects via VST, export that as a wav, import in a Reason sampler, and have it triggering rhythmically in time with your beat, which would be a pain to do with just midi notes. Or maybe you don't like the synths in Reason, but you love the samplers: use VST's for synths, and Reason for drum / sample sequencing. And one more thing: Reason isn't all that suited for mastering, and exporting single tracks out of Reason, doing your mastering eq, compression and whatnot, then recombining them is a bit of a pain. So just record the Reason tracks into Cubase and use that for mastering, with better compressors and more accurate EQ's via VST's.

[SirRus]

I ReWired Cubase with Reason and I can trigger NNXT samplers via Cubase midi tracks. HOWEVER, I'm getting a pretty substantial delay between when I hit a note on my keyboard and when it is heard through my speakers, and I don't have any other applications running so short of CPU limitations, is there anything else that you could recommend?

[Hy Bound]

quick noob-ish question:

I got reason and went online and downloaded some songs. I noticed on the sequencer the tracks have different colored backgrounds. Can someone explain what they are and what they do?

I think what you mean is "grouping." this is pretty easy to do. you click the pencil icon and drag it over the notes in arrange mode. Or you can go into edit mode and select the notes you want to group individually and group them. This is easy for quick editing of portions of songs instead of indiviual notes.

On a completely unrelated note:

I have learned quite a bit about reason and all the different effects by just messing around with the program. You can make some pretty crazy sounds and basslines by just screwing around.

Also, I would like to thank SGX with his example files and his tips and tricks page on his site; they have been invaluable!

[sgx]

I ReWired Cubase with Reason and I can trigger NNXT samplers via Cubase midi tracks. HOWEVER, I'm getting a pretty substantial delay between when I hit a note on my keyboard and when it is heard through my speakers, and I don't have any other applications running so short of CPU limitations, is there anything else that you could recommend?

Sounds like you need to adjust your audio drivers and or settings from within Cubase.

You're welcome, mr. Zenith.

[Chern]

another quick question:

How do i record changes on the mixer? For example i press record, then play, then for one of the tracks i can mess around with the device its attached to and it'll record those changes. But what if i want to change the volume of the track on the mixer at a certain point? or even the master volume?

Also, is there a way to increase the volume without having it peak out? keep it in the green/yellow area yet have it be loud?

thanks.

[SmockJoc]

I found the help for the latency issues that I was having in this thread. Thanks guys.

[SirRus]

another quick question:

How do i record changes on the mixer? For example i press record, then play, then for one of the tracks i can mess around with the device its attached to and it'll record those changes. But what if i want to change the volume of the track on the mixer at a certain point? or even the master volume?

^^^ Came here to ask the very same thing... right clicking the sliders on the mixer gives a greyed out "Edit Automation" link... and yet I have seen Reason projects that fade out the master track and individual tracks as well - what up wid dat?

I was also wondering if it is possible to automate the dry/wet setting on digital reverb. (SGX's tutorial on making those easy drum fills would be a lot cooler if I could automate the dry/wet setting to actually record them.)

Thanks.

[SirRus]

Awesome, I'm still learning my way around the interface, thanks for the help. Another question about that though, now that I have created the sequencer track how come the only way to automate it is manually within the track, like on the graph. When I hit record and mess with the knobs with the mouse nothing gets recorded, like it does on say the track volume of a NNXT device. I'm glad enough that you have showed me how to automate it at all, but for convenience, wondering if it is possible to record mouse modifications on the knobs or if I can only go to the graph for this. Thanks again.

[sgx]

I think you just can't. I just tried it. Can't say I personally miss the feature though.

[SirRus]

haha thanks anyway for trying SGX. I probably need to get a midi controller - anyone know of any relatively inexpensive/midrange midi controllers that work well with Reason?

Yes I know this probably should go in the Hardware forum, but I added that last clause "work well with Reason" so I won't get flamed.

[humanliteshow]

You did assign the sequencer track to "Mixer 1", right?

