Pro Tools Enters the Age of Reason

By Joe Gore

Digidesign's recent Pro Tools 6.1 software boasts a number of cool new features, but the coolest by far — at least for those of us creating music on LE systems — is the program's new support for the ReWire protocol.

Devised by Propellerhead Software, the Swedish audio brainiacs behind such programs as ReBirth, ReCycle, and Reason, ReWire is a means of sending audio and MIDI data between applications. Now you can run ReWire-compatible applications such as Propellerhead Software's Reason and Ableton's Live together with Pro Tools, controlling them via Pro Tools MIDI files and capturing their audio output as Pro Tools tracks via RTAS plug-ins.

Sound a bit familiar? It should, if you've clocked any hours wrestling with DirectConnect, the inter-application scheme deployed on pre-6.0 versions of Pro Tools. But you may find ReWire simpler and more intuitive to work with. For example, when you open an RTAS Reason, Pro Tools automatically launches Reason in ReWire slave mode. You no longer need to mess with the audio and MIDI preferences of the slave programs. In short, ReWire demands relatively little "why isn't this working?" time. Plus it gives you direct access to two seriously ass-kicking programs.

It's a particularly cool situation since the strengths of Reason and Live directly complement those of Pro Tools. Reason, for example, offers an impressive assortment of virtual instruments, an area in which Pro Tools is still finding its feet. (And some of PT's best virtual synths, such as Access' Indigo and McDSP's Synthesizer One, remain TDM-only options.) Similarly, Live excels at the real-time time-shifting of audio loops, a trick Pro Tools doesn't yet do.

This month and next, we'll look at using Reason with Pro Tools. After that, we'll explore looping with Ableton Live.

Get Reasonable
Mind you, Pro Tools 6.1 software doesn't include these programs — just the means to run them; although as of September 2, 2003, all Pro Tools systems do ship with special versions of Reason, Live, and three IK Multimedia products, most of which allow you to upgrade to full versions. If you already have a Pro Tools system but you don't yet own Reason, download a demo here. Happily, the demo version of Reason has only a few handicaps: you can't save Reason files, the program shuts down every 20 minutes, and you get only a sampling of the program's 1 GB sample library.

We're not going to delve too deeply into Reason's formidable features — consider the following a sort of quick start to the Reason quick start. It would probably be a judicious idea to read through Propellerhead's excellent documentation at this point, but if you're feeling rebellious, I'm not going to rain on your riot.

Install the Reason demo. Quit Pro Tools if it's open. Open Reason and set it up to suit your system: Under Preferences, select the appropriate MIDI input device and audio output (your MBox, Digi 001, Digi 002 Rack or Digi 002 should appear in the pull-down menu).

Press play (the space bar controls the transport, just as in Pro Tools) and party to the festive Swedish house music of the auto-load demo. While you're partying, scope out the screen: The lower portion, obviously, is a grid-style sequencer akin to the one in Pro Tools, complete with tape-style transport controls. The upper part of the screen displays your virtual rack — the instruments selected for a given song. Note that only a segment of the rack is displayed; to view the rest, scroll downward. You can collapse each instrument to a minimal view by clicking on the triangle icon beneath its upper-left corner "rack screw." For a quick view of the entire rack, select any triangle while holding down the Option key, and everything shrinks to its minimum view:

Reason offers not only a flexible array of instruments, but also an equally flexible routing scheme. See for yourself — press the tab key for a view of the patching, complete with virtual wiggly cables:

Now click on any track name in the sequencer portion of the screen. Its name becomes highlighted, and the rack "zooms" to display the instrument in question. For example, highlight the first instrument track, "Badaid," and note how the display shifts to feature a Subtractor, Reason's virtual analog synth. Now click on ReDrum to zoom to Reason's step-input drum machine. Pretty neato.

Next, click immediately to the left of any track name. The MIDI plug icon that appears indicates the selected instrument is available for MIDI input. Click alongside "Badaid," for example, and finger your MIDI keyboard. You should hear a triangle-wave synth sound with a piano-like attack. Try the same with the other tracks. The "ReDrum" track includes a set of drum sounds laid out chromatically beginning at the note C1. "Bass" and "Melody A" trigger separate Subtractors set to different sounds, while "Melody B" controls a Malström, a granular-based synth that excels at eerie digital timbres. "RnB-loop" triggers the individual slices of a loop via Reason's REX file player, starting with the C1 key. (We'll look at REX files in greater depth next month.) You get no sound when you select "Melody A PattChange" and "Melody B PattChange," because these channels are simply transmitting control info to two of the Subtractor tracks.

