52 Reason and Record Tips Week 4 – Unlocking the Secrets of CV and Gate. from James Bernard on Vimeo.
Reason and Record may lack plug-in support, but what they do have – open-ended patching between the available modules, in the tradition of analog synthesizers – opens up plenty of creative possibilities. The only sad news is that many Reason uses don’t take full advantage of that depth.
Here are three tutorials to get you started, if you’re not familiar with how to do this (or if you need a video to send your friends to get them patching). At top, James Bernard continues his 52 tips in 52 weeks series with a general look at how the CV and gate connections work. From Propellerhead’s Matt Piper, we have two videos with guitar, one routing through Malström and the other through the Thor synth. Matt tells me that in the Malström vid, “once the patch creation portion starts (at 0:36), there are no edits thereafter– it is a ‘live performance’ that I hope is somewhat musical.”
It’s all good stuff, and of course it’s terrific to be able to combine Reason and Record in order to get audio routing through the modular system – “’bout time” I believe is the phrase I’m looking for. At the same time, I’m sure that doesn’t ease the frustration of Reason users who don’t like the idea of having to buy Record just to get audio. I can understand the perception there, though at least there are some crossgrade offers. It’s a tricky question: the Props could have added basic audio functionality to Reason, but then, once you do have audio, you might start asking for all the other stuff that’s in Record. (The mixer, more audio effects, audio track management and editing – work through that wish list, and you can see why they have another product.) To me, the interesting question now will be who will upgrade and who won’t.
Speaking of Propellerhead news, a number of readers have noted this announcement on the Propellerhead site:
“Do you want to help us test the music software of the future? Are you a Reason/Record power user? Can you keep a secret? If your answer is yes to all three questions, maybe you would like to join the Propellerhead Test Pilots?”
I don’t actually know whether this is Reason 5 or something else. I expect I will find out, at which point I’ll be sworn to secrecy. In the meantime, for anyone else who doesn’t know, feel free to commence the rampant speculation. And if you’re a current user, you can try signing up for the limited testing pool.
And here’s part two of using guitar and synth in Reason/Record, which also includes a downloadable Combinator patch.
Propellerhead Record + Reason: Playing Guitar Through the Reason Synths (Part Two)