[sgx]

Yes, we did. You can set up automations, but it seems you can't record them in real time.

I'm not terribly familiar with midi controller hardware. I've heard good things about the Oxygen 8 though.

edit: btw, I kinda try to stay away from automating mixer volume sliders. Its annoying if you just want one channel louder in the whole song and you've got it automated already. You have to go redraw your automation if you want the whole thing say 15% louder. I try to automate volumes on the instruments.

Here's a tip also: if you need an extra volume boost on an instrument, or you want to volume boost after a chain of effects instead of before(sometimes different input volumes can change the way effects affect a sound), you can just add a Scream machine in there with distortion turned off as the last effect in the chain. You can also automate that and control volume from there. Maybe you can record automation on a scream, too. I'm not sure if you can and I'm too lazy to try.

[Uncle]

I'm not terribly familiar with midi controller hardware. I've heard good things about the Oxygen 8 though.

I have an Oxygen 8 and while it is a fairly decent midi controller, I would reccomend you all to go the extra mile and pay a little more for an Ozone. Go to M-Audio's website and take a good look at it (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MAudioOzone-focus.html); you'll find there may only be a few extras on the outside, but the real prizes can be found on the back panel: along with being a quality midi controller, it also sports inputs for mic, stereo and other auxilary lines, eliminating the need for a separate midi interface.

Shortly after purchasing my Oxygen, I began to somewhat regret not spending another $100 to $200 for these extra features. While doling out $100 to $200 more for something I might not neccessarily use sounds a bit dumb, it certainly is nowhere near as dumb as having to pay $400 to $600 for a separate interface later.

(when I found out I could have

Anyway, that's how I feel about it; if you play electric guitar or similar aux instrument and might want to record that on your computer, but you don't have an interface already, an Ozone is a sound decision.

But don't listen to me; if you're looking around for a controller, you know what all you need. Check the URL above and see what you think.

[Uncle]

Since we're speaking about midi controllers and Reason, I would like to say that even with the controller, I still tend to use the mouse for a large number of adjustments because I have no idea how to map the knobs to particular parameters (e.g., Slider A is used for the master volume of a device, Knobs A-D control the Attack Decay Sustain Release respectively, etc.).

How do you do this in Reason? I can't figure it out. Also, will your midi controller setups stay in the memory from project to project, or must they be reentered each time?

[Nicole Adams]

Alrighty, I'm having a little trouble with automation of ceratin devices. When I right-click on any of the global control knobs in NN-XT, for example, I have the ability to edit an automation. My problem is when I right-click on any of the knobs in the mixer or Advanced Reverb the edit automation selection is there, but not available for me to select. This didn't make any sense so I opened up one of SuperGreenX's project files and he had the ability to edit different automations of these same devices. All of my connections look right and I tried opening up a new project to see if I could be able to do it there but cannot. Can anyone tell me what might be the problem?

[sgx]

You need to create a new sequencer track and link it to the machine you want to control,.

Regarding midi controllers, I really don't use mine much at all. I mainly use it to fool around, get some chord progressions going, or make a melody. I'd say like 1% of my time in reason is spent using my keyboard. I almost never use it for recording automations also.

[Hy Bound]

Yeah, so ok, I am trying to remix a song with vocals, and I want to extract them from the song, but have no real way to do it. I posted this in the remixing forum as a separate topic, but it got deleted. Anyway, does anyone have an idea of how to get just the vocals out. Right now Im ripping the song in a cheap-ass program and importing it in the NN-XT and trying to EQ the lyrics out... yeah, it sucks...

[sgx]

THere's been a lot of threads about this. One is probably still around if you look for it.

Short answer is you pretty much can't get vocals out of a song cleanly. And you wouldn't use Reason to do it.

[Uncle]

Regarding midi controllers, I really don't use mine much at all. I mainly use it to fool around, get some chord progressions going, or make a melody.

Sounds a little like myself.. I also tend to use it to audition instrument patches (eg. playing a few notes through a certain machine and seeing how it sounds).