Tweak, Ho!
Now try modifying sounds via Reason's instrument panel. Reselect the "Badaid" track, and then click-hold on the word "Badaid" on the Subtractor panel. The pull-down menu reveals a long list of patches — check them out. And these are only the tip of the tonal iceberg. To access the full patch library, click on the folder icon to the right of the track name, which opens the Reason browser. No need to strain your eyes searching for the relevant folder — just click on the magnifying-glass icon in the upper-right-hand corner of the browser screen. This takes you directly to all "Refill" files. ("Refill" is proprietary Reason jargon for a set of patches, samples, or sequences. Unlike most other sequencers, including Pro Tools', Reason archives its data as a single mega-file rather than small individual ones.) Double-click on Reason Factory Sound Bank and then select Subtractor Patches. Click on any category, and up pops a list of patches. As an example, select the "Pads" category, and load the first patch, Air Traffic.

Subtractor loads that patch, and now all the other patches in the Pads folder are available via the synth's pull-down menu.

The browser works similarly with all the Reason instruments. Click on the browse icon, navigate to the relevant folders, and load the sounds.

And remember, these are just the presets. Try manipulating sound via the synths' virtual controls. (Note for synth beginners: A good "tweak of first resort" is to fiddle with the filter frequency and resonance controls.)

Reason Goes Pro
Now that you've learned some basic Reason moves, try integrating the program into a Pro Tools session — for example, PC | Mac, which was the starting point for last month's column.

When you're slaving programs via ReWire, the order in which you open them is important. You'll always open the master program (Pro Tools, in our case) first and close it last. So quit Reason, then launch the Pro Tools session. No need to restart Reason — Pro Tools will do that for you in a moment.

Create a new stereo audio track and a new MIDI track, and arrange them like this:

Click-hold on one of the insert buttons on the "Audio 2" track. Note how Reason and Ableton Live are listed as choices. Select the former.

At this point, Reason should start up all by itself. Press play in Pro Tools, and you should be treated to a triumphant reprise of the Swedish house demo — only now, the audio appears within Pro Tools via the Audio 2 track. The transports between the two programs are linked — you can press play from Pro Tools or Reason, and the two programs will march along in sample-accurate lockstep.

If you're working with our ongoing demo sessions, you'll probably hear some nasty noises. Partly this is because our demo groove and Reason's have nothing to do with each other. Also, you may find, as I did, that opening Reason and its default song reset Pro Tools' tempo to that of the Reason track. (I guess that's what they call a bug.) The original tempo of our "Groove Workshop" session is 107. If it's switched to anything other than that, reset it manually. The sounds will still be horrible, but they'll be horrible in perfect synchronization.

Record-enable the MIDI track, and start jamming. The MIDI tracks you create within Pro Tools can now play any instruments active within Reason. You can modify any elements in Reason simply by bringing the program to the foreground in your finder.

(Note: If you're going to use ReWire, you're going to spend a fair amount of time toggling between programs, so Mac users will definitely want to employ the Command + Tab program-switching key command. There are also several shareware programs, such as Keyboard Maestro, that can speed up and customize the program-switching procedure.

Now you can add the instruments you like via Reason's Create menu. Since there is only a single pair of stereo outputs available from Reason under Pro Tools LE, you'll certainly want to start by selecting "Mixer 14:2." Once the mixer is in place, any instrument you add will automatically be routed to the next available mixer channel. Smooth! And note that you can have many MIDI tracks, each driving a different Reason instrument, with their collective stereo output returning via the Reason RTAS insert, like so:

That way, you can mix the individual Reason instruments via MIDI settings within Pro Tools, from the Reason mixer, or both.

Once you devise a Reason template that works for you, you can save it and then enshrine it as the default song under the Reason preferences. Since Save is disabled on the Reason demo, I've prepared a one-of-everything rack you can specify as your default song in the unlikely event that you need a break from that ebullient Scandinavian house-fest. Download my Reason song file PC | Mac.

After you've coughed up the spondooliks for the full version of Reason, you'll need to save your edits as a Reason song and store it in an easy-to-remember location — your Pro Tools session folder, for example.

So try adding an ounce of Reason to your Pro Tools sessions. Remember, while you can't save your sessions within the demo version of Reason, you can bounce your Reason synths and samples as audio files within Pro Tools — pretty cool for a freebie! Next time around, we'll explore using Reason as a groove tool via step-programming, REX files, and control-voltage sequences. Until then: Farväl!

Click here to read previous columns.