Reason MIDI Outputs

[jeffreyathompson]

My original MBox on an old PC finally took a crap... so I broke down and purchased a macbook pro, MBox3 with ProTools Express 10.3.4, and ProTools 11 Crossgrade (which still hasn't arrived). The Adapted Reason I used to use on my old system would not install on my new mac, so I also purchased Reason 7.1. I now have everything installed and working... sort of. I can insert Reason on an aux channel and if I play one of the reason instruments I can see signal on the aux channel and hear the sound coming out of the MBox. But when I setup a MIDI track and go to my outputs on the MIDI track, none of my Reason instruments are available in the drop down menu. I really really need this to work, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by jeffreyathompson

My original MBox on an old PC finally took a crap... so I broke down and purchased a macbook pro, MBox3 with ProTools Express 10.3.4, and ProTools 11 Crossgrade (which still hasn't arrived). The Adapted Reason I used to use on my old system would not install on my new mac, so I also purchased Reason 7.1. I now have everything installed and working... sort of. I can insert Reason on an aux channel and if I play one of the reason instruments I can see signal on the aux channel and hear the sound coming out of the MBox. But when I setup a MIDI track and go to my outputs on the MIDI track, none of my Reason instruments are available in the drop down menu. I really really need this to work, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

There's no need to use a separate MIDI track for feeding Reason. Use PT Instrument tracks which are a combo of MIDI and Aux tracks. This way you host the MIDI to feed Reason there and the audio for the first two outputs from Reason return there. When you want to render the audio from Reason route the output of the Instrument track to an audio track in PT, enable record on the audio track, hit f12 on your Mac keyboard and the audio will be rendered.

What I didn't mention above is the routing of MIDI to Reason and here's where it gets a little complex. When you have the Instrument track inserted in a PT session go to View/edit window and select instruments. That will show the instruments assignments for that track and from there you pick what instrument in Reason you want to send PT MIDI to. Now here's the complicated part - that simple explanation only goes for single instruments in Reason. The routing gets more complex if you're using Combinator patches in Reason because there are many possible MIDI paths and not all are the same. I find I have to set it so that the PT MIDI is going to two different parts of the Combinator - one path for the MIDI notes themselves and a second path for MIDI volume because of the weird way Reason MIDI paths work (and nowheres is that routing explained in Reason documentation and no one on their forums has been able to help either). The path that allows MIDI notes to play for a Combinator is not the same path for MIDI volume (cc7). Sorry to say this is something you're going to have to figure out on your own because each time I do it I go through the same thing and no two instances are the same because Combinators are all different.

For your own education I'd suggest Googling Rewire/Reason/Pro Tools to get a bit more info. Good luck.

[jeffreyathompson]

Thanks for the reply Musicman691. When you say "go to View/edit window and select instruments," where is that? how do i get there? When I look at the outputs on an instrument track, I still see no Reason instruments.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by jeffreyathompson

Thanks for the reply Musicman691. When you say "go to View/edit window and select instruments," where is that? how do i get there? When I look at the outputs on an instrument track, I still see no Reason instruments.

Look at the View menu pull down at the top of the screen. Basic PT knowledge everyone has to know. Have you even read the PT manual? Everyone gets one as part of the software download. If you want to run PT with any kind of aplomb you're going to have to do some reading on your own. PT is NOT plug and play software.

I'd suggest getting a good book on PT. There's one for rank beginners called PT11 Ignite that Barnes & Noble and Amazon carry. Get it; read it; learn from it. It might also be worth your while to visit Groove 3 as they have excellent video tutorials; not free but worth it.