And in regards to the vocal bit.. would it be possible to re-record the vocals yourself (as in singing it and using that instead of the original recording)? Not always the best way to go, but look at how SGX handled the situation with "4F73R M3"; he not only performed it himself, but he even changed the lyrics, which ended up working out even better. Maybe that's not going to work for what you have in mind, but at least you have a better worst-case scenario than having to use poorly-EQ'd vocals..

Two things while we're at it:

1)How did Trenthian get his lyrics for his One Winged Angel remix?

2)SGX, how did you handle the vocals for your B4U mix? Did you ReWire with a different program or something? I'd like to know in case I ever need to drop lyrics into one of my own works..

[sgx]

I believe I saw Trenthian saying that he happened upon a fan-made soundfont of those vocal samples that were ripped from the game.

I recorded the vocals in the free audio editor Goldwave www.goldwave.com then inserted them as audio samples in Reason. I could have used the nn19 or redrum for it, but I used ReCycle to make the different phrases into chopped up .rex samples and ran them in dr rex. I had to adjust my timing a bit and this made it easier. I could have manually chopped and loaded this stuff into lots of redrums, but that would have been messy and more time consuming.

[Hy Bound]

Thx a ton SGX, I'm kinda tired tonight and don't want to have to install all the programs required right now, but I will soon.

[Uncle]

I recorded the vocals in the free audio editor Goldwave www.goldwave.com then inserted them as audio samples in Reason. I could have used the nn19 or redrum for it, but I used ReCycle to make the different phrases into chopped up .rex samples and ran them in dr rex. I had to adjust my timing a bit and this made it easier. I could have manually chopped and loaded this stuff into lots of redrums, but that would have been messy and more time consuming.

Cool, I use Goldwave too. The style you say you used to insert these lyrics surprised me, but in all honesty, running them through Redrum is how I would have done it. I'm not fortunate enough to have a copy of ReCycle, so I'd have to splice the lyrics in Goldwave.

Two more questions (for now =P):

What kind of mic did you use for recording the lyrics?

Do you use ReWire at all, or is your work all produced within Reason?

[sgx]

I have some Sony portable mic thats made for use with minidisc players and stuff. Its not so hot for vocals, which is why I definitely needed to have that distortion on the vocals.

I do use ReWire a bit now, mostly for mastering stuff (some eq's and compression) within SONAR. The only songs I've done this for however, are Composer and Deep Breath (newer originals). Otherwise, Its all Reason.

[SirRus]

so.. whats the best way to do stutter effects on vocals (or anything?). loading a bunch of wavs into redrum and overlapping and tweaking volumes and omg such a mess, and I'm out of ideas... but being a n00b I have very few ideas so not really all that surprising.

oyeah and if anyone has any other cool mixing effects on vocals (im still learning my way around the vocoder... i have no idea what I'm doing on the backside of the Reason rack) that would be pretty sweet.

help? thanks!

[Uncle]

I have some Sony portable mic thats made for use with minidisc players and stuff. Its not so hot for vocals, which is why I definitely needed to have that distortion on the vocals.

Ah.. I should have guessed that was why you distorted the vox. Still, that's pretty impressive for a basic mic. I assume you used Scream 4 for distortion?

I'll have to check out the originals you mentioned.. only thing is I'm not downloading as much music as I used to, because I don't often download a mix on sight anymore; I usually stick it in a queue of stuff I want to download. Not neccessarily the greatest thing in the world, but when you need to leave bandwidth open for the phone, it works =P

SirRus: I assume you mean gating? For something like that you'll want to hook up a Matrix to the machine you're working with (Redrum, Subtractor, NN-XT etc) and create a pattern on the Matrix..

Can somebody else go over this in more detail? I still haven't done enough with gating sound to properly explain it to somebody else. I'll try to see if I can explain it later, but as of right now I don't really remember how the devices were wired in the back; that's pretty much the most important part now, isn't it?